LOST SOULS
a 52 min. documentary
by R. Sticchi & M. Niola
directed by R.Sticchi
© 2002 TDP films

In Naples any nameless dead is a lost soul, only living people can save him. But there’s a price to pay. A documentary about the close relationship and the possible contracts between death and life in Neapolitan culture, where death is just another way of being alive.

THE CONTEXT - Neapolitans like to bargain. Not even death can stop them. Death, as a matter of fact, in Neapolitan culture is just a prosecution of life with almost nothing methaphisical in it.
In spite of a vast belief in Catholic principles, Neapolitans syncretized the dualistic idea of Heaven and Hell in a single pagan Purgatory. In this land, as real as the “other” one life goes on as usual. As the “living souls” struggle to make ends meet the “dead souls” must gain their wealth.

What can be considered wealth in a non material world? For Neapolitan people wealth for a soul is represented by the prayers that living people address them.
“Life” is easy for the deads who leave behind them loving and caring relatives, but those who don’t have this asset lead a beggar life.
In 1656 the Great Plague claimed 250.000 lives out of the 450.000 inhabitants of Naples, hundreds of years later plenty of nameless bones still fill the Neapolitan crypts, these bones, abandoned in common graves lost their identity: those deads have no name to address a prayer to.

THE CONTRACT - These souls are the bums of the other life and the common people sympathize with their poverty mates. By way of a complex ritual the popular tradition “cleans” the bones and spirit of these lost souls, gives them back a name and welcomes them in the family pantheon.
They have to deserve, though, this hospitality: a lost soul has to accomplish a little miracle first, “help out” a little bit the host family.
Real contracts are being arranged in the darkness of the Neapolitan crypts between living people and the deads: the contract is signed in the realm of dreams.

THE CONSEQUENCES - This tradition is full of consequences in the everyday life, death is everywhere and can happen anytime. When the time has come, everyone has to be able to have some love from someone. Then nothing is important but the prayers of living people.

THE SKULLS - These deads don’t have a story, they are nameless and forgotten, but during the centuries, some of them have “conquered” a name. Not only for the people that have “adopted” them, but a proper name and an individual story. These deads are more “powerful” than others. They have a particular ability to resolve the problems that living people submit them that’s why they have “earned” their own identity and people just can ask them something….with respect.