Abstract

N-Capace is the story of a homecoming: Tormented Soul returns to Terracina to meet the ghosts of her past. Mixing stream of consciousness and quasi-sociological interviews, Danco’s unusual documentary brings what is most vulnerable into the public square, transforming the landscape into a mental space. Danco’s complex intermediality involving cinema, theatre and photography creates a form of «fragile cinema» that calls for an engaged critical approach. While intimate, the journey home of N-Capace invites a reflection on the collective past, as well as the meaning of community, memory and belonging. Exploring this «public intimacy», this essay reflects on the distracted relation that our post-industrial digitalized culture entertains with the world’s materiality. An ethnographic journey in present-day Italy, reminiscent of those of Zavattini and Pasolini, N-Capace is a form of film-memory that takes the measure of the Italian post-war and our present disorientation.