Shan Newspaper
a new cultural world
In March 2007, the film “Shan, the ancient heart of natural peoples” was screened in cinemas in Italy and abroad. The director is Stefano Milla and the film stars five musicians: the members of the group LabGraal.
The film gains inspiration from the book "Natural Peoples and Ecospirituality" authored by Rosalba Nattero and Giancarlo Barbadoro in collaboration with Ola Cassedore, leader of the Apache Survival Coalition of Arizona, and with encouragement by the Office for the High Commissioner for the Human Rights. This film fits no current genre and spans from documentary to fiction and ventures into fantasy and musical to take on a wealth of symbolism having various levels of interpretation. The title alone expresses the ancient and immaterial soul of the Earth's Peoples and conveys the profound spirituality involved.
It was a way for LabGraal to use pictures and music to express the poetry and the spiritual experience of the Natural Peoples, which find references in Nature and in the Mystery that they unveil, a way of sharing their identity, history and culture.
Due to its moral content, the film was presented at the United Nations in New York. Its’ French “premiere” was in Brittany, it was broadcast on Rai channels and was on Sky’s national network for two years. It was included in various film festivals, entering the ranking of the first thirty most-viewed films in Italy and receiving numerous enthusiastic write-ups by film critics. It also inspired the novel “Shan” by AnnaMaria Bonavoglia.
Neither the director nor the musicians imagined that this film would have created a new film genre, or that it would have laid the foundations for a new way of creating culture, becoming the inspiration for events, projects, books, comics, conventions and film forums.
The spirit of “Shan” has opened up the way for the assessment of numerous issues that sometimes, despite being right next to us, are invisible and are made invisible by a culture which is no longer able to perform free research, becoming trapped inside dogmatic visions of the world.
The magazine you’re reading also follows the moral thread of this special film.
Inspired by the film, we decided to try creating an observatory from a privileged viewpoint: the world of "Shan".
"Shan" is the ancient name given by the druids of the celtic culture to Nature, seen as the existence, the guardian of a great cosmic mystery. A concept shared by all the Natural Peoples, those invisible peoples whose traditions date back thousands of years. An archetype that means knowledge, evolution, wellbeing, spirituality, above and beyond any dogmatism.
In creating this magazine, we were inspired by Shan and the profound message launched by the film. The film talks about spirituality and direct contact with Nature, about apparently forgotten ancient traditions, about the archaic culture of the European natives, linked to the myths of the Graal and Phaeton and the legendary city of Rama. It talks about the science of the Natural Peoples. About the need to defend the sacred place of the natives and the need to protect animals, our brothers on this planet.
From this observatory, from the point of view of Shan, we intend to propose the issues dear to us, to convey continuity to the message of the film and to make invisible worlds “visible”. To analyse them together with our readers. In order to avoid losing the excitement of being first-hand "researchers". So we won’t forget. Ever.
The Editorial Staff
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