Helen Mirren speaks out on love for Salento and need to protect environment

Dame Helen Mirren, special guest at the "Lights in the Woods" event. Photo: Screenshot from video

 LECCE – Dame Helen Mirren, British actress and Oscar winner, was a special guest at the “Lights in the Woods- a night of cinema, arts, nature” event and testified of an urgency to protect nature amidst the arrival of the xylella plant disease that wreaked havoc on the olive trees in the region. 

 In the gardens of Palazzo Baronale Serafini-Sauli in Tiggiano on Aug. 3, the Cinema del Reale association, OfficinaVisioni and Big Sur organised “Lights in the Woods,” an event dedicated to the protection of the landscape.

 Helen Mirren, a guest speaker at the event, said, “We are so lucky to be here in Tiggiano where the local administration and organisations such as Cinema del Reale really fight to defend the environment.”

 Mirren arrived in Salento 16 years ago and could “straight away observe Salento’s growing attention towards the environment.”

 Her contribution to the event this year focused on celebrating man’s relationship with nature, animals and plants and there were a series of readings, projections, performances, installations, and music on this theme throughout the evening. She intertwined the verses of Vittorio Bodini with Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream, accompanied by a musical performance from Rachele Andrioli and Coro a Coro. 

 She then explained her passion for Salento and its extraordinary landscapes, as well as the kindness and generosity of the population and mourned the devastation caused by the plant disease Xyella fastidiosa that has wiped out millions of olive trees across the region and in Southern Europe. 

 “The arrival of xyella was a terrible tragedy, to which I have been witness. We are working to save the trees and replant them.” 

 A committed campaigner for Salento’s environment, two years ago, Mirren narrated a documentary on YouTube, warning of the plant disease and its effects. 

 al

 

 © COPYRIGHT ITALIAN INSIDER
UNAUTHORISED REPRODUCTION FORBIDDEN