Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
In 2019, we talked with Calabrese actor Fortunato Verduci about his role in the FX series “Trust,” his passion for the Calabrese culture, and keeping alive the region’s traditions of music and dance. He was later featured in the April 2020 issue.
Now, Verduci has a new project; an enchanting music video celebrating the land he loves so much. The video is set in the Castello di Santo Niceto, an 11th-century Byzantine castle nestled on a hilltop in Motta San Giovanni in the province of Reggio Calabria. In this haunting setting, Verduci and model Maryame Jafire act out a tale of love to the Calabrese folk song “L’affettu di l’amuri.”
Directed by photographer and video editor Vincenzo Sanci, the song is performed on organetto and piva (a Northern Italian bagpipe) respectively by Giuseppe Lucà, a manufacturer of traditional Calabrian instruments, and Antonio Nicolò, a renowned expert in wind instruments who boasts collaborations with various international artists.
According to Verduci, the song is about love. “It talks about the sun and the moon, about an impossible love. When there is one, the other is missing,” he explained.” He goes on to say, “However, maybe the intense feelings of love can bring the sun and moon together. We wanted to insert the perfect opposite already existing in nature that between the other marries with the reality of this wonderful region. The dance we wanted to perform is not a traditional dance but a hymn to a life stuck in a crucial moment of the story.”
This non-traditional element was important to the message of the project, given the climate in which we are currently living, according to Verduci. “Besides the feeling of love, we also wanted to leave space for other very current themes: that of integration and coexistence between peoples. Music can unite us citizens of the world. Music and acting (theater and film) are driving models of interculturality and tradition but also of openness, which in this case join under one sky.”
To view the video, click here.
