Matera. Mother of stone (2019)

Located in the center of Europe and yet foreign. While the bells of the Romanesque cathedral ring, in the carved rocks frescoes of Byzantine monks appear; in baroque palaces parade suffering figures on the paintings of Carlo Levi, in the streets joyful tourists visit caves transformed into hotels. Matera is the place where 9000 years of history converge. Capturing the luminous light of the South, the documentary by Alessandro Soetje immerses itself in the windowless rooms where even up to the fifties men and beasts lived together. And in caves used as churches, where mosses and lichens merge with the frescoes and then follow the gurgling water in a sophisticated system of tanks and pipes dug into the belly of the city, where the artists Enzo Viti and Teresa Lupo dedicate themselves to mapping the inner life of their city. With what mastery of parsimony their ancestors thought of building this city. Urban planner Pietro Laureano explains how the material of the caves has become houses, buildings and churches, in a continuous passage between inside and outside, above and below, without interruption. This unique and extraordinary architectural system was forgotten after the denunciation of the poor living conditions of the people of Basilicata made by Carlo Levi in his novel Cristo stopped at Eboli led to the evacuation of the caves. It was thanks to young and combative explorers such as the current mayor of Matera Raffaello de Ruggieri that this stone heritage was saved from the ruins and looters, thus giving visitors to the European Capital of Culture the chance to discover a Matera awakened by the coma in which it had fallen for decades and which now instead appears as a colorful, lively and unique city in its splendor.