The Red Flower – Alice Rohrwacher

◆ We translated with director Luciana Fina invention of love, A Portuguese poem written by Cape Verdean poet Daniel Felipe during the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar. Invention Banned by censorship, Felipe was persecuted and tortured. He did not have time to see the end of the dictatorship because he died in 1964 at the age of 38. His words inflamed the revolutionary hearts of the Portuguese ten years after his death. In the poem, a tyrannical government is trying to stop a dangerous epidemic of love: it closes schools, blocks traffic, and tries to catch the two runaway lovers who are spreading the terrible, gentle disease that will eventually conquer all. On April 25, 1974, a peaceful revolution put an end to Europe’s longest fascist regime, which had strangled Portugal for forty-eight years. This day was also chosen in honor of the liberation of Italy. Soldiers, students and workers marched together against the regime and, as a sign of non-violence, placed red carnations in the barrels of their rifles. There are many myths about the cause of red carnations. I like to imagine it’s a reference to the poem Philippians, in which a love-struck child suddenly asks for a red flower and cries in despair because it is denied him. It is the flower that announces the inevitable and imminent epidemic of love In all corners of the city in every corner of the city.