Director’s notes

“Holy Week, in those places once under Spanish dominion, holds a special fascination for writers, photographers and film directors. In Sicily, the liturgy reveals a mixture of influences deriving from Greek, Spanish and Arabian culture. The Vasa Vasa ritual of the Madonna as it unfolds in Modica dates back to at least 1645. On the day in which Catholicism celebrates the Resurrection of Christ, the townspeople of Modica gather in the main square at midday to witness the removal of the black mantle of mourning from the Madonna as she greets the Risen Christ. With an intimate and moving gesture, Mary the Mother kisses and blesses her Son and assumes the role of mother of all those pressing around the benediction ceremony.

The documentary begins with the ritual clothing of the statue of the Madonna, a devotional moment from which the public is excluded. It was my desire to communicate the sense of mystery. Alone, in the darkened church with the figure of the Madonna while a storm was raging outside, I experienced a feeling of emptiness. Of absence. Of bereavement. Mary is a woman who has lost her Son. A suggestion by De Andrè immediately springs to mind: in “Three Mothers” he sings “If I hadn’t been a child of God, I would still have you for my son”. The intimate relationship between the two takes on sacredness already in the mother-son relationship alone. And here I was helped by the popular piety of an elderly woman, Maria Bonomo, whose dirge in dialect is chant, pain, tear, Love, punctuated in memory of Jacopone da Todi in his “Donna de Paradiso”. Marco Cascone’s wonderful music reads mourning and joy more than any other element, built on the system of the original band music of the party composed by maestro Francesco Di Pietro, and enriched by the moving and incredible interpretation of the singer Yasemin Sannino.

The Feast of Easter (from the Hebrew “to pass over) corresponds with the arrival of Spring. Nature and Tradition are united in reminding us that what is destined to die can be reborn, that an end can have a new beginning. What ends can begin again.

Easter Sunday is the day on which everything can start afresh because anything may happen. Even the dawn of a new life”.

Alessia Scarso