16/07/2007

Filming a city thinking of a continent. Naples as Europe: a land of dialogue, a meeting point between cultures, an exchange of civilizations. These words by Raffaele La Capria open Napoli! Napoli! Napoli!, the documentary that Carlo Lizzani and Francesca Pirani have dedicated to the city and its nearest surroundings.

The occasion is the bicentennial of the Province of Naples, founded in 1806. Two centuries later (shooting began in March 2006), Riccardo di Palma, president of the province, commissioned what Lizzani defines “the territory’s new calling card”: just a little over an hour (“the standard running time requested by the broadcasters worldwide”) to visit Cuma and Ottaviano, Ercolano and Pompei and the islands of the gulf. And Naples, naturally.

For Lizzani, who is finishing post-production on Hotel Meina (although the film on the Nazi massacre of 1943 will doubtfully be ready for Venice), Napoli! Napoli! Napoli! marks a two-fold return: to the south and to documentary filmmaking. In fact, in 1949 he shot Nel Mezzogiorno qualcosa è cambiato and Viaggio al sud and, upon arriving from Rome, found “a city less provincial than the capital, more open”.

The problems of today are different from those of yesterday, but the documentary makes no room for either. There is no camorra [Neapolitan Mafia], for example, nor the emergency covering the front pages of newspapers these days. For Lizzani, “the problem of the preservation of cultural patrimony is more serious than that of waste, and television that is not interested in culture deserves an insurrection. Because art is our country’s bread”.

And is television interested in this documentary that says nothing about violence and ugliness to show Greek and Roman, Aragonese and Angevin beauty? Producer Giacomo Pezzali (who with International Multimedia Production is creating portraits of other Italian provinces as well) has mentioned contacts made with RAI and European and US networks and, above all, broadcasters from Asia, because this is where the new streams of tourists are coming from. Thus, the film is destined for them, and free DVD distribution is being considered in hotels and related sites.

As well as in the Italian cultural institutes throughout the world and, naturally, in the schools throughout the Province of Naples. Because, according to Lizzani, “this film could have educational value. It invites [people] to become aware of the patrimony surrounding us, and stirs up a sense of responsibility of those who live among these marvels”.

(Translated from Italian)