Honorable Mention in the category « Alternative / Experimental »

Under the mulberry trees lies hidden, metaphorically speaking, the existential dimension of those who live in the Montecalvario neighborhood, a tiny hamlet in the city of Naples but with a very high population density. The history of this place is one of incessant social transformation: from a military district to an area with a high crime rate, it is now considered a tourist destination of international interest. The population has inherited the “porous” character of tuff stone, the building material used in much of the city center, with the ability to be penetrated by violent exogenous phenomena without ever losing its integrity. The mulberry trees, which once covered the entire area and served as food for silkworms, acted as a screen for prying eyes, a safe place for everything that should not be done in the light of day. Today, mulberry trees imaginatively represent a dimension invisible to most people, to those who do not proceed slowly, to those who pass through this space without breathing in its pauses, its downtime, its life purified of all sorts of exoticism, of all sensational events or actions. There is a present that runs parallel to the city represented, a present that defies prejudice, where the shadows are cold and poverty retains the smell of coffee and bleach, where there are ancient faces weighed down by a sense of predetermination. In this part of the world where everything moves in an adjacent and opposite way, as if at the antipodes; everything stirs and suddenly fades into oblivion. There is an evanescent humanity, a theater of bodies lost in everyday forgetfulness.