Radio Egnatia

The Via Egnatia, a natural continuation of the Appian Way in the Balkans, is an ancient Roman street built to connect Rome to Constantinople (what is now Istanbul) – the capitals of the Western and Eastern Roman Empire – passing through Southern Italy, the Otranto Canal, Albania, North Macedonia, Greece and Turkey. Radio Egnatia is an imaginary radio station, its programs are made of a tangle of sounds and real information, such as pieces from actual old radio programs, sounds and songs collected during numerous trips to the Balkans. The movie is made of various episodes, each symbolically represented by a stone plate made of pietra leccese, traditional stone from Lecce, which is created and then “discarded” to attest the passage of the main characters on the old Roman Road. Every “pebble” tells the story of a life or of a landmark, a local community or traditions which are disappearing, it tells of people from different geographical areas meeting. Matteo Fraterno is the guide on this journey. He is a relational artist, nomad by vocation and every encounter by encounter, stone by stone, he accompanies us through the borders and the multiple ethnographic identities, auditory and cultural, from Salento to Turkey.