We live in an era where information travels fast and is at times superficial. The challenge posed by Future Digs is to give rise to more profound reflections with some of today’s most authoritative personalities – historians, scholars, researchers and intellectuals – who will bring  Matera to the centre of the European cultural debate. The outcome of the first events on the programme has been positive, opening with “Lezioni di Cinema” (Lectures on the Cinema) – a series of showings and meetings  organized with the Lucana Film Commission as a partner.

On February 7th, the Cinema Piccolo set the stage for a collective reflection on contemporary film-making entitled “Ieri. Andreotti e il cinema: I modelli produttivi nella prospettiva europea” (“Yesterday. Andreotti  and cinema –productive models in a European perspective”). In this  full-scale show, Tatti Sanguineti, the exceptional mentor of this series,  engaged experts and authoritative partners such as writer and journalist Bruno Gambarotta and Paride Leporace, the director of the Lucana Film Commission. This lecture on cinema showed how depth and lightness could be joint in a conversation that offered an attentive audience intriguing details on the leading role played by “Il Divo” ( translator’s note “the Star”, as Andreotti is often referred to ) in the history of the cinema after the Second World War.

On February 9th the cultural baggage of Future Digs was moved to Casa Cava for the inauguration of the series (“Lezioni di storia. Oltre I confine”) “Lectures on History. Beyond borders”, organized in cooperation with Editori Laterza. It tells of the never-ending need of peoples to cross geopolitical and cultural borders in a continuing transformation of the self and of others.

The lecture series was opened by an expert popularizer – Alessandro Barbero who took part in the meeting “Ai confini dell’Europa: da Adrianopoli a Poitiers” (“On the borders of Europe: from Adrianopolis to Poitiers”) dealing with the great invasions from the late Roman Empire up to the time the Muslims appeared on the scene. The lecture was very well-attended and a large audience could also follow from home thanks to YouTube streaming, with over two thousand viewings registered.

After the kick-off with the historian Barbero, on Saturday February 23rd Casa Cava was again the venue chosen for the lecture (also on livestream) held by Franco Farinelli, the Dean of the Philosophy and Communications Department of the University of Bologna and chairman of the Association of Italian Geographers (Agei). Views were exchanged on the evolution of spatial models used to represent the world during the event “Ai confini della terra: da Colombo a Google” (“To the boundaries  of the world : from Columbus to Google”). How is our idea of the world being reshaped with the advent of the Internet? What do you think about the concept of ‘boundaries’? Questions such as these ones are what we attempted to answer together with the students of the schools who took part in the discussion. In this article they tell us how, in their view, the concept of boundaries has changed.

Lezioni di Storia (Lectures on History) is an event fully in tune with the spirit of the European Capital of Culture – looking to the past with a look towards the future.

After the lectures on cinema and those on history on February 27th, it is time to open the chapter regarding lectures on democracy. After  the first meeting in Milan, “People have the power” will be launched in Matera with five dates organized in cooperation with the Fondazione Giacomo Feltrinelli in order to gain insight into the processes of grassroots participation.

The lecture entitled “Democrazia è: il potere di realizzare” (“Democracy is: the power to make things happen”) was moderated by the Huffington Post journalist Angela Mauro and featured the following speakers: the sociologist Giovanni Moro, Michelangelo Secchi of the Centro Estudios Sociais of the University of Coimbra, Elio Manti of Basilicata Region and Silvana Kuhtz of the University of Basilicata.

And that is not the end of Future Digs: in order to bridge the distance between citizens and institutions , citizens are invited  to bring their ideas and energies to the gatherings on the 6th, 7th and 8th of March for another set of lectures on democracy, cinema and history.

The 8th of March is a special date as it marks the opening in Matera of the Biennale di Democrazia, a cultural  event promoted by the City of Turin and organized  by the Fondazione per la Cultura Torino and the Polo del ‘900 with the contribution of Compagnia di San Paolo and the support of Intesa Sanpaolo. For further information, please access the official Matera 2019 calendar of events.