L’ORCHESTRA DI PIAZZA VITTORIO
a film by AGOSTINO FERRENTE
Mario lives in Piazza Vittorio, heart of the historical neighborhood, the Esquilino, developed during the time of Umberto I. It is currently distinguished for becoming the most multiethnic area in Rome where no less than sixty ethnicities live and work together and where ironically it is said that Italians have become “the minority”. Piano and keyboard player for La Piccola Orchestra Avion Travel, Mario is fascinated by the sounds and languages that, like music, rise through the courtyard outside his windows and enter his home. His fascination becomes an idea: create an orchestra with musicians from all over the world. 
Soon his dream meets and bonds with that of a documentary filmmaker who also lives in the Esquilino, Agostino Ferrente: to save the only cinema that remains in the neighborhood, the Apollo. It is one of the oldest and most beautiful theaters in Italy but time has taken its toll on it and it had even become a porno movie theatre. Now it is being threatened with becoming a bingo hall. His dream also envisions the various cultures around the piazza: save the theatre and give it back to the neighborhood by transforming it into a multi-disciplinary laboratory with films from all over the world and become a meeting point for all those living and working in the area. These two dreams are the basis for the creation of the Associazione Apollo 11, made up of musicians, actors, artists, intellectuals and local residents who love Piazza Vittorio. The association forms a committee in defense of the cinema with the hope that it will become a theater of diversities in keeping with the image of the Esquilino. On October 14 2002, a stage was improvised on the bed of an open truck and parked in front of the Cinema Apollo. The Association Apollo 11 put on a live concert to collect support to save the theater. This also marked the first take of a “work in progress” docu-musical that for five years would become a travel log describing the human and musical adventure Mario and Agostino undertook in the desperate search for musicians born somewhere abroad and brought to Rome by destiny… Among pleasant surprises and frustrating setbacks, including musicians that came and went, an orchestra of about thirty musicians was created. Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Hindis, atheists… musicians able to get by with their music and others eking a living washing windshields at traffic lights. There are self-taught artists who can’t read music and musicians with diplomas from conservatories. There are a few Italians and others who can’t speak Italian very well. Victims of right and left-wing regimes, those with pasts they would rather forget and those who miss their homes desperately. Musicians from far and wide… except China! It was difficult to approach the community that is slowly taking over the Esquilino with its stock houses of made-in-China shoes and t-shirts springing up under the irate eyes of local resident committees, mostly right-wing, that regularly demonstrate against them. Despite minor rivalries between some of the musicians in the orchestra, the financial difficulties within the association, and notwithstanding the restrictions of the strict Bossi-Fini immigration law as well as all the bureaucratic obstacles immigrants have to face each day, the Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio gives voice and body to a harmonious diversity that has nothing to do with “ethnic music” because it’s one for all and all for one in an altogether new genre of music. And not only do the various languages and instruments unite, since its beginning there have been mixed marriages and children born with a new shade of color.
For further information:
Cineclub Internazionale Distribuzione
DOWNLOAD
About the film (.pdf)
Awards and Festivals (.pdf)
What they’re saying about the film (.pdf)
Images
Film still (.jpg)
Poster of the film (.jpg)
