The Champlas Carnival at the Sestriere Film Festival

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The Champlas Carnival contains a large part of our history and the Franco-Provençal tradition to which this territory belonged. Our people had great consideration for school and culture and since before the 13th century these territories were literate. The men, who left their families in winter to look for work in France, often offered themselves as tutors in bourgeois families beyond the Alps. They showed their knowledge at village fairs, making themselves recognized by the feathers on the hat they wore: a goose feather communicated that they could teach reading and writing in French, two feathers that also knew mathematics, three indicated a great teacher who also knew Latin.

In 1343 the Republic of the Escartons (Escarton d’Oulx, Pragelato, Casteldelfino, Queyras and Briançon) was born. The capital was based in the city of Briançon and the local populations were free bourgeois. What does it mean? It means that on the basis of their landed properties (called fires) they paid taxes, thus freeing themselves from many other taxes.

Carnival roles, even female ones, were played by males. In particular, by conscripts, boys who had passed the military examination. In our tradition, precisely because the mountain environment was difficult to live in, the female figure was highly valued and in the roles of the Carnival the figure of the matriarch is accompanied by two husbands. The Double, for example, is a woman who carries her husband on her shoulders. In addition, there is the ritual of the bonfire where the “Old Woman” sacrifices herself to allow nature to awaken.

The Champlas Carnival is a propitiatory rite for a favorable agricultural year. It is an invitation to respect nature and its cycles. If it were always winter, the earth would not bear fruit and without rye no bread…

The Champlas Carnival can make us reflect on the great work that our farmers have done in the area with a great sense of community. Just look at the piles of stones you come across while walking: one by one they have been collected and stacked year after year, to snatch an extra corner of land to cultivate.