We paid a Christmas visit to our riverbank characters. There were four of us, quite a team: accompanying
Niccolò, the producer, and
Andrea, the director were two special photographers,
Marco Santantonio, with 35 mm camera, and
Pietro Luzzati with a digital one.
We made an unexpected discovery: nothing less than a (reproduction) portrait by Van Gogh painted by
Reno under the makeshift roof of the shack where he lives. He told us that he had started it a few months ago and he agreed to finish it for us. Probabily it will be a scene that you will be able to watch in the documentary.
We then moved over to
Gerardo in his unlawful garden. Christmas time has made him quite happy. Sticking to the typical Italian southern tradition, he will spend a lot of time eating with friends and family. We chatted cheerfully on his "terrace" on the bank and some quite interesting stories emerged like the last summer night fishing: Gerardo and friends they took a three feet long “groper” (the typical river fish) with a stick. Was it really that long? Was it a fisherman’s boast? Anyway we have to think how to film a night fishing scene.
He further told us that last month he helped his gipsy neighbours to build toilets. He dug two holes in the ground, one for women, one for men. But they kept stealing from him and so he set a lot of branches on fire near their shacks to scare them away.
Roky’s school is closed for the Christmas holydays, but when we got to the his shack we couldn’t find him: he was away, picking som from the rubbish bins at Porta Palazzo, this city’s huge open air market, one of the largest in Europe, a favorite shopping area for Turin people and tourists, where you can buy anything (at very good value for money) from fish to ancient furniture, from trousers to tea. A lot of non first class vegetables and fruit are discarded and thrown into rubbish bin by sellers near the end of the day and the river poor often scavenge for food.
We didn’t wait for him to come back but gave his people good food as a Christmas gift. They thanked us and were very, very happy.
