There is no need to bother Carlo Levi with Christ Stopped at Eboli, a monument of our national literature, or Pier Paolo Pasolini with his film The passion according to Matthew to remember all the importance, the historical, cultural, social and artistic weight of Matera, for this year named European capital of culture. It is one of the oldest human settlements in the world, together with Aleppo in Syria and Jericho in the West Bank and boasts over 10 years of documentation on their first traces in the great book of humanity.
In the 50s it was defined as "the shame of Italy" due to the dramatic social conditions in which the inhabitants of the city were forced to live, far away, abandoned and separated from the reconstruction that the country was starting after the war. Since then, everything has radically and profoundly changed: in fact, a recovery and enhancement plan has been launched which makes it today, fully and perhaps not only for the current year, a total place where to find the signs, the passages of every kind of human expression.
The documentary film produced and created by Francesco InvernizziIn partnership with Chile, distributed in cinemas for three days: 21, 22 and 23 January.
It is a directorial work of noble origins which has seen, for example, works of the caliber of Jean Vigo with A About de Nice from 1930, that is, a documentary about a place, a city, without a real narrative track, without a predefined screenplay, which takes shape precisely in its essence, through the images and characters that animate it. The images, alone, would be sufficient to fully convey the complete sense of beauty, of the suggestion, which inspire the primordial places of Matera. The shots were taken in very high definition, in 8K, and they perfectly render the lights, the colors, the depths which only in this way make it possible to appreciate all their beauty. The documentary, for now, is expected to be distributed only in cinemas but could soon be available for streaming. It will certainly not be the same thing: the visual pleasure of the big screen is still unsurpassed and it will take a long time before the best of the new TV models will be able to approach this marvel.
Perhaps the secret of Matera, of its charm lies precisely in being the place of history, of its distant past, and at the same time of the present of the lively and vital city. Among the many initiatives that concern it, it should be remembered that it was chosen as the site for testing the new 5G signal diffusion technologies. All this coexists perfectly with the rites and liturgies that are repeated over time, such as the procession of the Madonna Bruna. The city therefore is not and does not want to be just a "temple" of mass tourism that creates so many problems where it is not managed as it should, but proposes itself as a place capable of making its inhabitants, residents, they overlook the edge of the ravines to admire a panorama that has been intact for millennia. Precisely his Materans are the protagonists of the documentary: starting from its mayor, Raffaello De Ruggieri, as well as being passionate about his city, he was also the architect of an important discovery in 1960, to then find the baker, the bishop, the workers who still work to the restoration and conservation of ancient stones.
The Sassi, as the ancient houses of Matera are defined, have become a UNESCO World Heritage Site and therefore under the absolute protection of humanity. The film is an invitation to get lost in the caves dug out of the tuff, the houses, the places of common life, just like a labyrinth from which you come out with the happy sensation of having been part, protagonists and witnesses, of so much history and humanity. Not to be missed.
