Abandoned Towns as Places of Memory. The Safeguard of Intangible Heritage through Cinema

This proposal aims to trace the relationship between cinema, heritage and cultural memory by analyzing the role of cinematographic production and narration to enhance architecture and landscape. The objective here is to identify the best tools and means to preserve the social fabric at risk - the tangible, as well as the intangible heritage of the abandoned towns and villages. For both aspects, cinema can act to preserve cultural memory in various ways. The case study of Craco represents an abandoned hamlet in the southern Italian province of Matera, Basilicata. It has undergone a total depopulation process due to a landslide in 1963, and is, today, the subject of enhancement actions connected to cinema due to its strong, impressive evocative environment. Levi s painting and political and poetical thought were deeply affected by this region s culture in the book "Christ Stopped at Eboli". His vision was reconstructed in a film by Francesco Rosi, who decided to set it in Craco, which in 1979 was still partially inhabited. The oral tradition of the last century of this particular historical context represents a living archive that needs to be preserved and protected as an intangible heritage. The tools of audio-visual recording are devices through which immaterial cultural heritage can be seen and harnessed. Cinema, among other means of expression, has the capacity to begin these processes, to reread and reinterpret the territory through narration.