Hacker CinemaA Smorfia
A Smorfia
La Smorfia
2026 · Film · short · 5 min
Directed by Jean Ruggirello
La Smorfia is a deeply-rooted tradition in Naples that consists of translating dreams into numbers to be played in the lottery. In this new look at Smorfia the surreal finds precise matter in a sequence of images playing with our ideas of perception and surprise.
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I am sorry, maybe I wasn't clear in my previous post.
The actual info in the article evidently largely comes from the encounter with Mimmo Borrelli and what he told her.
While it is unlikely (but possible) that the Author may have seen the 1984 movie by Luciano De Crescenzo she cites, it is almost impossible that she knows first hand about the works of Eduardo, and of course the Smorfia is only marginally connected to dead relatives and dreams.
The whole piece is IMHO yet another (poor) example of the typical stereotypical article by a foreigner (the twist is that the Author is for once not German or Anglo-Saxon, but Argentinian/Spanish and of Italina descent) that comes to Naples, stays there a few days, knows nothing of the city or of the people, finds something folkloristic talking to a single or a few sources and writes an article on the "curious" way Neapolitans think and live.
To be fair, she didn't actually mention the ubiquity of short, mustached, dark complexion men and checkered white/red tablecloths in restaurants, but she went very close to it.
The (italian) net is however full of interviews to Mimmo Borrelli, whom - for some reasons - appears to be very popular among the "intellighenzia", here is one, hagiographic as most if not all the other ones:
http://www.quartaparetepress.it/2015/07/07/mimmo-borrelli-il-teatro-parla-flegreo-intervista/