“La Frequenza Fantasma (The Ghost Frequency)” is a feature film that paints a non-hierarchical portrait of a crumbling

village nestled on the mountains of Calabria, in the south of Italy. It is the story of a place suspended in time and space, a place of sounds, smells and numberless thresholds where the memory of a mythical past and the present are inextricably intertwined. It is an investigation into the nature of collective

and personal history, into the origin and preservation of memory- how it is etched and perpetrated, both in the minds of the people who still live there, and in that of the soil, the ruins, matter itself. It is the story of the relationship between animate and inanimate matter, and of how this relationship turns into the motor and purpose of existence- a search for the sacred patterns of the quotidian within the rhythms of nature.

The physical presence of the body and the overwhelming power of a wild and untamed nature are the two forces which dominate all belief in this secluded and anachronistic stretch of land, where faith and superstition are the binding elements that help the continuation of identity and collective history. The few testimonies gathered in the film are the voices of the village’s guardians and have the power of an incantation, that grants survival and continuation to what would otherwise crumble into oblivion and loss.

Engaging with time as physical matter through a careful and protracted period of observation, framed through the lens of an animator’s eye, keen to allow for minute transformations to occur and unlock all kind of quiet epiphanies, this film attempts to uncover all the layers of historical sediment that have accumulated in a particular space through time, and to reap new myths through a personal interpretation and direct encounter with place and narrative.

Sound and music play a crucial role, guiding and displacing the eye, allowing the viewer to engage with the manifold layers of interpretation of the real, erasing and magnifying tones and nuances, building up to a lyrical portrait of place at once objective and profoundly subjective, almost subliminal, aiding the process of making visible the invisible.

The title of the film refers to the role that the invention of the telegraph (and the transmission of sound signals in general) played in spiritualism, allowing to tune into frequencies that, although invisible to the eye, are nevertheless a fundamental aspect of our collective subconscious, following the understanding that sound, once released, will never disperse but will continue to haunt the ether, invisible and inaudible but an unquestionable trace of lapsed presence.