The Sea And The Cake

A cinematic essay about Palermo and Sicily

I used to think that Goethe had written the most boring stories about Sicily – till I met him in a dark, mysterious tavern in downtown Palermo. His face showing the traces of decades of booze topped by a crown of curley grey hair, he offered to guide me through Sicily. Frederick the second, Hohenstaufen emperor came along to visit an Arabic school, in which the kids were gaily twittering a song of tolerance, while the former Mayor Leoluca Orlando, surrounded by his bodyguards would drag a huge Christmas tree into the salon of his ancient villa. The Etna did not want to hear of calming –- therefore, the star cellist Giovanni Sollima had come to challenge him – both erupted – side-by-side. Next a sign appeared on top of the garbage: "Non e un Film di Mafia" (this is not a film about the mafia), that the city had bestowed the sea, just as the "conscience" – the mafia photographer Letizia Battaglia –, took a seat. What remains are the musicians, who like Muezzins, standing on top of the Norman cathedral in Monreale, would shout a poem by Dylan Thomas into the land that always appeared to me like a big tasty cake laying astray in the sea.

© Edgar Honetschläger, KGP Filmproduktion

World premiere: International Film Festival Rotterdam 2004 (Rotterdam, Netheralands)