XI Rassegna - Nuoro 7/12 Ottobre 2002 [file.pdf] - Isre

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T his documentary is about a feast in honour of St
Joseph, widespread throughout all Sicily, that is
characterised by offering the poor and orfans a dinner
and the preparation of bread which is given as a gift.
According to the great Sicilian folklorist, Giuseppe Pitrè
“this banquet is offered by people as a means of giving
thanks … as it is a homage to the Father of Providence,
everything must be grand and spectacular”.
Ferrara made this film in Gela which was undergoing a
great social and economic transformation at the time, due
to the construction of large scale petrochemical
installations there, this transformation became the theme
of another of his documentaries made in the same town
and year, Gela antica e nuova.
In an interview broadcast two years ago, the director
recalled that: “For St Joseph, the people of Gela
organised a feast of extraordinary proportions with
charitable aims in mind: some ten families prepared three
characters chosen from the poorest families of the place,
a small child, and old man and a young girl who
represented the sacred family. They dressed them in white
tunics and placed crowns on their heads made from multi
coloured paper. On that occasion all the well-off families
competed with each other to have them as their guests. In
the central church about a hundred St Josephs, Baby
Jesus and little Virgin Marys were first blessed and then
went off to celebrate the feast consuming suppers of truly
pantagruelian proportions, which had been prepared. At
the end of the feast the leftovers were distributed among
the poor families, who thus had enough to feed
themselves with for a week”.
Biofilmography
Giuseppe Ferrara was born
in 1932 in Castelfiorentino, in
Tuscany. After graduating
from the University of Florence
with a degree in Literature,
including a thesis on the
history of cinema, he began
working as a free-lance
cinema journalist in 1952. In
1959 he obtained a Diploma
in film direction from the
Centro Sperimentale di
Cinematografia in Rome. He
has made about eighty
cinema documentaries as well
as published numerous works
on the subject of the cinema.
His name is associated with
the important season of Italian
documentary films called
“Demartiniano”, after the
famous ethnologist Ernesto De
Martino (from the end of the
1950s up until the first years
of the 1970s). Dealing with
De Martino’s study and
research themes (funeral
lament, magic rituals,
tarantism) and the great
festivals of the South, the work
of a group of directors,
Gandin, Mingozzi, Di
Gianni, Dal Fra and Mangini,
and last but not least Ferrara,
produced a series of
documentaries that for many
academics marked the birth
of Italian ethnographic
cinema. Of Ferrara’s
documentaries related to this
theme one recalls: I maciari
(1962), about the
thaumaturgical powers of a
child wizard, Il ballo delle
vedove (1962), filmed in
Sardinia at Lula and centred
on the rituals surrounding the
healing of a man bitten by a
black widow spider
(Sardinian tarantism); La
madonna di Gela and La
cena di San Giuseppe both
filmed in Gela in Sicily in
1963, that deal with themes
of popular religion in southern
Italy. Ferrara has also made
thirteen full length films all
centred on political, social
and current themes of public
debate. The most well known
of these are: Il sasso in bocca
(1970); Cento giorni a
Palermo (1982); Il caso Moro
(1986); Giovanni Falcone
(1993); I bancheri di Dio - Il
caso Calvi (2002).
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