Mireille

Mireille is 58 and she’s been out of work for some months. She lives in a flat with her partner near Lyon, France. 

During this pandemic she’s discovered that she’s a hero, and that she’s wise because she appreciates every single day and she manages to control her rage against the government and its way of managing the pandemic, its exploitation of fear. She’s mad at the hysteria spread through the media. What she appreciates the most are the empathy, solidarity and the attention to the others. 

Her biggest fear is thinking that the world won’t change and that we’ll become more isolated and distrustful of others. And that we will keep destroying the planet. 

Her message to those who are experiencing hardships is to cultivate optimism. She repeats to herself that she has food, a roof upon her head hence she can bounce back. It’s high time our society acknowledged the importance of all those who are in the frontline, she said. It’s taken a pandemic to understand their value. 

Giulio

Giulio is 50 years old and is a musician. Originally from Benevento, in the South of Italy he now lives in Reggio Emilia with his girlfriend and a cat. They share a ground-floor flat with a small garden. 

What he’s appreciating the most is the quality of the air, the silence, and having much more time at his disposal to do things he wouldn’t normally be able to do. 

The most destabilizing aspect of this pandemic is the uncertainty, i.e. not knowing when this will end. He says he had no fear. 

He invites those in need to ask for help, without being afraid of rejection. He’s deeply grateful to all those people working in the frontline to make sure all we need is provided for. 

Sonia

Sonia is 37 and is originally from Arcos de Valdevez, Portugal. She now lives in a flat with her husband and her two children in Ponte da Barca. Her mum used to live with them before the pandemic. 

The most positive thing for her is the ability of her family to adapt whilst keeping an emotional balance and peace at home. What she appreciates the most is silence, allowing her to be more attentive and conscious. 

From a psychological point of view, the most challenging thing was dealing with the impact of social distance from relatives and friends, dealing with fear, and discussing virus-related issues with her children. From a financial point of view it’s been difficult, trying to make ends meet despite a lower income. 

Her biggest fear is that of missing the chance to become more human and less self-centered. She feels that we all need to be more conscious and responsible both as persons and as a community. 

She tells those in need not to simply survive but to try their best despite the circumstances, trying to create space for appreciation. It’s important to “train” our smile. It’s time to be grateful, she insists, and to focus on the positive things, not the difficulties. 

She’s grateful to those in the frontline and she prays for their health and that they can go back home soon and rest. 

Alper

Alper is 41, he’s an export consultant. He lives in a flat with his wife and his 7-year-old son in Istanbul, Turkey.

What he appreciates the most is not having a fixed schedule. This makes things flexible especially with his son whom he can play with and help do the homework. Home schooling is great, he believes. The lockdown is an opportunity to spend more time with his family and despite expecting more conflict, he’s in fact realized how everyone is respecting each other without fights.  

He doesn’t find the situation destabilizing because he’s managed to prepare himself, also talking to his friend in Milan. On the contrary, people who were taken aback by the lockdown were more affected by anxiety.  He’s not fearful either, he’s just adapting to changes. Fear, he maintains, is caused by the idea that we Westerners have of being stronger than nature. Realizing our impotence makes us scared. 

For those in need he quotes a proverb that goes along these lines: life will put stones on your path. It’s up to you to decide wether you want to build walls or bridges. Bridges unite people.

He’s thankful to all the people in the frontline who will have to think of all the lives saved when feeling disheartened. 

Stéphanie

Stéphanie is 46. She’s a toxicologist and a dancer. She lives in a 60 square meter flat with her cat in Lyon, France.

Both in a positive and negative way, what surprises her the most is the relationship with time. She’s questioning what time is and how people function accordingly, be it in the urgency or in not knowing what to do. What do we do with out time, knowing that it’s borrowed and that at a given moment our physical life will end? It can be destabilizing, or pleasant. 

This same reasoning applies when sending a message to those in need or in the frontline. What it all boils down to is deciding what to do with our time and how to live both individually and as a community. 

Love is? And how does it sound

Love is something that... you can make friends, love is so beautiful because it keeps us together then you can play, you can talk to friends, you can write love letters and do a lot of funny things with my friend Ari, for instance, and Mia, my dog.

I love horse riding, I love chatting with my funny friends very much, also my cousin, my grandpa whom I always play with and my granny who’s always cooking many things for me, mum whom I always visit at work and dad, because he always makes me do funny things. 

I love the sounds of all animals very very much, that of little birds too...

Love... love are many, in that you have puppy love, when you are so enthusiastic and everything looks bright and you hope for a future and so on...

Here, the important thing is to make it last. Love partially evolves too, because it becomes so to say fraternal, especially as you grow old. Sometimes you look at your wife with some sense of nostalgia in a way, then children, grandchildren and all that jazz step in, and this is a different kind of love but the important thing is that this love lasts forever, that can really last a whole life.

I always bring flowers to my wife, because I remember her birthday and mostly when we got married. We had three children, seven grandchildren and a great-granddaughter. 

A song that reminds me of love, for instance, is “Stringer in Paradise”... something like... I can’t recall the exact title. It’s a very beautiful song that evokes the moments when we met.

What is love? It’s a big big question, I do not have the answer and I don’t think anyone does. 

It could be just feeling good whilst being on the precipice simply because you’re with someone who makes you feel good, it’s losing weight without being on a diet... it could be...  yes, it might sound silly but you have that too, and it’s a poison and at the same time the only antidote for that kind of poison. 

And it is a symptom, as an illness could be, so to say, an infection: this is what it causes, or at least what it has caused me. Actually there are different kinds of feeling in relation to people or things in fact, or passions for animals, for music, for the arts. 

It’s a bond...

The word “love” could be a song, in fact different songs connected to the person in that specific moment of your life.

To me love should be an unconditional feeling, free from any constraint, from any individual need, something pure towards the other, without demands, without...

I shall take a dog as an example: love in an absolute sense is the love a dog feels towards his owner. Actually, I cannot put this concept into practice because my rationality so as my cravings, my desires, my needs, my fears take over...

To love I associate the sound of silence and that of water flowing down a stream as a background.

Love is something... it’s a feeling that somebody looks for from the beginning until the end. When you feel it, it’s the most beautiful thing in the world. We’re always trying to discover different things, because true love doesn’t have a limit. 

As you get old, you understand that love is something that comes down to what is closest to you. 

I am still looking for love, because I think love is... I don’t know... this I don’t know, I still have to feel it. 

I associate love with the voice of my mother, of my son, of my wife.

To me love is something that wraps everything around, that unites both people and the environment, it’s something that when present attracts people, attracts the environment in which you live... it’s in the air and unites. 

I see it as an union. 

Another aspect of love is taking care not just of other people but also of things, why not, also material objects, of what surrounds you: taking care of what surrounds you. 

A sound I really like and that I associate with love is... kind of... flapping wings because so as birds fly all over and can occupy all the spaces let’s say... yes, wings flapping is soft, and yet it’s there and it unites.

To me love is above all sharing, sharing of passions, sharing of experiences, sharing of daily life. To me this is love. 

I love my family above all – my daughter first and foremost – and clearly I love living and sharing the day or experiences with them. Here, to me this is love. 

I associate with love all that music, let’s say, with a lot of rhythm. I associate it with happiness, with love, with lightness.

To me love is a feeling that warms you, that warms your heart, it makes you feel happy, it makes you feel good. It’s a feeling a person feels for another who can be a brother, a cousin, a friend, a partner, a parent. 

A sound I associate with love could be... dunno... a heart beating, yes, a heart that beats.

“The great risk of the contemporary world with its multiple and oppressive consumerism offer is an individualistic sadness.”

I shall start from a phrase pronounced by Pope Frances because I think he is one of those people who can well understand what’s happening in our time. I think this is just the point: relationships have lost quality because we’re overwhelmed by continuous inputs of things to do immediately, ready, easy, 24/7 and this kills man, it kills the relationship which is on the contrary the foundation of any true relationship between people who respect and love each other. 

I know Christianity... it’s not just man who looks for God but it’s Good who looks for man. When you realise that you are loved by God, all the rest can start. 

Music helps a lot indeed in that it is art, beauty and somehow reflection of he who has created all. 

Wanting the wellbeing of others is Love, wanting the wellbeing, the big wellbeing, the ultimate wellbeing, that which makes you able to see beyond what you fear of losing or want to gain. 

Creating the best conditions allowing people we love can fulfill themselves, become accomplished. It implies sacrifice, renouncement, being that of what others need which is very difficult. We think we can intervene in other people’s life but just a few are able to be nothing, hence everything. 

This “I love you” de-powers the feeling completely, because you have to express it without saying it. It’s what we Buddhists call “the Noble Silence”, that’s where authentic feeling pass by, those which remain untainted.

My name is Alice and I am 8 years old.

My name is Toni, I am 83, I got married in April 1959. 

My name is Riccardo, I am 29 years old. Can I say I am an artist? I am a painter. 

I am Elena and I am 44 years old. I am married and I have a cat.

I am Marco, I am a hairdresser and I am in love with my job.

I am Chiara, I am 45, I’ve bene married for 16 years and I have a 16-year-old daughter.

I am Fabio, I am 41, I live with my partner and I have a 8-year-old daughter. 

I am Cecilia, I am sixteen and I study, I’m at the high school.

I’m Father Amedeo and behind the scenes of my life there’s always been somebody called the Lord.

I am a buddhist nun, my Christian name is Rosella and my buddhist name is Mioren. 

LE OFFUSCATE – se ti spiego, magari capisci perché piango

La storia di un’amicizia speciale nata durante le terapie, le incognite con cui ognuno di noi prima o poi deve fare i conti.  L’audiodocumentario ‘LE OFFUSCATE – se ti spiego, magari capisci perché piango’ non è un semplice racconto dell’esperienza oncologica.

Le protagoniste ci prendono per mano in un viaggio che apre il cuore e approda con coraggio nella dimensione del confronto diretto con se stessi e con l’altro. La riflessione diventa così anche la nostra. Supera la retorica e l’illusione di trovare soluzioni definitive, e con leggerezza entra nella profondità.

La malattia non è solo dolore e sofferenza ma anche opportunità di esplorare territori che spesso decidiamo di ignorare, perché ci spaventano. È, soprattutto, occasione irrinunciabile per interrogarsi sul senso più intimo e profondo che scegliamo di dare alla vita.

"LE OFFUSCATE - Se ti spiego, magari capisci perché piango" è un audiodocumentario di Federica Bonacini, completamente autoprodotto tra il 2016 e il 2017 a Reggio Emilia

Hanno collaborato:

Dott. Michele Caltabiano, consulenza

Stefano Meschieri, assistenza al montaggio

Riccardo Sghedoni, disegni e grafica

Giulio Cesare Vetrone, musiche originali e mixaggio

Il documentario è disponibile per l'acquisto in versione DVD pack a €15, con incluso il CD delle musiche originali.