In many quarters of Naples the collection of the spruces for the bonfires of Saint Anthony is a tradition, a ritual, an adventurous game that the kids pass down from generation to generation. For those who look at it from the outside, it may just appear as a sequence of acts of vandalisms and yelling till night, that ends with a dangerous fire, too close to the buildings. We wanted to tell about what happens in many streets around the city in January, from a point of view that’s the closest to the one of a bunch of kids. Following them in their hunt, their coalitions and tiffs between gangs, observing their behaviours, their language, their codes of conduct. We were sure that all the questions that we’ve been having from a long time, and that are necessarily, about the connection between the city and the children, would have come out spontaneously.
For the strength of the theme and the disruptive nature of the story.
For its anarchic energy, the celebration of a rite of passage, the subversive practices of a group of young boys reclaiming their space and remapping the city of Naples in an ongoing process of building and destroying
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
City of Lisbon Award for Best International Competition Feature-Length Film
FATHER AND SONS / Wang Bing / 2014 / China, France / 87′
Special Mention
IL SEGRETO / Cyop & Kaf / 2013 / Italy / 89′
Motivazione: Un film che utilizza le risorse del documentario, ma che è vero e proprio cinema, racconto avvincente, avventura corale, scoperta continua di una Napoli vista come un set inesauribile. Un film che sorprende per la bravura degli interpreti e per i dialoghi di rara efficacia, dentro una progressione narrativa degna del miglior thriller.
Best documentary 2014
http://www.faitodocfestival.it/it/empatia-2014.html
“for reinventing at the same time a tradition and a territory, finding in the urgency of the juvenile body a principle of violence and pleasure without which no subversion of order is possible”
IL SEGRETO one of the finalists of David di Donatello prizes
GIANNI VOLPI’S MENTION at Bellaria Film Festival 2014 goes to IL SEGRETO by cyop&kaf for “the immediacy of the narration and the prompt eyes on a group of Neapolitan kids, whose actions are driven by the desire to build an identity and by the attachment to their city”.
The winner of the documentary section of “Terra di cinema”, the new Italian cinema festival of Tremblay-en-France, Paris, is IL SEGRETO by cyop&kaf. Here’s the reason given by the jury.
We chose the film that received the greatest approval and left a deep mark in each one of the twelve members of the jury. This film proposes a complete immersion in the adventure of a group of young teenagers, it illustrates accurately and with incredible beauty the city of Naples, as if it was a single character, with its mazes and its night life.
The film does not aspire to justify nor explain, it rather invites us to participate in the adventure, in search of the holy fire.
Emotions keep growing, delightfully, abolishing the border represented by the screen, and letting the spectator become, for ninety minutes, one of the actors of this great celebration that is not going on in front of him, but around him.
This film is… «Il segreto» by cyop&kaf.
After receiving the special mention of the jury of the Torino Film Festival during last November, il segreto has now received in Paris the “Joris Ivens” prize, designated to the winner of the international competition of the Cinema du Réèl festival, for the best debut film.
“For the way chaos translates into cinema and into a new world order of an irrational force”, this is the reason given by the jury composed by the French Blaise Harrison, the Russian critic Boris Nelepo and by the Danish curator Mads Mikkelsen.
“Il segreto” – produced by Parallelo 41, Napoli Monitor, Quore Spinato, Antonella Di Nocera and Daria D’Antonio – has also received a special mention by The Youth Jury, composed by five high-school students and a filmmaker.
Fotoreportage by cyop&kaf
The Jury also awards a Special Mention to:
Il segreto by cyop&kaf (Italy, 2013)
For the following reason: For it strong narrative potential that develops within a microcosm inhabited by kids who (almost unwittingly) trace and retrace the conspicuous ways of an adult world already at war. The origins of a form of hardship concerning us all are composed and stratified through their story.
UCCA – VENTI CITTA’ AWARD
The national Jury of UCCA (Unione Circoli Cinematografici Arci) is composed of Greta Barbolini, Paola Scarnati, Mauro Brondi and Chiara Quartero. The prize consists in the distribution of the winner selected from the Italiana.doc competition in at least twenty cities, in the clubs and screening rooms affiliated to UCCA.
Moreover, the Jury also awards a special mention, proposing for distribution in the national UCCA circuit, to:
Il segreto by cyop&kaf (Italy, 2013)
For the following reason: For its decisive, clear and passionate approach to a multifaceted reality of a real, intense, yet contradictory Naples, where the social condition of kids escapes any superficial label, triggering a careful and detailed reflection.
In quanto luogo fisico, “il segreto” rappresenta materialmente e concettualmente il centro della narrazione, ma è un luogo non luogo, un’utopia a cui mancano però i tratti fondamentali della non esistenza, perché esiste, e della desiderabilità, perché a nessuno interessa quel posto così com’è. Nient’altro che un vuoto, lasciato lì dal terremoto del 1980 e dall’incuria. (continua a leggere)
A metà tra i ragazzi della via Paal e un cinema di sapore antropologico scomparso dal nostro orizzonte, Il segreto è un originale lavoro che raccogliendo le istanze di un passato di cinema verità, ma senza alcuni insopportabili cascami, riesce a discostarsene proponendo un cinema spontaneo, ma non istintivo, rispondendo così forse alle speranze di molti. (continua a leggere)
E segreto è anche quel sentimento di relazione che i registi riescono a costruire coi protagonisti, una reciprocità forte, rispettosa degli spazi e del rito dei ragazzi, e insieme capace di farne scorrere la vitalità e l’energia. leggi qui
Not a comment, not an «explanation» (it probably consist in the old tradition of the Cippo of Saint Anthony), only the attempt to give them back the vitality and the spontaneity of a generation that finds the code of its identity obeying to some laws that nobody ever wrote. Read more
Il segreto by cyop&kaf (lower case letters exclusively), Neapolitan filmmaker-writers that work as antagonists in those dark territories of the Spanish quarters, telling about their alleys, the decaying halls of the buildings destroyed by the earthquake and never rebuilt, the physical emptiness that becomes emptiness of the soul, in need to be filled and to be lighted up by a bonfire. Read more
Cyop&kaf made an appropriate decision choosing not to reveal the motivations behind the actions of the kids, leaving the audience unaware of a phenomenon that assumes a ritual appearance, leading the whole narrative structure in a dreamy, hypnotic dimension.
read more
Other than choosing a linear and simple direction, and a montage full of shots and reverse shots, that in some long scenes makes the film look more like a fiction rather than a documentary, the author reveals his painting experience, showing some frames that appear as symbolic paintings in motion (as in the high angle shot of “the secret”, that looks like an anthill during rush hour).
Cyop&kaf gave us a new point of view, direct, clean, close to the kids’ one, hiding in the dark alleys even when the sun’s up, or under the street lights at night. In a courtyard born on the ruins left by an earthquake and where the people have waited for something else to be built, in vain.
Someone, scared of his duty, talks about his discontents and fears, revealing that not even his brother could possibly defend him: he’s in house arrest.
read more
Il più notevole visto finora è italiano, si chiama Il segreto. Tra Santo Stefano e Sant’Antonio, nei quartieri popolari di Napoli, una tradizione vuole che gli abeti di Natale vengano raccolti e infine bruciati. Un tempo diffusa, l’usanza è tenuta viva da alcuni gruppi di bambini dei soli quartieri spagnoli.
leggi qui
cyop&kaf have deserved this film after having given so much to the “sgarrupati” (decaying) hinges of the Spanish Quarters.
read more
Cinema politico senza didascalismi: come un film d’azione, tutto in strada, sempre in strada, che rispecchia evidentemente l’idea dell’arte di cyop&kaf.
leggi qui
(Italiano) Senza coordinate né didascalie, gettano lo spettatore nel cuore della metropoli e nella missione appassionata di una manciata di ragazzi dai 10 ai 15 anni, che con sprezzo del pericolo e un fervore irripetibile trascinano alberi enormi da un quartiere all’altro, agendo per istinto viscerale e perpetuando una tradizione che affonda nelle radici mistiche della città, lasciando che il pubblico sia calamitato, spontaneamente, dalla loro parte
leggi qui
Regia cyop&kaf Soggetto Luca Rossomando Fotografia Ciro Malatesta Secondo operatore Daniele De Stefano Montaggio Alessandra Carchedi Correzione colore Angelo Francavilla Montaggio del suono e mix Massimo Mariani Musiche Originali Enzo Avitabile Materiale di repertorio Amedeo Fasanella Produzione Quore Spinato, Parallelo 41, Napoli Monitor, Antonella Di Nocera, Daria D’Antonio
Con (in ordine di apparizione): Ivano Calabria, Luigi Provenzano, Antonio D’amato, Mimmo Russo, Emanuele Criscuolo, Salvatore Di Matteo, I ragazzi della Torretta, Gennaro Picco, Salvatore Nocerino, Francesco Albinni, Ferdinando De Crescenzo, Emanuele Pio Adamo, Godwin Kofi “Emanuele” Boateng, Francesco Verrano, Rosario Pirone, Giuseppe Basile, Antony Marra, Luigi De Crescenzo, Giuseppe Civitelli, Francesco Civitelli, Mario D’ascia, I ragazzi del Cavone, Francesco Matteo, Carlo De Fortis Nadi, Tommaso Panico, Marcello Quaranta, Emanuele Abbate, Gennaro De Gaetano, Pio Patrizio Manna, Giuseppe Iannelli, Luciano Zazzera, Giuseppe Letteriello, Mimmo Egidio, Salvatore Riccardi, Amedeo Fasanella, Giovanni Iair, Matteo Ciriello, Gennaro Avoletto, Ciro Starita, Luigi Miano, Raffaele Fani, Francesco Cannola
usually paints, and occasionally stumbles upon writing,
city planning, and photography. When a video camera ended up in his hands for the first time,
he had been working with Naples’ Spanish Quarters for three years.
The fruits of his labor became first a book, QS, and then a documentary film, Il segreto,
which try to convey the complexity of a neighborhood corroded by prejudices.
To look inside and beyond the frequently brutal appearance of things.
Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.
