La Grande Rogazione con Mario Rigoni Stern

(The “Grande Rogazione” with Mario Rigoni Stern)
by Renato Morelli
36’, Italy, 1994

The Great Rogation of Asiago is the last of those antique rituals, called “rogations”, that are strictly tied to the annual agricultural cycle, still deeply felt today by the local populations. Begun in 1638, the “Trip Around the World”, as the people up there call it, departs at dawn every year on the eve of the Ascension and concludes at sunset. It covers some thirty kilometres on foot during which the participants sing antique litanies in Latin and the Kristle in Cimbro. Th e fi lm tells the story of the Great Rogation of 1993 through the narration of an extraordinary protagonist: Mario Rigoni Stern.

Renato Morelli
Born in Trento in 1950, he studied music and social sciences. As an ethnographer he has conducted research on the ethnic linguistic minorities of the eastern Trentino region that have been published in various journals. He has been a director for RAI in Trento since 1979 and an accredited journalist since 1999. In 1998 he founded the Archivio Provinciale della Tradizione Orale and in 1999 the cultural music project, Destràni Taràf.