PRODUCTIONS: THE WAY OF THE THOUSAND

DIRECTOR

PRODUCER

DURATION

VERSIONS

FORMAT

Luigi Cammarota

SD Cinematografica

43 min.

HD

Saying \"Palermo\" arouses opposite emotions, all very strong. Regional capital, wonderful, chaotic, passionate metropolitan city, home to magnificent world heritage sites for art, culture and traditions. Placidly lying - when it appears from afar - in the superb \"Conca d\'oro\", with a density of four thousand inhabitants per square kilometre, Palermo is certainly not a quiet place. But looking south from the sea, it appears surrounded by a barrier of mountains, the Monti di Palermo, a chain of mountain ranges more than a thousand meters high which dominate the gulf and the city with a mighty embrace.
From the top of these mountains, the noise, the passions and the frenzy are barely perceived, miles away, but also centuries away. Incredibly, the landscape and nature are still those of the rural, sunny and wild Sicily of the nineteenth century, when the narrow-gauge train of the \"Sicilian Railwais Company of London\" connected Palermo to Corleone, passing through Monreale and Ficuzza. The train is no longer there, but the ancient route can be traveled on foot, horse and bicycle.
Stefano is a young man with a passion for exploratory trekking who, studying an ancient guide of the Alpine Club from 1910, identified a fascinating itinerary that he knows of history, culture and untouched nature: the \"Cammino dei Mille\". It is the set of paths, mule tracks and country lanes that allowed Garibaldi and his thousand \"red shirts\" to outflank the Bourbon army by advancing on the crests of the Palermo mountains and conquering the city and the whole of Sicily.
With the supervision of Amelia Crisantino, writer, journalist and historian, and together with other volunteer and enthusiastic walkers, he traced the surprising route of one hundred and sixty kilometers that winds along panoramic ridges, wooded valleys, very green plateaus and which touches large and small inhabited centers , but all famous, such as Monreale, Corleone, Misilmeri, Marineo, Piana degli albanesi, Santa Cristina Gela, Mezzojuso, closing the ring in Palermo.
From every point of the way you can see the sea. The most enchanting stretch is in the Bosco della Ficuzza, a Site of Community Importance and a Special Protection Area, a hunting reserve of the Bourbons which, in addition to the royal lodge, boasts stupendous panoramas, centuries-old woods, archaeological remains and precious endemisms. An immersion in the past and in the uncontaminated nature of a Mediterranean territory of rare beauty, which brings out the truest, most natural and sustainable soul of this land through the gaze and voice of the young volunteers and the inhabitants met along the way.