Maurizio Borriello was born 1974 in Naples, Italy. He is a boatbuilder, filmmaker, and independent researcher in cultural anthropology.
After the Tsunami he worked as volunteer rebuilding fishing boats destroyed by the seaquake. Since then, his interest shifted to the study of coastal communities, boatbuilding technology, and transmission of knowledge. His research interests focus on understanding maritime cultures of the Indian Ocean from ethnographic and archaeological perspectives.
Faber Navalis is Latin for boat builder, words in an ancient language for describing an ancient profession. This might seem to be a film just about the restoration of a wooden ship, but the actual subject of this documentary is the state of mind of its shipwright: an Italian researcher in maritime ethnography who decided to learn boat building skills…