A bridge of words to reach the many invisible prisoners in the prisons of Emilia Romagna, opening a passage into often radical, inaccessible solitudes.
Words are a great power. Combined with intentions, words can reverse the order of the world, opening up a smile even in the dark.
It is from this idea that Parlami Dentro was born, called to write by the Vincenzo Casillo Foundation and LiberiDentro – Eduradio&TV: on the occasion of Christmas, an invitation to share a narrative thread of resistance, with the simple and human gesture of writing a letter.
“Let’s put a fragment of our free life into the hands of an isolated and often judged person, whether it’s a stimulus, an inspiration, a wish, or even just a hug: the recipient will be an unknown detained person”, the appeal addressed to anyone who wants to reach an isolated interlocutor with a special message in a bottle, transforming an island into an archipelago of stories (made up of trials, hopes and mistakes) connected by bridges of words.
The intention is in fact to create connections, putting good words into circulation, stripped of any prejudice or pietism.
Among the recipients of the initiative, even the people confined to the via Burla prison who in recent days have been involved in initiatives aimed at opening glimmers also using that privileged key to self-knowledge and elaboration which is the artistic experience. As told by Antonella Cortese, of the small and tenacious Eduradio&Tv editorial staff in Parma, which is part of the larger LiberiDentro project, born in April 2020 with the aim of overcoming the distances between prison and citizenship in a juncture of acute human and social emergency from the pandemic.
What was the city’s response to your appeal?
“Talk to me inside has paved the way, indeed, I would say that it has uncovered a vase from which a plurality of voices have come out who wanted to be represented by telling each other, talking about their lives, their own and different solitudes, quoting poems, stories, songs: voices different who, imagining themselves in restriction, wanted to encourage those who really are. A social mobilization that we would never have imagined: he wrote a fifteen-year-old boy, a mother with a few-year-old daughter, a grandmother, a nun, some writers, the daughter of a father in prison. Civil society is much less distracted than one thinks.”
Approaching Christmas, loneliness is a sharper thorn. “Yes, during the Christmas holidays the pain in the sleeping rooms – as the cells are called today – becomes palpable; the distance from the loved ones (for those lucky enough to have them) an unbridgeable absence. Our initiative aims to make the “free” aware of that world that exists, but which we hope to never encounter directly, which is the prison, a neighborhood of our city, a highly plural and cosmopolitan place in terms of cultures and religions.
How did your experience in contact with the world of prisons begin?
“My experience in the prisons of our Region begins with Liberi interno Eduradio&Tv, the transmission that acts as a bridge between prison and the city broadcast on IcaroTv channel 18. Throughout Emilia Romagna every day at 5.15 pm (therefore also in prisons) we talk about what happens in prisons, about culture, health, spirituality, cooking, beauty. The people who follow us from within sometimes guide us on topics, criticize us or stimulate reflections that we would never have valued from our perspective, an invaluable added value.”
She recently entered the Parma prison and was able to witness experiences from the inside in which art becomes an instrument of reflection, elaboration and liberation. What images do you keep of these experiences?
“Yes, lately in Parma prison I had the pleasure of participating in two different meetings: the screening of the film Un eroe, by the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, presented as part of the project Nobody saves himself alone promoted by the APS il Mondo di Oz along with other associations. Prisoners were present, seated in the row opposite to that of the external guests: the corridor separating the rows was a furrow, a line of demarcation between outside and inside, a river that cannot be fordded.
Very touching, then, the theatrical show presented a few days later. It’s me directed by Franca Tragni and Carlo Ferrari, in synergy with the Municipality of Parma and Progetti&Teatro. The focus was gender-based violence. The promises, the verbal and physical violence, the expectations, the love that is not true love, were told by the words and bodies of eight prisoners in the prison theatre, in the place where the so-called sex offenders are locked up. It was a strong and courageous show, proposed by the directors together with the actors, among other things really good, in a silent theater with an attentive and involved audience. Then applause and emotion before watching them disappear behind one of the many gates that takes them back to their overnight rooms while the public saw them file past, so close for a moment, giving us one last look”.
To join the ParlamiDentro project, you can send your own message to parlamentro@gmail.com by 11 December 2022
Some letters will be selected and read during the radio-television program Liberi interno – Eduradio&TV, visible on YouTube and followed by the 700 inmates of the Rocco D’Amato prison in Bologna and at regional level on Lepida TV (www.lepida.tv), Icaro TV channel 18 and Radio City Fujiko, 103.1 FM
Talk to me Inside, a letter to reach the invisible in prisons