‘La Paranza della bellezza’ –‘The gang of beauty’ is a docu-film directed by Luca Rosini in 2019 and it is shot in a quarter of Napoli called Rione Sanità.
The word ‘paranza’ originally referred to a fishing boat and over the time was used to indicate the gangs of criminals constantly fighting to take over the area.
The movie focuses on the positive reaction of some locals to bring Rione Sanità to a new life through a series of artistic and cultural projects. Amongst them we learn of a cooperative of young people called ‘La Paranza’ who decided to promote tourism showing the beauty of the area and in particular the amazing site of the catacombs.
They chose to call it ‘La Paranza’ as a way to inject a new meaning into this word and to claim back their territory.
The story unfolds from within through the direct tales of the real people of the area.
There is no voiceover as the stage is completely left to the authentic protagonists of this story.
The stylistic strength of this work is not just in the honest and truthful point of view but also in the way the story is presented emphasizing the many problems of Rione Sanità and the unusual solution proposed.
‘La paranza della bellezza’ presents itself as a theorem to be proven: “la bellezza salverà il mondo”, “beauty will save the world”, a quote taken from ‘The idiot’ by Fëdor Dostoevskij. Luca Rosini strongly and firmly proves the point that beauty can be the answer.
It is both a documentary of social analysis and a work of art with clear references to the neo-realistic roots of the Italian cinema.
It conveys a renewed sense of beauty as it shows how ‘la bellezza’ can be an active force able to bring things to life, to give spiritual strength and to trigger unexpected changes and social redemption.
Luca Rosini is a journalist, tv presenter and film-director. He studied at the Rogue Film School of Werner Herzog and took part in the training project Esodoc (European Social Documentary) of the Zelig school in Bolzano. He started as documentarist, then he worked as reporter and today is the host of information talk-shows in the Italian TV.
Luca Rosin won twice the Ilaria Alpi award, his work ‘Souvenir Srebrenica’ was shortlisted for the prestigious David di Donatello.
His documentary ‘In a single breath’ won the American Documentary Festival of Palm Springs.
Watch here the full movie with English subtitles: https://vimeo.com/363226667
