Giuseppe Paviglianiti

Set in apocalyptic Palermo peopled by ignorant, inbred, flatulent gluttons and deformed Mafiosi, a dark comedy which centers on a poor family of three-middle aged brothers who are coerced, by local Mafia honchos, into hiding a mysterious old man known as the Uncle from Brooklyn in their home.

“Being born in Palermo is a kind of punishment, but I’ve never left because it would feel like betrayal. Moreover, I can’t imagine Cinico Tv in any other place in the world.” To Franco Maresco, a brilliant, solitary director from Palermo, his city was the stage of a surreal comedy of rampant decay just as the Mafia was renegotiating the division of power and influence in the emerging Second Republic. Ruins, trash, scraps, underwear, flatulence and burping raided the TV screen at dinnertime in Italian homes in the spring of 1992, sparking hostile cultural debates about the limits of trash and the aesthetics of ugliness, the sense of post-history and post-humanity

A montage dedicated to friends, actors and companions who have passed away over the years: from Francesco Tirone to Paviglianiti, two leading figures in the famous Cinico TV series, from Tommaso Lauria to Carmelo Bene. This journey down memory lane (and through pain), created especially for Fuori Orario, was broadcast on the night of Ferragosto.

The program consists of clips featuring interviews conducted by the two directors with alienated, crazy, and squalid characters against the backdrop of a desolate Sicily. A characteristic feature is the black and white footage. The subjects are all strictly male: there is no place for femininity in absolute squalor and desolation.

"I migliori nani" simulates the television programs that have dominated much of Italian programming since the 1990s: a studio and a series of what in conventional television would be called "reports," but which are actually excursions into a twisted, mutilated, and discordant world.