Pagani

At the foot of Vesuvius, the celebration of Our-Lady-of-the-Hens is still tinged with paganism. While Fonzino prepares a ritual altar to host the statue after the procession, Biagio leads the femminielli, the transgender masters of a cult where dance and song have a cathartic energy.

In Pagani, at the foot of Vesuvius, the celebration of Our-Lady-of-the-Hens is still tinged with a pre-Christian religiosity that continues to inspire the organisers and the inhabitants. The film opens with Fonzino’s mysterious but touching confession: “Before he died, my cousin Franco gave me the keys… He told me that I had to continue that… Otherwise…” Embedded in the dynamic of emotional transmission, this traditional festival immediately holds greater interest than it would have done had it simply been folklore. But the tradition itself has several fascinating features, including the crucial role played by the femminielli, men dressed as women, the superior beings who bridge the gap between the sexes but also between life and death. We see Biagino, a femminiello who sings superbly, acting out the birth of Anne, during which a “black baby doll with a giant penis” is suddenly brandished as if for an exorcism. The film follows the chronology of the festival, which begins seven days after Easter and culminates, thirty days after an altar to the Madonna (the tosello) has been erected, in a procession bearing her statue. The care taken by the protagonists in making the accessories and looking after places and animals highlights the extent to which this ancient and complex symbolism impregnates their daily life, a mixture of cathartic energy and the feeling of having one’s place, one’s indispensable function in the community.