Continente Perduto (a.k.a. Lost Continent and Continent Perdu) is a 1955 Italian documentary film about Maritime Southeast Asia including Borneo. The film received the Special Jury Prize at the 1955 Cannes Film Festival and the Big Silver Medal at the 5th Berlin International Film Festival. Italian composer Angelo Lavagnino scored the music for the film, for which he won the Nastro d'Argento award for Best Score.
"If I talk about THE LOST CONTINENT, I talk about one of my favorites, just because it gave me the opportunity to show myself as a man and as a composer. I was gone for more than six months in Indonesia. At that time, for an Italian, going to Indonesia was like Marco Polo going to China! I found there what I expected to find: in their forests were many bamboo trees with which I created incredible sounds.
The bamboo, opened at the middle and laid on the floor, made sounds in 'pitch'. Using the 'diapason' I made a 'scale' out of it! (...) I did not have any problem in scoring this movie. I loved the Indonesian music, but I wrote music that reflected my personality. The music took ten days to write, arrange and conduct, and I am very satisfied with what I did (...)" - From an interview with the Maestro Lavagnino, one of the legenday Italian score masters
