Workcenter

The film tells the story of seven people from different parts of the world, who live together in a remote valley in Italy. It’s a very unique theater group started by Polish director Jerzy Grotowski. The Workcenter Group is like a miniature society, a mosaic of different mankind, contrasting personalities. People disappointed with religion but struggling to create a new spiritual practices that will fill the void. Their daily lives are more like monks than actors. They devote their entire time to spiritual practice. Part of the activities of the team is working on old songs of tradition, which activates energy centers in the body and leads to transformation and to the interiority of the human being. Every member of the group comes with their own stories, own problems, and has a different approach to be in such a closed group, but all of them are united by the desire to go beyond their human limitations and find in the work a moment of transcendence and liberation. Our documentary looks for new ways of storytelling, aiming to convey this ritual practice into the language of film. We are trying to capture the spirit and energy of it.
Pandemia and life on-line shattered the group, which for many reasons started to fall apart after many years of working together. Why do some of the members decide to leave the group ? Workcenter is a story of human thirst, desire to see what is “behind the veil”, but it’s also a story about disappointment, collapse, about the world that nowadays is slowly fading away.
We all ask ourselves: what is the meaning of life? Actors from Workcenter believe that performing art can bring us closer to answering this question. As filmmakers, we wonder whether a documentary, which is only a record, can bring the same impact. We envision our film as a brief encounter with art that in its purest form can also be a space of sacrum.