My main focus was to start from those myths to tell a story that could investigate deeper into human kind and what scares the audience in a more visceral way. It looks like a brilliant writer wrote them to be one day used…to write a script based on them. “When I discovered the legends and the actual history of Poveglia,” he said, “I was very surprised because they seemed like the perfect fit for a work of fiction. He decided to take the folklore and urban legends of the island of his homeland and build a story of exploration, both of history and of the self. Several years ago, Mengotti decided to act on the film that had been playing itself over and over again in his mind. “I loved to spend my time there and explore the island, sometimes even by myself! I was always getting lost and having to find my way back.” What had it been like to see the plague ships discharging their human cargo? Who wandered the now vine-choked halls that so frightened the people of Venice? Despite the popular opinion in the US, and the rest of the world, that no Italian would set foot on Poveglia, Mengotti wandered the ruins of Poveglia’s small hospital that served as a plague quarantine with his parents, and later by himself. Urban legend has it that the doctor threw himself off of the bell tower.Īs a child and a young man, Mengotti allowed these legends, and the sweeping vista visible from his home, to fire his imagination. He began lobotomizing and torturing the patients that came into his care, adding to the blood spilled on the island. There, it is said that the dark energy and spirits of the damned drove the doctor who worked there insane. In the early twentieth century, some of Poveglia’s old hospital structures, periodically used throughout the centuries, were converted into a hospital for the mentally ill. The second tale is that of the doctor at the sanitarium. If the urban legend is to be believed, there were over 160,000 people buried or burned in plague pits (mass graves) on Povegelia.
Unfortunately, the Plague killed so quickly that victims who were supposedly shipped out never returned. According to popular urban legend in Venice, plague doctors would take shiploads of plague victims out to the island to keep them away from the populace. It had formerly been an abbey or convent, and so it was equipped with a church and outbuildings to serve as a quarantine. Poveglia is situated right in the Venetian lagoon. The first of course is the island’s posting as a plague quarantine. Mengotti explained to me, in an exclusive interview with the director, that there are two persistent folktales that pertain to Poveglia’s past and its dubious use in the Middle Ages. Though small and unimposing by day, Poveliga is shrouded deep in dark mystery and legend. Some of them, like the “Octogan”, date back to the Middle Ages, when Poveglia was a small port of call for ships bearing confirmed cases of the bubonic plague. It stands tall among the many other buildings and out buildings still extant. He spent his childhood days gazing at the white-washed bell tower, which at one point had been attached to a monastery. Mengotti grew up on the large island neighboring Poveglia. The Director Director Emanuele Mengotti and Cinematographer Edoardo Emanuele on the set of The Plague Doctor. His film, The Plague Doctor, is at once an exploration of the self and a tribute to one of the world’s most famous haunted locations, the Venetian island of Poveglia. The film maker may not ever replace the greatest of our local tavern heralds, but like any story teller, the film maker has a duty to tell the stories that drive them.įor director Emanuele Mengotti, the story he is preparing to tell the world has driven him since childhood. Though we’ve not lost any of our academic appreciation for the hearthside story or campsite tall tale, it cannot be denied that we as a species have moved into the art of mass producing our spoken heritage.