Synopsis: From a family of doctors and artists, welcomed by the students of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa when he started writing ‘The Leopard’, surgeon and anthropologist Umberto Eco defined Antonio Pasqualino as "the man of the puppets". His love for the Sicilian Puppet Theatre matured in Palermo before the war and bloomed into the dedication of a great scholar, collector and promoter of the preservation of popular heritage.

The narrative of the dedication of a whole life meshes with the description of a popular tradition that has changed but still stuns his new public.

In Sicily, since the middle of the 19th century, the genius of the great puppeteers has won great acclaim from the public. Pasqualino (1931-1995) investigated this extraordinary encounter between epic-chivalrous literature and folklore. With the help of his Danish wife Janne Vibaek, he battled for the survival of the Sicilian Puppet Theatre, which was plunged into crisis with the arrival of the television at the end of the '50s, and founded the Museo Internazionale delle Marionette.

To narrate the Sicilian Puppet Theatre and the adventure of Antonio Pasqualino, we used the testimonies of family, friends, collaborators and puppeteers, a mostly unreleased iconographic documentation, parts of plays and backstage of the Sicilian Puppet Theatre.

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