The Power of the Spirits

A man lives holed up in an old house, inherited from his ancestors, seeking refuge from the threats of the outside world. Between waking and dreaming, he is the helpless witness to his own disintegration.

The life of the Lucan peasant faces not only atavistic poverty, but also the ferocity of nature. When bad weather rages, the hard-won shelters are at risk of being destroyed by landslides. The only thing to do is to leave home, hoping to find it intact on the way back.

In the military academy of the Nisida Air Force a new course begins which sees among the new recruits called "chicks": Giorgio, forced by his father after he squandered millions at the gaming table; De Montel son of a general, Mario who wants to follow in the footsteps of his father who died in combat; Antonio who declares himself Neapolitan while coming from the province and Ugo who comes from the north.

Short documentary about pagan rites in the countryside.

A day in Rome viewed by sixteen different directors under the supervision of the great screenwriter Cesare Zavattini.

In the province of Salerno in Campania, a village is attracting more and more pilgrims, sometimes several hundred a day. Arriving by bus, car and even on foot, they pray to Saint Antony to protect them from demons and disasters. They do this through the intermediary of a certain Giuseppina who embodies the dead soul of young Alberto, the grandson of the former seminarian who died accidentally some ten years earlier.

A "symbolic" character traces the path of man in search of salvation in this world within his own ghosts and deformations.

The Lagno is the canal that crosses Naples, collecting its debris to stop even before reaching the sea. Around its dirty waters, the film outlines a cross-section that is anything but oleographic of the Neapolitan capital, immortalized already in the advanced industrial era and still wearing the signs of war and desperate poverty. After a few spoken notes, the sound commentary is entirely inhabited by a ghostly composition.

A visit inside the walls of the Annunziata, an ancient Neapolitan orphanage for girls, where numerous young women reside while waiting to get engaged, find work, and redeem themselves socially, but also elderly women who have resigned themselves to a life spent there.

In a working-class neighborhood of Naples, a woman works as a sorceress and healer. Gianni spends a day with her, observing her work with poor clients, the sick, those suffering from love, and, of course, the superstitious.

Documentary on a case of heretical worship that occurred within popular Catholicism in Serra d'Arce, in the province of Salerno, where Giuseppina Gonnella, a sort of mystical sorceress-exorcist, freed people from evil and spells and was sometimes possessed by the spirit of her nephew, who died in a car accident in the 1950s.

Between makeup, embassy receptions, and musical evenings, the lives of some fallen noblewomen.

These are ceremonies and events linked to the traditional festival of the Madonna dell'Arco, which culminates on Easter Monday in the church of St. Anastasia, 9 kilometers from Naples. The sanctuary houses around four thousand votive offerings that document the popular desire for salvation during collective and individual calamities.

In a small town in Lazio every year a procession is held in honor of San Giovanni, to ask forgiveness for the sins committed, recalling an ancient legend.

When he is granted a day off to celebrate his daughter's wedding, office worker Krehler begins to realize how alienated he is.

In Montesano, Salento, during the festivities held in August in honour of Saint Donatus, patron saint of epileptics and the mentally ill, the power of collective suggestion causes strange phenomena and rituals to occur. Luigi Di Gianni, master of anthropological documentary, films the worshippers with Dionysian force as they writhe and scream as if in a pagan rite, showing how the content of the Catholic liturgy succumbs to the primitive passion of popular religiosity.