“THEVirgil is a way of being “,” It’s our Hogwarts “,”I wouldn’t change anything in these five years»: The voices of the students of the historic high school in via Giulia, in Rome, are unanimous. For them, the Virgil is much more than a school. The docu-film tells it well All saints aired on Discovery + through the voices and faces of the artists who passed through those classrooms: Francesco De Gregori first, the protagonists of the Roman trap and post-trap scene, then, as Franco 126, Ketama, Side Baby (ex-Dark Polo Gang, author of Everything asks for salvation), the Wing Klan, the Tauro Boys, Drone, Pretty Solero, up to the artist and photographer She.s Lola.
A scene from the docu-film Tutti Santi on Discovery +: it tells the story of the Virgilio high school in Rome through its alumni, now exponents of the Roman trap music scene.
The title of the docu-film refers to the start date of the last occupation, in 2021: Virgil’s students in fact every year give the school the name of the saint of the day they take possession of the classrooms, and in 2021 they started precisely on 1 November. A consolidated ritual, this of the occupation in the autumn which, as the students themselves say, has also partly lost its political significance. It is done, sometimes it lasts a few days, others even a few weeks. We sleep at school, make music, go to see the stars on the terrace, make love with the “kids”. Who knows now if it will replicate, with the air that pulls.
The Virgilio high school in Rome, the cradle of trap
The strong sense of belonging means that even students who are more interested in music than in Latin remember those years with nostalgia and affection. As a student today says, “I’ve never seen anyone leave other schools and get sick. Here, on the other hand, there are those who remove the pieces of plaster in the courtyard, at maturity, to take them home as a souvenir“. There are many anecdotes, like that of the hens, which were sneaked by someone during an occupation, and not all of them were found, given the vastness of the building.
As a historic high school in the center of Rome, the Virgil is reputed to be a school of the Ztl. Those who attend it, however, and those who have been through it, deny it: prof Garbini (on a door the words “respect for prof Garbini” make us understand the relationship that binds him to his students), prefers to speak of “contamination”: not only the students from Zone 1 arrive at the Virgilio but also from more peripheral neighborhoods. This strong sense of belonging, of experimentation unites them.
Danilo Bubani’s docu-film has one affectionate and curious look on the Virgilio high school in Rome, like its protagonists. He does not judge, he says. Certainly, artists who are very popular on the trap scene have emerged from the turmoil of that school. Like those of the 126 crew, which takes its name from the number of steps on a staircase in Trastevere. A collective started by student bands, in a special school.
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