Napoli Napoli Napoli

Ferrara at the End of the 2000s

(All images are details from iPhone photos taken of the film playing from the Kino / Film Desk Blu-ray.)

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An inventive combination of documentary, fiction, meta-documentary... Portraitures of inmates in a Neapolitan women's prison, journalists, and community organizers; staged stories involving a local family (starring Abel's ex, Shanyn Leigh, as the daughter/sister) and a mafia arm wrapped up in contracting, ordered to carry out a hit; Abel and the crew roaming the alleys and projects, as the inmates of a men's prison recreate their daily routines.

Shot on circa-'09 prosumer HD, this is ethnology and sympathy, a cogent survey of the sub-communities that co-exist in Napoli x 3.

"People shouldn't worry so much about the corpse on the ground in a pool of blood. Because there are multiple deaths that happen before that: the deaths of young people's consciences; the destruction of their dreams."

A valedictory image of survivors: the Neapolitan incarcerated, the poor, the residents, and, tearing through Schoolly D's "King of New York" with full band under the end credits, Abel Ferrara himself at the end of the 2000s, on the cusp of a triumphant, sober, newly meaningful body of work.

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