The Ghosts of San Berillo

In Siculiana, a small Sicilian town full of flaking facades, religiosity is lived out as a matter of course. And of course the figure of Jesus Christ worshipped here is black, and always has been. However, some people cannot get used to their dark-skinned neighbours in the refugee camp. The camera accompanies locals and stranded people along their paths, which often lead to the church, but not necessarily together, and draws a kind of map of the city in black-on-black contrasts.

Palermo, Sicily, Italy, 2017. Twenty-five years after the murders of anti-mafia judges Giovanni Falcone, on May 23, 1992, and Paolo Borsellino, on July 19, 1992; and on the occasion of the tributes held in memory of both heroes, skeptical photographer Letizia Battaglia, chronicler of their titanic combat, criticizes the opportunism of shady characters who, like businessman Ciccio Mira, profit from the commemoration of both tragedies.

Once upon a time there was a garden, a refuge, a safe haven - 'The Garden of the Finzi Continis'. It came to life in Giorgio Bassani's 1962 semi-autobiographical novel recounting an unfulfilled love story between two young Jews in Ferrara, while fascism was raging in Italy in the late 1930's. In 1972, Vittorio De Sica's film adaptation of the book won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Since then, the fictional space of the garden became so tangible that people from all over the world come to Ferrara to look for it. Fifty years after winning the Oscar, reality and fiction come together once more, as we walk through an imaginary garden and bring to life the book, its author, its main protagonists, history, love, friendships and betrayals.

Christopher Clark was an eco-warrior, a remarkable Scotsman who created his own personal Outpost of progress in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest. It was the model for a utopian society based on the perfect balance between nature and technology, protected and run by the inhabitants of the forest. Unfortunately, the situation got worse year by year, and in the film, a new huge wildfire now threatens to destroy the Outpost. Chris takes a gamble and decides to pit an equally spectacular event against the destruction of the forest: a Pink Floyd concert inside the green inferno, as a way to convince the Brazilian government to set up a nature reserve. To a dreamer like him, anything is possible, and he may well be right: in a world careening towards the apocalypse, being a bit crazy is the only form of resistance there is. But can we really save the rainforest? We, the children of the same capitalist system that is destroying it?

In the heart of Rome, face to Saint Peter’s, stands a Palace. The owner, like a renaissance patron, has once been offering shelter to a bizarre group of friends, embracing their joyfully ambitious causes. The perfect hideout from where to pursue the most aleatory artistic projects, far from the hassles of life. Now in their 50s’, they are suddenly reunited by the premature death of their charismatic leader, Mauro. He left something tangible to the group of friends: hours of footage where he directed them in the most diverse roles, a supposed masterpiece that was never finished, and now a a mirror reflecting images from the past. The mourning, in the shudder of a moment, shakes the numbed spirits, leading them into a radical confrontation with their future.

Simone, Francesca and Olivia are three young people from Bologna who are members of the Communist Renewal Party. Full of life, they take part in demonstrations and party meetings and believe that they can change the current world, dominated by ruthless capitalism and pressure for performance, for the better. At least until the moment when it turns out that it is almost impossible to change the minds of the older party members and the unsuccessful attempts to win new supporters intersect with the difficulties in their personal lives. Comrades is an empathetic time-lapse portrait that shows how the current young generation is losing its illusions, and how difficult it is to keep faith in what we believe makes sense.

Through magical realist animations in the style of baroque chiaroscuro, Devoti Tutti returns to the martyred Saint Agatha of Catania a voice she never had. Alongside a chorus of the citizens of Catania and the stories of real abuse survivors, Devoti Tutti shows how a community’s reverence for its saint masks misogynist realities. In her cell Agatha is kept company by her breasts, which her tormenters severed from her body—a reminder of the violence she suffered, but also of her refusal to submit to a man’s desire. Together with the flying breasts, Agatha escapes from the chamber where she has been held prisoner for two millennia and flies out over the ocean and into her own self-creation.

Maresco returns to speak not only about Jazz, but about the double thread that connects jazz with Italy, or more precisely, with Sicily.