Vele

Le Vele di Scampia is a futuristic housing estate in northern Naples and a Camorra battlefield. Conceived by Francesco di Salvo in the late seventies and widely recognised for their urbanistic, Le Vele (The Sails) were squatted by mafia families even before completion. Today the building complex is a symbol of the Camorra’s power in the Naples region and a key centre of European drug trafficking. Matteo Garrone shot his movie Gomorra based on the Novel by Roberto Saviano on the site in 2008. Tobias Zielony’s film Le Vele di Scampia from 2009 originates in this very place. Seven thousand single images, shot at night with a digital single-lens reflex camera, are used to create nine minutes of animation film. The book Vele is based on this animation film with an selection of 287 single images.