Tested by time, a new festival in Naples to retrace history

In the heart of Naples, the Church of Saints Marcellinus and Festus, on Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd December 2023, the first edition of the festival “Alla prova del tempo” will be held. Story with figures. Freedom/Authority”. The protagonists of the two days will be eight meetings presented by the writer, literary critic and essayist Paolo Di Paolo and with the presence and participation of Laura Pepe, Matteo Palumbo, Fernanda Alfieri, Giovanni Bietti, Michela Ponzani, Francesco P. de Cegli, Sara Giudice, Luciana Castellina.

The festival will retrace some stages of the bumpy journey of freedom, of its ambiguous relationship with authority and its degeneration (authoritarianism, in all its forms, from tyranny to totalitarian dictatorships, passing through the eternal struggle against freedom of science). It will do so by combining concepts and key figures of this story, in a constant counterpoint between contemporaneity, modernity and antiquity. There is a very strong need for history. Of awareness of the historicity of the problems. Powers without morality – Voltaire noted with rude frankness when defining politics – rule over people without memory. This is why historical memory is opposed: because it constitutes a brake on the desire to rewrite the past and above all it does not predispose to blind obedience but to the exercise of free thought.
The first edition of the festival starts right from here and will present itself to the public full of guests, themes to face and discuss: republican freedom, tyrants, bodies contested between desire, knowledge and power, Verdi, the Risorgimento, men and women in the struggle partisan, vampire stories, Anna Politovskayadissidence in Putin’s Russia.

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“There are many ways of understanding history – he declares Gennaro Carillo – One is the paralyzing one of being crushed by the weight of a tradition (“Italy is a country where the dead rule”: it’s a bitter joke from The Wedding Director, Marco Bellocchio). Another is to have as precise an awareness of the past as possible and avoid the risk of repression. In this sense – continues Carillo – memory is a political act, an antidote, a form of resistance. It is no coincidence that history hours at school are decreasing and a grotesque discipline like Geohistory has been invented. This festival has the ambition of trying to respond, albeit partially, to a need. And it does so – concludes Carillo – by setting up a non-trivial program on a theme, Freedom/Authority, of crucial importance for our present.
“Our association Aps A Voce Alta – declares Marinella Pomarici – for many years, aware that knowledge of the past helps to understand the present and plan the future, for three years it has supported the Laterza publishing house in the organization of the “Festival of History and History Lessons” in a virtuous interaction with the Neapolitan cultural institutions, especially with the Bellini Theater. And precisely because the request to bring history to the center of the cultural debate in Naples is very strong – he continues – we welcomed with great joy the invitation of the mayor of Naples to continue on this path .

“In the panorama of cultural festivals – declares Paolo Di Paolo – At the test of time, among those dedicated to history, it is certainly a small jewel with the aim of questioning itself in its first edition, on important themes such as freedom and authority, to understand the present through the past. It is a great pleasure for me – concludes Di Paolo – to present the meetings and to be able to dialogue with the professionals invited to participate due to the need to think about history which we feel is necessary and urgent today”.