Inmates go from jail to ‘Rome Film Fest’

NO places could be more far away from each other, ideally and materially. On the one side, the nice highclass cultural venue of the 11th Rome Film Festival with its red carpet. On the other, in a shabby north east suburb, the Rebibbia prison: over 350 inmates and a maximum-security ward. Yet, for one day, they seemed to belong to the same world.

For the first time ever a theatre show staged by a company of inmates performed directly for the festival’s audience gathered at the MAXXI Museum of 21st Century Arts. The initiative met a main pledge made by festival’s artistic director Antonio Monda of “bringing movies all across the city”, and reaching the most different audiences. Yet, this went even further. It was not cinema to go to Rebibbia, but the other way around. The theatre piece was performed at the prison’s auditorium for an audience of some 300 people and live-streamed in full-HD for the public at the MAXXI.

Some 20 actors were on the stage, all prisoners from the maximum-security ward mainly devoted to associative crimes, which in Italy means mafia-related crimes. The event was unprecedented, and drew several authorities from politics, judiciary, the national penitentiary administration, and from Rome Tre University supporting the project. The company performed excerpts of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, the first part of 14th century epic poem The Divine Comedy widely seen as the most prominent work of Italian literature, and the basis of modern Italian language. “Who in the world would have ever imagined maximum-security prisoners expressing themselves to the outside world through art, via web streaming and fibre-optic cable,” director Fabio Cavalli said.

Authors described the piece as an example of Enhanced Performing Art fusing together theatre, cinema, and web. It was also a rather challenging script, with an emotionally strong impact. Accompanied by live music, each actor performed in his own dialect according to the several translations of Dante’s work made by other Italian poets throughout the centuries. Dante’s Inferno is like the description of an ancient prison, and its pages are full of horror and blame for human cruelty, but also compassion for the losers, and disdain for the crimes of the powerful.” All of this was on stage, and well conveyed to the public. - Xinhua