I was walking in an outlying neighborhood, looking for a disreputable public urinal.
Under a bridge, two thugs were waiting, next to their bikes.
As I was passing by, they shouted, without animosity : "Race d'ep".
As I was drunk, it took me some time to understand.
Homosexuals don't speak back slang.
Race d'ep for pederast.
I suddenly felt that floating beside me was the shadow of another race.
I didn't feel that shout as an insult,
but as the summary of my belonging to another world, another history.
A century-old history,
which beginnings can still be told by the living.
A new identity that became a quasi-nature over the course of a century.
They appear just before the start of the 20th century,
mutants of the visual art and of medical sciences,
discovering themselves, through their representations, as a particular species.
Between the wars, in the convulsions of pre-concentrationnary Germany,
they proliferate,
building their own destiny, redefining the being human.
A dispersed people,
a memoryless people,
forgetful of lived experiences and exterminations.
A conscience to be different, which is neither eternal,
nor born in the american liberation of the 60's.
It had a golden age, half a century ago.
Lost continent, erased by the totalitarian bloodbath.
This movie aims at showing this unknown history,
through the images it created. The race d'ep history.
This history follows photography.
Another memory, another sensitive skin.
They immediately take hold of it. A sign of their modernity.
From their origin, they will use this smooth surface that can hold dreams
as the favorite confidant of their starting culture.
Thanks to photography, they will dare on the masculine body what is difficult in reality.
From Gloeden to contemporary pornography, they will use film as a preferred media,
as this movie is the latest example.
They were born with modern childhood, away from which they're carefully hold.
Their mutations are simultaneous,
bringing childhood from naivety to untouchable myth,
mirror of adult frustrations.
But, as physicians or artists,
they are the great trap-image hunters, where teenagers get stuck,
prisoners of illusion, forever having this age desirable for childhood lovers.
Restless investigators of the teenage body, they dreamed the picture of a forbidden beauty.
1st part : The 1900s
Photo shoot time
The baron Wilhelm von Gloeden was born in 1856 by the Baltic sea.
Advised by another german baron, the painter Otto Geleng, he decides to visit Sicily and Taormina,
praised in his time by the poet Platen.
He settles in Taormina, and will not ever leave it.
He starts painting.
But in 1888, Gloeden is ruined.
He then starts, using a camera lent by a german friend of his,
to make postal cards of countryside views.
Around 1880, is the very beginning of art photography.
It triumphs in 1887 with the London school and Gloeden.
Sensitive film can now be used for something else than document or portrait.
Gloeden worked without interruption until his death in 1931.
His production makes him one of the first of these avant-garde artist.
Well-known in his time, Gloeden received many praises and awards,
in Italy as in Paris, in Cairo as in New-York.
English Edouard VIII, spanish Alphonse XIII,
Richard Strauss, Oscar Wilde, Anatole France
visited his studio.
He dies, leaving more than 3000 films to his favorite model, Il Moro.
In 1936, fascist police seizes the films, destroys half of them,
and tires Il Moro.
In 1960, his work is still censored in Italy.
All third-world children are waiting for their baron.
This mad german baron, Gloeden was the model of.
Photo shoot time
Of course I knew the baron.
I may have been the first to see him.
My name is [Pancrazio Puccini ?].
But when I was young, I was called Il Moro.
I guess there is arabic blood in my family.
I remember vividly when he arrived.
He was dressed too warmly for our weather.
We went to help him with luggage.
And he drew money out of his pocket !
At first, he would only look at us from afar,
while we were playing leapfrog.
We were already teenagers, but
we would behave like kids, because there was nothing else to do.
Today, my grandson, the one operating the filling station,
he owns a Vespa, he can go see movies.
He might still meet his baron though.
I bought the filling station when the baron died, thanks to him,
in 1935.
He would spy on us, and it was slightly weird
to feel him watching us like that.
It would make us laugh
to see a foreigner
having more interest in us than in family.
In this time, girls would never go out.
They stayed home with their mothers.
Men would go to work in the city, or at sea.
And us, kids, would take care of the flock.
We would run around, catch each other.
Fight for fun.
We were young, and beautiful.
We were young and vigorous.
Nothing too serious, just child play.
We would tease the younger kids.
Tie them up.
We were only children.
One day, he eventually asked us
if we would model for him.
We thought he was a painter.
It was the first time photography
was seen in Taormina.
He had put a huge canvas as a set
in his artist studio.
We he moved back, he would say : "Achtung !"
We would hold our breaths,
until we heard...
CLICK.
This model sessions sometimes lasted for the whole night.
People from the village would look trough the window while passing by.
He was generous, and very kind
very polite with women.
So no one ever protested.
My mother ended up with a real devotion for him.
She put his pictures on her chimney.
Next to the saints...
Staying still like that, we would catch cramps.
He would came back, half talking to us,
taking the pose to show us.
He mainly wanted us to looked more serious.
He would talk about greek art, Pompéi's fresco.
But we were distracted.
He had to start again tens of times.
And he would swear !
Kids like us, we would have given
all the Roman statues of the Argiento museum for a phonograph !
To put us in the mood, he would deliver greek poetry.
Theocritus, or Virgil.
At the same time, We would laugh.
We weren't very smart, we were innocent.
Like small countryside beasts.
We were completely unaware.
I only realised much later that
the baron was a great artist.
As everyone agree nowadays.
But he had to fight against our animal nature.
He wanted to refine us, to transform us
into mythological heroes.
He wanted us to be princes.
He was looking, in us, for human perfection,
but we were a poor substance,
so unperfect for such a great creator.
I was one of the youngest :
Aldo, who became Mayor,
Graziano, who is now a pharmacist.
Ettore, who died during the war.
I was as thin as a rake,
and I was slightly ashamed to show myself like that.
He would often get mad at us.
Shouting against our games, our rudeness.
He would say :
"Aren't you ashamed ! Boys of your age !"
He tried to get us out of our hole, try
to get us interested in culture.
Ah, poor us...
We were unbearable.
He was very patient.
[?]
He would catch us in his pictures almost by surprise.
During summer, we would go out,
near the abandoned convent.
The baron had his head full of pagan ideas.
A way to love the hour of sun set,
called Apollo in ancient times.
He would thought of himself as Zoroaster or Zarathustra...
I don't remember. We were his choirboys,
as he would invocate to lights.
Light is very important for a photographer,
it is actually the core.
We spend a lot of time modeling.
Full days under the sun.
We were used to it, we knew his quirks.
He was obsessed with big eyes.
He would say that in a picture, they're the mirror of the soul.
Nowadays, one likes quick pictures, but
he could spend three day on a single picture.
Because there was a cloud.
Or because one of us had moved.
I was Ixion on the wheel,
Endymion asleep, the hunter catching Diana taking her bath.
He would use all kind of old stuff to create his sets.
He was the one who gave a second life to Sicilian wheels.
Sometimes, for art's sake and our own, he would become harsh.
He would tie us up, twist our arms,
make us do contortions.
He wanted pain, expression in photography.
When we would see the pictures, it was clear
that we weren't statues, because greek statues
have very small dicks.
But ours,
mamma mia, they were fully developed.
One night, we settled in this small tropical garden in front of the house.
He moved chairs for us from the sacristy.
Gave us a holy wine
to drink in crystal glasses.
We were exited, spilled a lot of wine on us.
Never again did I live such a night !
He needed us to feel a certain way
in order to get the picture he wanted.
And we would end up feeling this,
after hearing him so often,
we felt we were better, prettier.
He would constrain us to pretend having certain relationships,
for the intensity of the final picture.
We had to make lover's faces,
I had to look towards Veraldo, or Graziano,
as if I was jealous.
More and more foreign tourists would come,
to see his pictures.
Il barone started selling them, and didn't give us our share.
He kept it for later times.
He would gave it to us on our wedding.
There was much more money to be made by modeling than by being a shepherd.
This is how our village repopulated itself.
Even the prettiest girl in Palermo
would look for her husband in Taormina.
We've been proud of these photographs for more than a century, here in Taormina.
We were but Sicilian kids.
He made us princes of Art.