DREAMERS

Slugging through the cliffs near the border between France and Italy, just having completed two million steps, my spinal column finally said ‘enough’. My back literally broke. Walking became out of question, so I decided to continue my odyssey by whatever means of transport - after all, the main objective of 8 Million Steps was always simply telling stories. I chose the most intriguing part of Italy, the South. I didn’t have a script, only a vague notion, or an intuition, that something exceptionally interesting was happening there, perhaps no less than the beginning of a new era of renaissance. 

The 45-minute documentary film, “Manufacturers of Dreams”, is the result of a journey that lasted several months, travelling through Puglia, Campania, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily, the last of which was the first part of my meander. I accidentally landed in a godforsaken town called Favara and met Andrea Bartoli and Florinda Saieva, the founders of The Farm Cultural Park. It was like having a divine illumination, I sensed immediately that I found myself in a place with an enormous power, the epicentre of an earthquake that was bringing down the old order and served as a source of inspiration for other people in other regions.

A cluster of revolutionary outposts had subsequently sprung up all over the South - organisations like Bollenti Spiriti, ExFadda, Made in Cloister, AddioPizzo and Libera Terra - the vanguard of the social and cultural transformation of the "Mezzogiorno".

Below are three versions: English, Italian and Spanish.