LE CREATURE DEL VESUVIO

short documentary 2013 GER/ITA

The Camorra has been dominating the city of Naples for centuries. By now it is part of people’s everyday life and it’s tolerated like an unavoidable and naturally given reality by most part of the population. The film’s essayistic way of storytelling enters the hermetic space and makes the city’s archaic structures of power perceptible.

Festivals and Screenings
Blickle Kino im 21er Haus des Belvedere Wien 2016
Werkstattkino München 2015
Projektraum-Lotte Stuttgart 2014
DOK.forum Filmschulfestival München 2014
Traube-Janesc Kultursonntag Südtirol 2013
41 Parallelo Screenings New York 2013
Duisburger Filmwoche 2013
Napoli Film Festival 2013
best short documentary Dokumentarfilmwoche Hamburg 2013

Director/DOP/Editor Martin Prinoth

Sound Recording Hanna Leiß Dramaturgy

Consultant Martina Mahlknecht, Bernd Schoch

Sounddesign Stefano Bernardi

Supported by Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein

Awards Best Short Documentary at Napoli Film Festival Jury Statment

Jury Statement The lyrical story of a city starts a passionate search of the innocence and fragility of the volcanic creatures, which are daily exposed to the fights, rituals and vices of the metropolis. It is a documentary film as intensive as a spiritual, but never excessive. By alternating fragments that are loaned from video art with others from classically observing documentary films a fiction that is truer than true is created.

Press Report A paralyzed and statical Naples
A lot has been and will still be spoken from and about Naples in documentary works. Martin Prinoth with his film „Le creature del Vesuvio“– a production of HfbK Hamburg – takes a very special and vigilant look at the city. The young film maker was born in Bozen and lives in Germany. The documentary film from Prinoth consists of carefully chosen pictures and camera angles. It switches between long scenes, landscape shots and crowds and finally a blue screen scene showing two brothers fishing on ocean cliffs. The narration highlights the mentality of people who are formed by criminality, lack of education and a deep religiousness. In other words an archaic Naples connected with its traditions. The film describes a status of immobility affecting everyday life and thereby allowing the local “malavita“(criminality) to act undisturbed. The producer forgoes interviews and journalistic argumentation but instead moves with his camera into the city to capture the sometimes empty and at other times populated rooms, quarters, streets and the ocean. By Simone Pinchiorri