THE PAPER SAINTS(I Santi di Carta)

Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the churches of Lecce multiplied visibly. To furnish them with valuable statues, depicting saints and Madonnas, the bishop asks the Pope for financial help, who sends an apostolic nuncio to the city to deal with the matter. Since His Holiness's coffers are almost empty, it is decided to make do with the less expensive papier-mâché statues, which can be made by skilled local craftsmen. As if by miracle, the Paper Saints achieved resounding success and were sold throughout Italy and abroad. Lecce, in the early twentieth century, became the world capital of the papier-mâché industry. The enormous amount of money created thanks to Vatican patronage led the Archbishop of Otranto, the powerful Monsignor Cornelio Sebastiano Cuccarollo, originally from the Province of Vicenza, to attempt to replace the papier-mâché statues with wooden ones produced in the north by his countrymen. The excuse is good: papier-mâché is not a valuable material, it cannot enter the house of the Lord. A harsh conflict arose with the Salento masters, who invoked the intervention of the Duce and Pius XI. A real trial of the Paper Saints takes place in the Vatican, which ends with the victory of the Lecce papier-mâché makers even if, inexplicably, the patronage decreases more and more until it is completely eliminated.

Main Actors

Donato Chiarello, Gino Cesario, Enzo Pisconti, Pietro Serio, Simone Ciccarese, Giorgio Vignali, Anna Murolo, Salvatore De Santis, Augusto Zucchi