Barbara Leolini – Creative and Visual Storytelling

When you practice Magic, your thoughts, your intelligence, and your will are the instruments of your strength. It is the sensation of the world as power. What I have understood is that Magic comes in many forms. I looked for people who believe in Magic and I asked them what this power is. The answer I found is “mind over matter” - if you firmly believe in something, you will have it. Much of traditional Magic takes place by the light of the moon on hilltops, in forests or in open fields. It happens at night because this is when this world and the other world can meet: it is when we are closer to the unconscious, the hidden. The religion practiced by the believers of Magic is called Witchcraft. The powers used in Witchcraft are utterly unlike any mental powers we could think of. These practitioners are not figures found in fairy tales that can move objects with their minds, but rather physical representations of dignities they worship. Magic is the potential to shape the energy you find out in the world and the people who practice Witchcraft are real. They are what brings Magic to life.

Ghost Hunting

A research in Italy reveals that 76% of Italians believe in ghost and half of them saw one. Every night, ghost-hunting groups across Italy head out into abandoned warehouses, old buildings and cemeteries to look for ghosts. They often bring along electronic equipment that they believe helps them locate ghostly energy. Ghosts are among the most widely believed paranormal phenomena. Cultures all around the world believe in spirits that survive death to live in another realm. Albert Einstein offered a scientific basis for the reality of spirits. He proved that all the energy of the universe is constant and that it can neither be created nor destroyed. what happens to that energy when we die? I tried to answer some of these questions, searching for the ghosts through people who experienced them in their life. I started questioning myself. What happens when, for instance, you realize you’re in the presence of supernatural laws? What happens when everything that you believed being rational, it doesn't find a reasonable comparison anymore? Ghost hunting isn’t so different from bird-watching. In fact, there is no hunting whatsoever: the aim isn't to chase away or capture the ghost, but mostly find proof of their existence.

The Swallows Return

I am one of a triplet. In my childhood, I've never been alone. Not physically, at least. It was more about my being disconnected, my identity. My anger was always a big part of my life, and so often, my shield. There is a spring of the heart and this mine. Love, as I know it, resolves itself into small solicitudes: food, heat and cold, tiredness, sometimes money. Everything else lay as if submerged at unreachable depths, in a mass of subjects never addressed, excuses to be made and received and memories to be corrected, which would remain unchanged. Sometimes I felt like a keeper of a museum. A huge, empty space where no one ever comes, and I’m watching over it for no one but myself. Feeling different is the worst cage a person can build for themselves because sooner or later, when you start realize how sad you are, you can fall ill with just a memory. With time, I've understood that behind my indifference, or “couldn't-care-less-attitude”, there was a big inability to communicate. I was unable to communicate my emotions and for that reason I couldn't read others’. I wandered through the silent apartment like the ghost of myself, unhurriedly following my own lucidity. “I'm going mad”, I thought sometimes. But I didn't mind. In fact, it made me smile, because at last, for the first time, I was the one making the choices.

"I am the light of the world"

Claudio and I, a young seminarist, we were sat down in the courtyard of the archiepiscopal seminary in Florence, when he said: “ the aspiration to the joy is engraved in the intimate of the human being. Beyond the immediate and momentary satisfactions, our heart seeks the deep joy. When I've begun this project I didn’t know what I would have thrown out of it. By an atheistic and 26 years old girl, the idea of the faith is a concept too much abstract, founded upon an idea of love that I’ve never tried. The aspect that I’ve chosen to analyze is the relationship between young people and the catholic religion, because it’s the world really far from me, from my life. I wanted to understand where their prayers went. Sometimes is painted an image of the Christianity as a proposal of life that goes against our desires of happiness, but if there is a thing that I’ve understand indeed it’s that Christians are happy men and happy women because they know not to be alone.

Web Documentary

During World War II around 80.000 Finnish children were evacuated from Finland, about 70.000 to Sweden and 4.000 to Denmark. Most were evacuated during the Continuations War. The period of reconstruction after the war was difficult for Finland. There was a lack of food, clothing and housing all over the country and many families had been broken because of evacuation, death or divorce. This made it more difficult to bring children back to Finland after the war. The foster parents had also often become attached to their Finnish children, and many of them wanted to adopt these children. After staying with their new families for several years some of the children had forgotten their biological parents as well as the Finnish language ñ their roots and sometimes children themselves did not want to leave their new families. Although many families did want their children back, they did not succeed. Ultimately, around 20 % of the war children stayed with their forest families after the war. Many more returned to their countries as adults. It was June 1942 when Kai Palomåki was sent as a war child from Finland to Denmark. He was seven years old. After six days and five nights travel, he arrived in Hoptrup, a small town in southern Jylland, where he met his new Danish parents. He didn¥t know how long his stay would be. He spent 17 years without any connection with his Finnish family.

I met Gianni at Rome's Gay Pride in 2012. I remember he hit me for his intensity and for the way he was using his hands to explain that life is a battle for our dreams. We became friends and I try to represent a heart beat into his life, his devotion and his loneliness. Gianni is homosexual and he always knew it. He’s an Italian singer/performer that lives for making art. That is all he’s interested in. The stage is home to him. He takes extremely good care of his body and loves working out. He has dreams and thinks that nothing is impos­sible if one has the right attitude of mind and keeps the faith. He loves to express both his masculine and feminine sides. The society we live in has a huge problem with a man wearing make-up, expressing his feminine side. He feels it’s essential to have 360-degree freedom within us, without judging our­selves. There’s nothing wrong with expressing whatever is inside of us. Gianni is joking and playing and giggling inside and tumbling around, stumbling here and there. This project is a window into his world.