Elisabetta and Limone

by Rodolfo Wilcock

For a long time I’ve had a recurrent image: I open the door of my house a little and at once someone slips inside, someone from any part of the South of the world who from now on is going to live in my home. This person is courteous, there is no exchange of words or anything else. That is simply, inevitably how it is. He is part of a crowd that is wandering and pressing outside, just waiting for a slightly open door.

Elisabetta is at home, living her absurd and happy life. Someone enters, through the window.

In her house/island/tomb, Elisabetta has carved out an independence for herself, a place with its own laws, its own justice. The laws of the world outside, if there still are any, are indecipherable or definitively mad. In any case, they don’t count.

The world outside is elusive, perhaps dangerous, disquieting; the only time it reveals itself, banal. The world inside has no universal, recognizable rules, just one small, personal, isolated rule. But it is the only one possible.

A sort of night has fallen on us, and the sand of the desert has arrived without us realizing it. Here and there isolated tips of objects emerge.

Contemporary ruins.

The communications network has disappeared, the improbable connections as well as the impossible ones. Maps showing how to get from one point to another do not exist. Who has ever seen maps of the desert? Paths are erased as you trace them, just a few footprints for a few minutes.

(Marina Spreafico – director’s notes)