It surprises and convinces, the docu-film of the duo artists about the scugnizzi (boys) and the celebration of the bonfire of Saint Anthony in the Spanish Quarters.
During the applauses the credits scroll down, full of the names of the film «Il Segreto», debut as a director of the urban duo artists cyop&kaf, that is in competition in the section Italiana.doc of the Torino Film Festival, directed by Paolo Virzì (verdict on the 30th of November). Last Saturday the theatre Sala 2 of the marbled Cinema Lux, was crowded. In the second line six kids from Naples, few of the tens of turbo-kids protagonists of the film, enjoyed but curiously silent in front of their own ultra-loud figures on the big screen. Two lines behind, Antonella Di Nocera from the production company Parallelo41, that participated when the film was done («we watched it and we got infatuated»). Next to her, the two directors Cyop and Kaf, that keep their identities private, as the superheroic identities of the writers impose. For this reason, to reveal some impressions after showing the film, it’s called on the stage Luca Rossomando, coordinator of the magazine Napoli Monitor and scriptwriter of the film, well edited by Alessandra Carchedi (a cut and paste of thirteen hours of film). Rossomando explains to the public the birth and the reasons of one of the most original projects of the festival.
IN THE STREETS – two notions about “the secret” first. It has the shape of a docu-film. No fiction, not an actor: the kids from 8 to 13 years old are followed (in a Zavattinian way) for ten days, and they behave as if the camera wasn’t there. It’s ninety minutes long, given back in the digital form with a neo-realistic Panasonic 100, totally focused on the preparation of the traditional celebration of the bonfire of Saint Anthony, ‘o fucarazz of the 17th of January. It’s been subtitled in Italian from the beginning to the end because the fast street slang would sound hard even to a person that lives in the Vomero, not only to the people in Turin.
A lady in the audience asks: «Was the movie entirely filmed in Naples? What kind of special effects have been used?». Silence. «…well, actually», Rossomando replys astonished, «everything in the movie is real. Except for the colour correction, any other scene has been shot as it looks». The northern lady probably couldn’t believe at the height of those flames, that reached the second floor of the buildings around, with the little tribe of the savages of the Spanish Quarters, that, bare-chested in the cold winter, sing and support the flaming spruces totem. Is there a trick? «No, the ritual is celebrated in many districts of Naples, and the movie shows also the competition between different gangs». Their goal is to create the greatest long-lasting fire, so it turns out better for those who have picked up the greatest amount of trees around the city.
The trees are the Christmas spruces that Checco Lecco, Tonitò and the others, ask to the hotels and to the residents of the higher quarters of Naples, also giving to these people the possibility to get rid of the trees that they won’t need anymore after Epiphany. The spruces, that sometimes are huge, are carried by hand or on a scooter, and are collected in a “secret” place, between the 1st and the 17th of January, which is a hidden abandoned spot between the narrow streets of the Quarters, where a building stood twenty years ago.
«QS», PAINT AND CINEMA – the possibility to follow the incursions of the “scugnizzi”, or turbo-scugnizzi, for the gestures and the speedy talk, isn’t a common privilege for a filmmaker of the realistic cinema. Cyop&Kaf have deserved this film after having given so much to the “sgarrupati” (decaying) hinges of the Spanish Quarters. During the last three years they have painted on doors, walls, shutters, inside the chessboard-shaped streets, and they have often done it with the help of the kids, who also appear in the film. During last spring they threw an inauguration party for the open-air exhibit, «QS – quore spinato» plus a map of all the paintings. Ideally the exhibit continues with the movie: «QS» bursts into the theatres of Torino, to shout out loud its strength in political commitment. «The actions in the film represent», Luca Rossomando specifies, «a deeper way to look at the reality of the impoverished areas, usually reported in a banal or lazy way». An academic would call it a demo-anthropological analysis. A way to mark various and authentic expressions of the contemporary social living of Naples, the artists would reply. «A movie that talks from a closer point of view can help, hopefully, to abandon the simplistic sight of the fight between good and bad, black and white, that always happens under the Vesuvio. Working between the different shades brings up different realities». And sets also many lies on fire. (alessandro chetta)