The project consists of a series of videos and photography carried out during a two weeks residency in the famous Sicilian village of Corleone. A place generates effects which cannot always be translated and reality is often much more than its representation.
“Before leaving I had many ideas on what to do in the village to develop my project. At the end I made what the village wanted me to do. I was flexible. I tried to adapt myself to the context because the context made the rules. It was, first of all, a journey into reality that generates stereotypes. It was an immediate interaction with things and people living there and in their every day life, before than its judgement, the sociological analysis and the media could manipulate them. I found a place of saints and devils, of victims and executioner, of stereotypes and reality, a local reality famous in the world. A reality used as metaphor,to quote the Italian novelist Leonardo Sciascia. I acted as a ‘mirror’ where the inhabitants could build their own stories: in front of the lens of my camera and my “unusual presence” they recreated their own identity. According to Italians, the word Mafia only has a negative connotation, depicting a situation more difficult to understand than to be represented. For most of the people around the world it reminds to the fascinating Don Corleone’s world as depicted in “The Godfather”, a very famous Coppola’s movie.” MDR