His
Dante
moved 1,000 Citanova students just last Friday in one of the dozens of school screenings with which
Pupi Avati
's film extends its life beyond the screening in the hall.
The director, who documented himself for months becoming even more than ever a great fan of the Supreme Poet, questioned by ANSA on the statements of the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano judges the release, "let it be said without any controversy, a little pretext. In the sense that the value of Dante, the reason why he has survived to this day and beyond today is his poetic, immense, mysterious excess, certainly not his political position".
Avati judges the minister's exit "anachronistic, given that we are talking about 700 years ago and a completely different context. Neither his political position nor his omniscience made him immortal, considering the medieval times, nor the use of the vernacular , but if anything the vernacular applied to such a vast poetic work".
In the film, with Sergio Castellitto-Boccaccio and Alessandro Sperduti-Dante, "I kept well away from attributing a political position to him. Some Dante scholars analyzed him for his choices, but Dante 'set up on his own', disgusted by everything and the worst period of his life to which he attributes his misfortunes were the two months he was prior 'descending' into politics".
"If I think of Dante - adds Avati to ANSA - and of ideology, the right would never come to mind, but let's tell the truth that Dante's vision of things in the world is totally inapplicable today, with a world that is truly different. And Benedetto Croce also thought so. I repeat, without controversy with the minister whom I respect, but the value of Dante is his poetic excess", concludes the director, underlining that he wanted in the film to give a vision of Dante spiritually high " closer to my sensibility which is not connected to the right nor to the left".