PLAYGROUND ADDICTION PLAYGROUND ADDICTION

One of the historical playgrounds in the city of Milan (Italy) is the one of Parco Sempione. Here, during the breaks from the basketball season, there are always been players from the major leagues challenge each other to the last basket, until the arrival of foreigners.

In the last twenty years the migratory flows in Italy have brought many basketball players from all over the world to the city, each eager to assert themselves.

Guys from all over Africa, China, South America, United States, Canada, during weekend bet their share of popularity.

On the playground, you fight to win, but you also want to show others who is the best.

The affirmation of the self here is very important. Street basketball is gaining more and more popularity in town and the playgrounds are being built everywhere.

But the street basketball court is much more than a place where a sport is practiced.

It is a place where the themes of integration and mutual knowledge are developed. A place where a new concept of community is created. Where different communities learn to know each other.

From April to October (and even beyond) on the fields scattered in every neighbourhood, the challenges of three against three go on for hours, even until late at night. Students and fifty-year-olds alternate on the cement playground, the integration has already taken place here. The playgrounds host diverse humanity, which in this continuous giving and receiving of the ball carries out an experience of reciprocity and trust towards a possible multicultural coexistence.


A film by

Carlo Furgeri Gilbert, Marzio Mirabella, Niccolò Rastrelli