short film / 1:02 / 2023
The archaeological site of Cote Ciombella on the Island of Giglio, which possesses ancient megalithic rocks, led me to imagine times when everything in existence was conceived as a reflection of the divine world. The air that was breathed at the site was a distant echo of an ancient world that rejected time in its concrete and linear form, but sanctified it through the cyclical repetition of archetypes that gave meaning to life and being. Mircea Eliade, one of the greatest historians of religion of the twentieth century, wrote a text on what he considers a philosophy of history, namely the myth of the eternal return. In this essay, he writes about the conception that archaic humans had of themselves and their place in the cosmos, through the perception of time as a circular sense, as a repetition of events that were consecrated from their very origin. In reading this essay lies the interpretation of the cyclical return posited by Platone, in which he describes a return to the primordial paradise through the reversal of the motion of the cosmic cycle, leading to a paradoxical regeneration of time. This invocation by Plato aims for the purification of mankind, justifying the suffering brought by catastrophes throughout history.
Illo Tempore is the concept of a place as a symbolic event, where a divine action takes place that will forever alter the destiny of terrestrial life.