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NEGUS

By Simone BERTUZZI, Simone TRABUCCHI

Documentary - Completed 2016

A triangle between Italy, Jamaica and Ethiopia through the figure of HaileSelassie I.
Toward the end of 1936, during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, an effigy of Haile Selassie I was burned in the square of our hometown Vernasca, northern Italy. This film is a tribute to the image of fire.

- Year of production
- 2016
- Genres
- Documentary
- Countries
- ITALY
- Languages
- ENGLISH, ITALIAN
- Budget
- 0.6 - 1 M$
- Duration
- 70 mn
- Director(s)
- Simone BERTUZZI, Simone TRABUCCHI
- Writer(s)
- Simone BERTUZZI, Simone TRABUCCHI
- Cast
- Lee Scratch PERRY, Abba SHANTI
- Producer(s)
- Luca LEGNANI (999 FILMS s.r.l)
- Synopsis
- The Negus project grew out of a historical event dating from the Italian Fascist period: in the colonial era, after the conquest of Abyssinia, an effigy of the last Negus of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, was burned in the main square of our hometown Vernasca, a village located between Milano and Bologna; this episode coincided with the victorious return to the village of a soldier from the colonial war. In parallel, Hailé Selassié I became the Black Messiah for the Rastafarianism, a cult which was born in Jamaica dur- ing the 30s and then spread all over the planet, including Ethiopia, consid- ered the Mother Land by the Rasta followers. This way, an event that happened a few kilometres from where we were born and raised, enters in resonance with a cult and a culture developed in the opposite side of the planet: this is something that cannot pass unnoticed. We need to give new meanings to this fire, trying to construct a fil rouge which starts in Vernasca and arrives in Shashemene, Ethiopia.