Tormento, the gay music video of Pop Star Maximo De Marco has now become a Cult in the GLBTQ World!
Produced by Sony Music Italia, it was censored in 2001 in Italy and reappeared online, after 20 years of blackout, in 2021! He was withdrawn from the record market and from all Italian music TVs, following a parliamentary question, initiated by some far-right homophobic politicians! In 2002, in protest the artist Maximo De Marco decided to publicly burn the original master of the video in the square, under the statue of Giordano Bruno, in Campo dei Fiori!
The video, a cinematic masterpiece, cost € 100,000.00! It was shot on film, inside the very famous church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin in Rome (Chiesa Bocca della Verita ‘), where no one had ever managed to shoot until then!
This is the latest restored and remastered version of the video clip, in stereo, which almost entirely retains all parts of the original video, do not get destroyed!
In the music video, Maximo De Marco plays a priest who becomes infatuated with a beautiful boy, who goes every day to confess to him … hence the dreamlike dream of uniting in marriage with this boy inside the church, in the presence of a bishop, celebrating the religious function, with the exchange of rings! In the video appear images, created by the imagination of the priest in love, which arouse spiritual torment in him, statues of Saints and Madonnas bleeding and the Crucifix with Jesus to which the priest addresses, to soothe his labor and inner battle , which is devouring him …
In the video, some “tableau vivants” represented had transsexual actors and models as protagonists, such as Michelangelo’s representation of Pietà! This is to affirm the equality of all people before God, regardless of their sexual nature!
Overall, the video was very strong and shocking for the Italy of those times … how strong and shocking it is still today!
The presentation of the work was made at the Warner Bros cinema in Piazza della Repubblica in Rome, where all the previews of the great American film productions were presented, at the presentation of the entire international press! It was a scandal that swept across the whole nation and the video became famous all over the world in a few days! Even the singer Maximo De Marco was escorted by 10 bodyguards, in an armored car, so as not to risk being lynched, by the crowd that had attended the screening! We cry out to blasphemy! The loss of moral decency … and all sorts of unbecoming accusations … so much so that the artist was even contractually killed by his record company and the video and song permanently blacked out and removed everywhere throughout Italy!
Maximo De Marco was called by the gay press all over the world, as the new Gay Music World Icon, on a par with famous artists such as: Madonna, Freddy Mercury, Elton John, George Michael … finally Italy also had its Icon Gay Musical!
After the censorship, Maximo De Marco made only 3 major concerts, one in Italy in the Gay Village of Rome, as the closing concert of the season, with over 20,000 admissions! An international one in Greece in Athens, where nearly 50,000 people flocked to see him! And the last one in Spain in Ibiza on the occasion of Gay Pride, in front of a huge audience of about 100,000 people!
In 2021, after 20 years, finally, the video receives a prestigious award: the “Gay Icon Music Award 2021“, as the best gay-themed music video in history! Award conferred by the European Gay Network of Barcelona.
