29|03|2025 Vestali Liquide
by Nora Mandray
Opening
29|03|2025 Vestali Liquide
by Nora Mandray
Opening
Once, in antique Roma, the Vestals kept the sacred fire of their city alive.
There were six persons, chosen at age 8 to serve for 30 years. Their
bodies, bound to its hunger, would watch over embers as if the empire’s
breath depended on it. And perhaps it did—so long as breath meant
conquest, so long as victory was measured in ash. The sacred fire was a
sign of the empire’s health. When the Roman empire started to crumble,
vestals were blamed and some even sentenced to death. Each year,
vestals started a new fire on March 1st – the new year, in ancient Roma.
Vestals are remembered for the sacred fire, but water held an equally
important role in their rituals–to purify, and to nourish.
What if the altar was a spring instead? What if the empire’s health was
not the rage of a flame, but the constancy of a tide? Water does not
demand sacrifice. It does not consume. It holds. It swells. It listens.
Through a 3-part film workshop orchestrated by Nora Mandray, a special
collective has created a water-based ritual: three grandmothers together
with their three grandchildren. Exploring the relationship between
ecology, memory and fluidity, their story delves into water as a carrier of
connection and transformation.
Here, in the massive factory-studio space where silk was once spun, they
weaved something different—stories, images, gestures, in communion
with water.
___
A film by Nora Mandray
Co-written by & starring
Lodovica Boatto, Caterina Boaretto, Loredana Ceschin, Carlo Perlini, Marina Susanna and Eva Pauletti.
Director of Photography: Stefano Steno
Produced by Arper Feltrin Foundation
Co-produced by Etimo & El Flamingo
Producers: Eugenio Ambrosin, Filippo Taccini, Philipp Becker
Costume Designer: Nicolò Savoia
Sound: Tommaso Dugato
Score: Alessandro Gambato
Editor: Leon Preller
In association with Ri-Prese Archives & Home Movies Foundation Archives
Special thanks: Josselin Esteve & Dalva Deshogues, Association Braquage.