Dopo la pausa [After the Break] is an experience of water and time travel in which I trace the evolution of working-class tourism from the main stage of its ultimate exponent: the cruise ship. The screen-as-window offers an opportunity for pensive contemplation thanks to a series of landscapes which, in a kind of cinematic tracking shot created by the ship’s own movement, slowly slide past a cabin balcony.

The film script is the actual ship’s log of a seven-day cruise with stops in the ports of Civitavecchia, Napoli, Livorno, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca and Cagliari. These places offer stereotyped local colour, on the one hand, and the ruins of imperial Roman entertainment, on the other. These in turn are reflected in the theatres and baths aboard the ship, where travellers are treated to a steady stream of piped music intermingled with the deep hum of the engines. The viewer will also detect layered echoes of cruise tourism-centred films such as Federico Fellini’s E la nave va, Manoel Oliveira’s Um filme falado, Jean-Luc Godard’s Film Socialisme or Ronald Neame’s The Poseidon Adventure, plus a special guest appearance by former cruise ship crooner-turned-politician Silvio Berlusconi.

The successive footage plays with the type of advertising used on cruise ships, constantly self-referencing their own fleet and other destinations while touting steep discounts “you can’t afford to miss”.