Ketty Volpe

Varichina was the first openly out homosexual man in Bari in the ‘70s. Ugly, flashy and campy, he was well known for making coarse advances to every man he saw. He was gay, had nothing to hide, and lived a life of celebration! Funny and heartwarming, Varichina: The True Story of the Fake Life of Lorenzo de Santis is a documentary/fiction hybrid looking at someone who was WAY OUT, long before it was socially acceptable.

A lonely house. A woman is treating her little garden, around her just an heavy winter sky and a small radio that broadcasts the news of some terrible serial killings committed in the area. And while in the house two little girls plays quietly, a menacing figure is about to arrive and upset this quiet, little place; his eyes are full of madness and the clothes he wears shows how Evil can hide behind the most harmless and reassuring appearance.

An unconventional day in Nicola’s life, which begins at the eye doctor’s and takes him around the city, his eye bandaged like a pirate’s. At home, the bakery or in his analyst’s office, the various stops on his wanderings are part of a much more complex journey however, a tightly-woven fabric in which there is the slightest of snags; a snag which stretches and unravels to finally take on a new shape. It is that awareness of being homosexual, and yet never having accepted it.