The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars
"The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars" is an ode to the youth growing in difficult contexts deprived of opportunities and positive role models.
This long-term documentary project explores youth culture in the Torretta district of Napoli through the traditional bonfire celebration known as Cippo di Sant'Antonio.
Stemming from a pagan tradition where peasants constructed fires with domestic waste to celebrate the end of winter and seek protection for the new year ahead the tradition has taken a unique turn in the city of Napoli. The current iteration of the ritual has evolved in a playful game seeing groups of children aged 6 to 16 take the streets in balaclavas, stealing Christmas trees, engaging in battles with gangs from rival districts and hiding and guarding the loot in secret areas within their territories until the day of the fire.
The game, drenched in violence and mischief in which tropes of friendship, trust, hierarchy, territory, masculinity, law and outlaw, also naively conceals the systemic criminality and territorial attitudes typical of southern Italy.
The fire is seen as a door through which various different dimensions are connected. Past and present as such, a before and after line that the kids look forward to be soon crossing. Youth and manhood, destruction and creation ultimately, life and death. The savagery dominating the creation and lighting up of the fire is followed by a quiet tenderness, the thrilling spirits of the adulthood caged in these young bodies are finally freed up and exhausted in the moment the fire finally burning.
