This beautiful church is worth a stop on the way from Pisa to the seaside. Arianna shares her discovery of it. The ceramic bowls that decorate the church are technically known as “bacini ceramici” in Italian, which could be translated as “ceramic basins.” Art historians who write in English, however, also use the term “bacini” for these tin-glazed works.

Arianna takes us down to a beach near Pisa, and explains a bit about how beaches work in many parts of Italy.

This documentary is about Guido Crepax, the creator of a famous fumetto (comic strip) that came out in 1965. The main characters are Philip Rembrandt, an art critic, and Valentina Rosselli, a photojournalist.

Crepax started out with one protagonist, Philip Rembrandt, but gradually phased him out, along with his superpowers. Valentina then took over as the protagonist. Crepax talks about Milan in the sixties.

In 1963 Crepax got his start in the world of comic books and two years later created his famous character, Valentina. The comic strip first appeared in the anthology comic book, "linus," founded by Giovanni Gandini, who had known Crepax as a kid.

Filmmakers Tinto Brass and Giuseppe Tornatore comment on how some elements of expressivity are shared between comic strips and the cinema.

Crepax's Valentina was an intriguing character because she openly reflected the sexual freedom of the late sixties and was attractive to both men and women. It was very "in" to be seen walking around with an issue of "Linus," an Italian comics magazine published in Italy beginning in 1965.

Valentina's success coincided with the beginnings of feminist movements in Italy. She depicted a woman who was strong and independent, who could do anything a man could do, a departure from the stereotype of the Italian housewife.

Among the pages of the comic strip, family members find familiar objects, drawings, and personal information from their everyday life. Although Valentina was a figment of Crepax's imagination, she was also an integral part of his family.

One of Crepax's techniques is to use the details of everyday life to build his stories and provide context. We even see the titles of the books in Valentina's bookcase.

Besides his much better known activity as a graphic artist, Crepax was a keen wargamer and wargame designer and collector of paper soldiers, drawn by himself.

Crepax loved playing at battles and would change the outcomes, using his friends to fine-tune the moves. He had some famous personalities as willing participants in the games, too.

Guido Crepax's son Antonio talks about the day Antonio Custra was killed in May of 1977, during an armed demonstration in Milan. This was during the so-called anni di piombo (years of lead), a period of social turmoil, political violence and upheaval that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism and violent clashes. Many demonstrators were arrested, but Antonio Crepax managed not to get loaded onto a paddy wagon.

Just as in Cubist art, Crepax would design his figures to be seen from various points of view simultaneously. Sometimes he would use small windows to attract attention rather than making them larger.

Who was the model for Valentina? Certainly, the actress Louise Brooks who portrayed Lulu in the movie Pandora's Box directed by G.W Pabst (based on two plays by Frank Wedekind), but also Crepax's wife, Luisa Mandelli.