Review of Summer ’82: When Zappa Came to Sicily (2013)
Seen in 2022.
Friends, surviving family and fans of Frank Zappa recount a worrying incident at a concert in Italy in 1982 and make another trip there 30 years later, to the town from whence the Zappa family emigrated to the USA.
Salvo Cuccia, an experienced director, sets up this documentary in a manner typical of amateurs, making it in part a story about his own life despite not having known the composer. With unusual aptitude, Cuccia then succeeds in reducing his own part to a minor thread in the tapestry of US immigration, rock music, police brutality, the Sicilian mafia etc., where even the brightest thread looks better for being part of the rich context.
References here: Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words (2016).