Happy 2012 everyone! For our film, the new year started with several great news. Three festivals are accepting Campania In-Felix (Unhappy Country) as an official entry – Peace on Earth Film Festival,  Colorado Environmental Film Festival and Thin Line Film Fest. More news coming up in February!

Our documentary will soon be in Santa Fe! Campania In-Felix (Unhappy Country) is an official selection for the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival. This is a young festival that started in 2009 whose goal is “to involve community in film for a meaningful experience and diverse audiences while elevating Media Literacy in every capacity for the understanding of contemporary society. ” We are thrilled to be part of their festival this year, which will take place Oct. 19-23!

See you in Santa Fe soon!

Great news for our documentary! Campania In-Felix (Unhappy Country) received an Award of Merit from the Accolade Competition. The Accolade is a prestigious competition that recognizes producers, established and emerging filmmakers from all around the world.

We are very proud of this award and we hope to reach several festivals in the next few months!

A lot of new updates with Campania In-Felix (Unhappy Country). The documentary is almost ready for its first official screening. After a sneak preview held in February at the Global Film Festival hosted by the College of William & Mary, we are now very close to the release of the film on April 15.

There are many news in store: new poster, new trailer and a surprise in the next couple of weeks. So, stay tuned for the exciting new updates coming up. I want to thank the Center for the Study of Interdisciplinarity and the University of Film & Video Association for making this film possible.

In the meantime, enjoy the new trailer and poster.

Since my last post, there have been some good and bad news in the area around Naples. The bad news is that the incinerator in Acerra stopped working. Unfortunately, for the residents of the area this might suggest a new period of waste emergency crisis with piles of trash accumulating in the streets and countryside. The hope is that this new upcoming wave of trash will push people to come together and fight again for their health and environment.

The good news is that I’m getting close to seeing a story out of the several hours of footage shot this past summer. I have cut a short sequence that gives a hint or an idea of what the documentary will be about. The film will be out and ready in May 2011. Before then, I hope I will be able to go back in December to shoot more footage and spend more time with the main subjects.

Enjoy the trailer for now!

I have just returned to the States after a summer of shooting in Naples, Italy, and some time spent with family and friends in Sicily. After three months of absence from the States, I was surprised to find out that Campania In-Felix (Unhappy Country) was awarded another grant from the Puffin Foundation. This grant specifically was requested to fund the photography aspect of the documentary. It was a pleasant surprise to find a check in the mail and to see how this project keeps getting funded.

With about 40 hours of footage in hand, the next task is to start laying out and editing plan and of course start editing. I feel pretty happy with the material I have and am looking forward to months of post-production.

As I will progress with my edits, I will use this site to post short clips from the edits I will do.

Also, this is a very important week as I’m waiting to hear from the Texas Filmmakers’ Production Fund regarding post-production funding. I’m crossing my fingers and I hope to hear good news!

We are three weeks into shooting and have filmed almost every day with short breaks in between. I’m still looking for personal stories and I hope that by the end of this journey, I will have gathered all or most of the material needed for the film.

These past two days have been interesting. It’s not difficult here to find trash because it’s literally everywhere. It is a little harder to find a fire – not a normal fire that we would expect but burning of what they call here “special waste”, which is not the normal waste a household produces but special items that require special ways of being disposed. The norm here has become to burn this special waste often composed of tires, televisions and other items. The smoke produced by this fire becomes highly toxic.

Yesterday, as we were driving on a main highway near Naples, we saw in the distance a black smoke. It was obvious that it wasn’t a normal fire. As we approached the fire, we stopped to film. For some reasons, the reality of this place hit me in a strange way. I felt disturbed by the view and the smell and honestly upset. I became more upset when I noticed people driving by as we were filming and looking at us filming with odd eyes as if we were the ones doing something strange and the fire was the norm.

It is in fact a sad reality. This has become a place where illegalities are now the norm and what is considered the norm is now viewed as strange and abnormal. If the government and organized crime are involved in this entire trash business, it is also impossible to exclude the common citizen from this mess – that same citizen who puts a tv or a set of tires on fire in the middle of cultivated land every single day. These frame grabs from the video shot yesterday indicate in my opinion how this place has become no man’s land. Sad but true.

A video frame grab of leachate coming from a site of ecoballe in the Triangle of Death area

Last week it’s been a productive week of filming. We spent time with a family of sheepherders who I’m hoping will become the main story of the documentary. We spent time with Alessandro, one of the children, a young guy in his 20s who grew up during the most difficult years for the family business – years when all the sheep were contaminated by dioxin.

Alessandro appeared angry when we spoke at home. From the 1990s up to this day, he meticulously collected clips from newspapers that relate directly or indirectly to the environmental emergency in Campania and in particular to his family. He took out several bags full of archival material and he showed us what he thought were the pivotal moments of the crisis. He also emphasized how from his great-grandfather up to his father everyone grew up as a sheepherder. Because of this environmental crisis and the death of his uncle, this profession is now out of family traditions.

We hope to spend more time with Alessandro’s family, paying special attention to Alessandro and his dad. Last week, we also visited a couple of dump sites in the countryside. We were lucky enough to have access in a site of ecoballe where all the toxic and non-toxic waste from 20 years of illicit dumping activity has been collected and put together into huge piles of trash covered by a black tarp. We got several close up shots of the ecoballe and one of the workers on the site let us shoot the leachate that has been deposited from the ecoballe. Leachate is the liquid that drains from toxic waste material in a landfill.

This week, I’m working on other subjects, developing and documenting their stories.

A video frame grab of Alessandro in his home in Acerra surrounded by documents and newspaper clippings

A video frame grab of Gennaro Esposito, an activist doctor at a toxic waste burial site

It’s been two intense days of meetings with people and getting to know their stories. As I get to know these people, I start sensing the complexity and depth of the issue. Each story I hear seems worth being told but as a storyteller I have to decide which stories need to be filmed and developed in front of the camera.

In the past two days, I met two women – a young girl affected by endometriosis and a middle-aged woman suffering from several hormonal unbalances. The young woman, Mariangela, is about to being tested to verify if her body contains the same toxic substances found in the land where she lives. The other woman, Bruna, has already been tested and she has a very high number of PCBs in her body.

Both women are potential subjects for the documentary and we will start filming these subjects next week. But the most dramatic story, which has high potential to become the strongest story of the documentary, is about a family of sheepherders. A father who lost his brother in early 2000 because his body was highly contaminated by dioxin. As a result, he quickly died of lung cancer. This man also lost his herd of animals when they were already all contaminated by dioxin. A tragedy that really has many aspects to be analyzed – one the health aspect, the other being the environmental side of the story. We visited their land yesterday with the father and his son. The land stands just a few meters away from the incinerator of Acerra (one of the biggest incinerators of Europe). On the other side of land stands Mt. Vesuvius. Now the family has no job and waiting to receive money from the city to cover the damage to their business activity.

Next week, accompanied by a doctor who is very active and involved with the environmental issue, we will be driving around the countryside, now buried and ruined by illegal dumping of waste. On schedule are interviews with the subjects we met so far and other meetings with more potential subjects.

Naples – finally arrived to destination. After a relatively smooth flying journey from Texas, we are now in Southern Italy land, surrounded by land and sea and a stunning view from all angles at least where we are now located.

We visited Naples a couple of days ago and almost everywhere we are, Naples and the region in general has this strange, vibrant energy that is hard to describe unless you have been here.

On the first day in Naples, we visited the Fontanelle cemetery, a strange place, I might say, located in a cave in the tuff hillside where thousands and thousands of Neapolitans, victims of the black plague of the 1600s and later the cholera epidemic of 1837, had been buried in this underground location. A dark place filled with thousands of unidentified human bones and skulls where myth, folklore, local beliefs and occult mix together. Check out the photo Matt took on his iPhone below.

It is really a symbolic place for the city – one that reflects the soul and the energy of the city itself.

Every visit to Naples is really a reminder of this weird energy…again hard to describe unless you’ve been here. The signs of the camorra, illegality and crime are visible if you can look beyond the appearance of the city, its streets, buildings and people.

It is surely an interesting place. Work will start tomorrow – visiting with doctors and families living north of Naples.

I think the anxiety to get to work has started. Time to get to work now….will post updates soon.