Tell us about your artistic path.
I am a self-taught filmmaker. I started doing small video jobs with friends in 2007, but I made my first short film Ventilatore when I was thirty-three, after several unsuccessful attempts.
I worked for several years as a television operator and during that time I was filming all kind of things. I was harbouring a sense of bitterness and disgust, but at the same time I discovered an interestingly grotesque side of existence. I was lucky because I was able to look at things and gather information under unusual circumstances. My goal is to conjure up that condition with the films I make.
Let’s talk about your work in competition at Laceno d’Oro: how did you start? Where did you find the spark?
Sbadigli, as for the first two chapters of Ventilatore e Pistacchi trilogy, stems from the poems by Attilio Lolini. In this case, it is an apathetic poem, which describes a lazy sun, who struggles to rise, while someone yawns repeatedly. As far as I’m concerned, ideas always come from something on paper, like a receipt, or an old magazine. I started working on this project after I found an old postcard on eBay depicting a snowman melting in the sun. That image of condemnation was the key to moving forward.
Cinema and festivals are finally coming back to theatres. Do you think that, after the last two years, cinema – from production to distribution and access – has inexorably changed?
Cinema was already changing before these last two years. The Covid has been a big limitation, both for production and distribution. And although the artistic limitation is often good, in this case it has only produced a great deal of bad films. I made one myself, too.
The only theatre my small town ever had closed in the early nineties, shortly after a horrible multiplex with pizzerias and shops opened. I like going to the movies, but since then I’ve been preferring DVDs. It seems to me that human beings only get worse when confronted with the new. But it’s not just about cinema, it’s an overall ugliness of the world.
