Arquivo

It is said that in the Sassi (Cave Dwellings) of Matera there is a high degree of madness caused by an ancient custom of intermarriage between families. This is a film about those who must invent a way of life. They are a small group of people seemingly eternal who must live day by day. It is a film about the contrast between one of the most beautiful places in the world and a tired and empty biblical set; and about some of its inhabitants who try to feel alive and that emptiness with words. The distinction between what is true and what is false doesn’t matter anymore. They are lonely people, wordaholics, and prophets, modern messiahs without disciples, who proclaim and propound and are ignored in the general indifference. They cry out to tourists, to their fellow citizens and even against ex-premier Berlusconi in the same spirit. Some of them work as illegal, unlicensed tour guides. Each day they wander the streets chasing and speaking to tourist groups who are mostly absent-minded and show little interest. Others pass the day by inventing ways of waking up their fellow citizens from their provincial sleep or by expounding their wild political plans or by proposing new projects to develop local tourism.Tourism is the only converter where everybody hovers in an under-developed socio-economic state of isolation lasting centuries.