Days of Light 3rd edition 2017 organised by Il Circolo, associazione culturale with the support of Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia Comune di Spilimbergo – Città del Mosaico Fondazione Friuli Rai Cinema partners Comune di Sequals Circolo Culturale Lumière La Cineteca del Friuli FVG Film Commission Istituto Superiore Il Tagliamento Istituto Musicale Guido Alberto Fano Unione Artigiani Pordenone Confartigianato Ordine dei Giornalisti del Friuli Venezia Giulia Filarmonica dell'Istituto Alberto Fano Centro Studi Pier Paolo Pasolini EnoPordenone Casula Vini del Friuli Vicentini Orgnani Vini di Natura Tenuta Fernanda Cappello
IMAGO- Federazione Europea degli Autori della Fotografia AIC – Associazione Italiana Autori della Fotografia Cinematografica Istituto Luce Cinecittà - Rivista 8 ½ Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia Roma Centro Cinema Città di Cesena Università di Lubiana with the contribution of GraphiStudio Friul Mosaic Cata - Artigianato FVG Sina Auto Enoteca La Torre art direction Gloria De Antoni and Donato Guerra organisation ElenaTommaselli Silvia Scanu press office Volpe & Sain technical management Claudio Tolomio opening session Nora Hoppe, Tariq Marzbaan PacharaTanjariyanon, Eakachai Jaicumma prize creator Friul Mosaic interpreter: Marta De Rosa web developper Espressione Web catalogue administrator Angela Gorini
Days of light in Spilimbergo, a city for cinematography Impressions from a festival that honours directors of photography in the Italian film industry
As Federico Fellini used to say, a movie is written with the light, and a movie’s photography can be defined as “the direction of the light”. Three years ago in Friuli Venezia Giulia, a festival was created to celebrate the role of cinematographers and to further develop the Spilimbergo area, already rich in cultural events. The city, which gave birth to an innovative photography school inspired from neorealism, hosted the third edition of the “Days of Light” festival from the 10th to the 18th of June 2017. This was achieved thanks to the Friuli Venezia Giulia autonomous region, the Fondazione Friuli, the Comune di Spilimbergo and the Confartigianato Imprese di Pordenone, with the cooperation of Istituto Luce and the magazine 8 ½, as well as the contribution of Rai Cinema. Among the novelties this year: the exhibition Parata di stelle by the great artist Pino Settanni, a focus on Lorenza Mazzetti – legendary director of the Free English Cinema movement, and the presence of the eclectic Italian-Iranian filmmaker Babak Karimi (projectionist, editor and renowned actor), witness and star of two cultural traditions and two ways of understanding cinema. Thus, the cinema in Spilimbergo contributed to building bridges between different cultures during the summer solstice.
Art direction Gloria De Antoni and Donato Guerra
Competition Le giornate della luce (“Days of Light”) announces three photography awards assigned to the best cinematographer among films of the previous season. The voting body is made up of a technical jury, a jury composed of young students from cinema schools and the public itself.
Director of photography candidates
Maurizio Calvesi For the movie Il permesso - 48 ore fuori (Italia, 2017) directed by Claudio Amendola with Claudio Amendola and Luca Argentero.
Essential filmography Volevo i pantaloni directed by Maurizio Ponzi, 1990; La discesa di Aclà a Floristella directed by Aurelio Grimaldi, 1992; Quattro bravi ragazzi directed by Claudio Camarca,1993; La ribelle directed by Aurelio Grimaldi,1993; OcchioPinocchio directed by Francesco Nuti,1994; Le buttane directed by Aurelio Grimaldi,1994; Nerolio directed by Aurelio Grimaldi, 1996; Un inverno freddo freddo directed by Roberto Cimpanelli, 1996; Italiani directed by Maurizio Ponzi,1996; Giovani e belli directed by Dino Risi, 1996; I miei più cari amici directed by Alessandro Benvenuti, 1997; Fratelli coltelli directed by Maurizio Ponzi, 1997; Prima la musica, poi le parole directed by Fulvio Wetzl, 1998; L'ultimo capodanno directed by Marco Risi, 1998; L'odore della notte directed by Claudio Caligari, 1998; Una notte per decidere (Up at the Villa) directed by Philip Haas (2000); Io amo Andrea directed by Francesco Nuti, 2000; Ginostra directed by Manuel Pradal, 2002; Prendimi l'anima directed by Roberto Faenza, 2002; Segui le ombre directed by Lucio Gaudino, 2004; Sotto falso nome directed by Roberto Andò, 2004; E ridendo l'uccise directed by Florestano Vancini, 2005; Sexum Superando - Isabella Morra directed by Marta Bifano, 2005; I giorni dell'abbandono directed by Roberto Faenza 2005; Viaggio segreto directed by Roberto Andò, 2006; Valzer directed by Salvatore Maira, 2007; I Vicerè directed by Roberto Faenza, 2007; SMS - Sotto mentite spoglie directed by Vincenzo Salemme, 2007; Io, l'altro directed by Mohsen Melliti, 2007; SoloMetro directed by Marco Cucurnia, 2007; Il caso dell'infedele Klara directed by Roberto Faenza, 2009; Mine vaganti directed by Ferzan Özpetek, 2010; Tutto l'amore del mondo directed by Riccardo Grandi, 2010; Un giorno questo dolore ti sarà utile directed by Roberto Faenza, 2011; Magnifica presenza directed by Ferzan Özpetek, 2012; Ciliegine directed by Laura Morante, 2012; Viva la libertà directed by Roberto Andò, 2013; Amiche da morire directed by Giorgia Farina, 2013; La prima volta (di mia figlia) directed by Riccardo Rossi, 2015; Ho ucciso Napoleone directed by Giorgia Farina, 2015; Non essere cattivo directed by Claudio Caligari, 2015; Le confessioni directed by Roberto Andò, 2016; Il permesso – 48 ore fuori directed by Claudio Amendola, 2017.
Michele D’Attanasio For the film Veloce come il vento (Italia, 2016) directed by Matteo Rovere with Stefano Accorsi and Matilda De Angelis.
Essential filmography La Tempęta directed by Marcello Vai, 2005; Icario 2012 directed by Alex Bottalico, 2006; ... e se domani directed by Giovanni La Parola, 2006; Ogni giorno directed by Francesco Felli, 2008; Fuori gioco directed by Francesco Felli, 2008; Pinucco Lovero. Sogno di una morte di mezza estate directed by Pippo Mezzapesa, 2008; Una notte blu cobalto directed by Daniele Gangemi, 2009; Good Morning Aman directed by Claudio Noce, 2009; Cinque directed by Francesco Maria Dominedō, 2011; Il paese delle spose infelici directed by Pippo Mezzapesa, 2011; Nina directed by Elisa Fuksas, 2011; L'ultimo giro di Valzer directed by Francesco Felli, 2012; Il signor nessuno directed by Francesco Felli, 2012; Tiger Boy directed by Gabriele Mainetti, 2012; L'ultimo pastore directed by Marco Bonfanti, 2013; Wolf directed by Claudio Giovannesi, 2013; Pinuccio Lovero Yes I Can directed by Pippo Mezzapesa, 2014; La foresta di ghiaccio directed by Claudio Noce, 2014; In grazia di Dio directed by Edoardo Winspeare, 2014; Gomorra - La serie directed by Claudio Cupellini, 2014; Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot directed by Gabriele Mainetti, 2015; Veloce come il vento directed by Matteo Rovere, 2016; See You in Texas directed by Vito Palmieri, 2016; Claustrophonia directed by Roberto Zazzara, 2016; Rocco Schiavone directed by Michele Soavi, 2016; Sirene directed by Davide Marengo, 2017; Moglie e Marito directed by Simone Godano, 2017.
Ferran Paredes Rubio For the movie Indivisibili (Italia, 2016) directed by Edoardo De Angelis with Angela Fontana, Marianna Fontana, Massimiliano Rossi and Antonia Truppo.
Essential filmography Sergio Leone: il mio modo di vedere le cose directed by Giulio Reale, 2005; L’isola in me, in viaggio con Vincenzo Consolo directed by Ludovica Tortora de Falco, 2007; L’ora d’amore directed by Andrea Appetito e Christian Carmosino, 2008; Soltanto un nome nei titoli di testa – Ugo Pirro directed by Daniele Di Biasio, 2008; Fisico da spiaggia directed by Edoardo De Angelis, 2008; Fratelli d’Italia directed by Claudio Giovannesi, 2010; Febbre da fieno directed by Laura Luchetti, 2011; Mozzarella stories directed by Edoardo De Angelis, 2011; Il turno di notte lo fanno le stelle directed by Edoardo Ponti, 2012; I più grandi di tutti directed by Carlo Virzì, 2012; Index zero di Lorenzo Sportiello, 2013; Zoran, il mio nipote scemo di Matteo Oleotto, 2013; Perez directed by Edoardo De Angelis, 2014; Bolgia totale directed by Matteo Scifoni, 2014; Monitor directed by Alessio Lauria, 2015; Indivisibili directed by Edoardo De Angelis, 2016; The start up directed by Alessandro D’Alatri, 2016; L’ora legale directed by Ficarra e Picone, 2017.
Technical jury
Piero Colussi chairman. He is a psychologist at the Mental Illness Department of Pordenone since 1978. Cultural operator for the love of it, he contributed to the creation of the association Cinemazero at the end of the seventies, of which he was president for a long time. He soon after created the festival Le Giornate del Cinema Muto. For ten years he was the regional councillor of Friuli Venezia Giulia. Recently he was appointed commissioner of the special agency (azienda speciale) Villa Manin di Passariano (Udine).
Oreste De Fornari is a journalist, a film critic and an Italian television writer. He has also written essays on Walt Disney, Truffaut, Sergio Leone, and a history of television drama (“Teleromanza”, 1990, reprinted and updated in 2011) and of Classici americani (2011). He supervised a book on Il sorpasso di Dino Risi and he participated for few years at the Commissione Consultiva per il Cinema at the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Beyond being a writer and a television presenter – almost always with Gloria De Antoni (“Magazine 3”, “Perdenti”, “La principessa sul pisello”, “Letti gemelli”, “La fonte meravigliosa”, “Romanzo popolare”) – he is also a film critic, an essay writer, as well as editor of the retrospective “Ingrandimenti” at the Genova Film Festival. In 2008 and 2009 he directed, with Gloria De Antoni, the following documentaries: Il perdente gentiluomo, Vita e arte di Antonio Cent, and La città di Angiolina, Trieste ai tempi di Senilità. From 2007 to 2010 they both presented the TV show “Parliamo italiano”, broadcasted by Rai International. In 2012 they filmed the documentary L’estate di Bruno Cortona - Castiglioncello nell’anno del Sorpasso.
Babak Karimi is an Iranian actor and editor, born in Prague in 1960, who lives in Italy. He comes from a family of artists, his father is the film director, actor and dramatist Nasrat Karimi and his mother is the actress, singer and theatre director Alam Danai. In 1971, at the age of ten, he made a first appearance in front of the camera, in the film considered to be the first neorealist Iranian film: Doroshkechi (known also as Il cocchiere). In the same year, he moved to Italy where he specialized in editing and shooting, making thereafter many documentaries and reportages in Italy and abroad. In 1991, thanks to the collaboration with the painter Mahshid Mussavi, he brings the first Iranian film distributed in Italy: Bashú – Il piccolo straniero directed by Bahram Beyzai. He edited the dialogues of several Italian movies directed by Abbas Kiarostami, Moshen Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi, Abolfazl Jalili, Ashgar Farhadi. From 2004 to 2011 he was consultant at the Biennale di Venezia for the Iranian cinema. He has been editing professor at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Roma and at the Accademia dell’immagine in Aquila. He played in well-known movies such as Gli Indesiderabili directed by Pasquale Scimeca, 2003; Tickets directed by Kiarostami, 2005; Caos Calmo directed by Antonello Grimaldi, 2007; Last Minute Marocco directed by Francesco Falaschi, 2007; Una Separazione directed by Farhadi, 2011; Il cliente directed by Asqar Farhadi, 2016.
Steve Della Casa graduated in History and film critics with Gianni Rondolino, he is a movie critic and an Italian art director. He is a specialist in popular movies. He was President of the Film Commission Piemonte from 2006 to 2013 and Art director at Roma Fictionfest. He is one of the founding members of the Torino Film Festival and was also its director from 1999 to 2002. Over the past twenty years, he wrote and presented “Hollywood Party” at Radio Tre, the cult cinema programme. He has presented La 25a ora – Il cinema espanso (La7 2004). He has collaborated with the following festivals: Venezia, Locarno, San Sebastián, Taormina; and he has written monographies on Monicelli, Mattoli, Freda, Bava and Garrel. He collaborates with the newspaper La Stampa. Since 2015, he has been television writer for the evening shows dedicated to the David di Donatello Awards.
Francesca Amitrano started working as a photo reporter in Genova in 2001 during the G8 summit and in Palestine during the second Intifada in 2002. Later she decided to move on to action photography. She graduated in photography at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia with Giuseppe Rotunno in 2007. She continued her training on the set of Gomorra and with Vilmos Zsigmond at the Budapest Cinematography Masterclass. She began her career in 2008 as a camera assistant in France, and thereafter she has been director of photography for the cinema and television. Among her films we can mention: La-bas educazione criminale directed by Guido Lombardi, awarded with the Leone del Futuro in Venezia, 2012; Il Gemello directed by Vincenzo Marra, 2012; Song’ e Napule directed by Manetti Bros, 2014; Pino Daniele - Il tempo resterà directed by Giorgio Verdelli, 2017. For the television she has shot two seasons of Il commissario Rex directed by Manetti Bros and one season of L’ispettore Coliandro.
Quarzo di Spilimbergo – Light Award The award has been assigned by the technical jury to Ferran Paredes Rubio for the film Indivisibili, directed by Edoardo De Angelis, with the following justifications:
“In the film “Indivisibili”, the story sounds like a clinical case study: two conjoined sisters waiting for the operation that should separate them. However, the social and psychological implications (willing for independence and the fear of it, the interests of the controlling father) make it universal, largely thanks to Ferran Paredes Rubio’s photography and his way of shooting Naples’s sky and sea, making it all realistic and magic.”
Quarzo dei Giovani - FVG Film Commission Award assigned by the jury composed of young students from cinema schools.
The jury was presided by the actress Paola Pitagora and consisted of the students from the cinema school ‘Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia’ in Roma, the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the ZeLIG Film School in Bolzano and the Civica Scuola di Cinema Luchino Visconti in Milano. They have elected Ferran Paredes Rubio as best director of photography for Indivisibili, directed by Edoardo De Angelis.
Quarzo del Pubblico – Audience Award Audience awards The audience has voted in Michele D’Attanasio for the best film photography in Veloce come il vento, directed by Matteo Rovere.
At the award ceremony the actress Lucrezia Lante della Rovere was there as patroness of the 2017 edition, along with the film critic Oreste De Fornari and the actress Paola Pitagora.
Film and talks
Film in competition
Il permesso - 48 ore fuori (Noir, Drama, Thriller, 91 min. Italy, 2017) Directed by Claudio Amendola, with Claudio Amendola and Luca Argentero; Photography by Maurizio Calvesi. Cinema Castello
A work half way between noir and social analysis.
Claudio Amendola, in his second movie as a director, is a puppet master of three men and a woman of different ages and coming from different social classes, who need to decide how to use a short window of freedom before it closes. A 48 hours permit out of Civitavecchia prison was given to Luigi, Donato, Angelo and Rossana. Imprisoned for various reasons, they need to pay their debt to society. Now that they are out, they have to decide how to spend the short time at their disposal. Revenge, atonement, redemption, love. Once free, each of them needs to deal with the world which has changed while they were in jail.
Talk with Maurizio Calvesi
An image to every story “The film Il permesso – 48 ore fuori was thought in four episodes, three autonomous ones and one that interacts with one of the others. The four stories have in common the 48 hours freedom of the protagonists. In this period of time, they need to face issues they had left unresolved before prison. Each story has its worth. In each one, different things happen in different places and with different ways of dealing with the image. I was coming from the experience with the film directed by Caligari, Non essere cattivo, when the director – Claudio Amendola – confided in me that he wanted to tell the story of suburban boys with that truth, that realism. The whole thing was about shooting in bare and harsh tones, but at the same time treating the characters with sympathy, in the framing and also with the light. One of the stories concerned the actor Luca Argentero; in the movie he is a former boxer of whom we don’t know the past and who decides to look for the person who caused the disappearance of his girlfriend. The context is the underworld, unreliable people who blackmail him and force him to set up an illicit boxing match. At this occasion, we shot the hardest, most exasperated, very technical scenes: a genre photography, inspired by Snatch, the film about underground boxing starring Brad Pitt. In another story, Claudio Amendola is interpreting an old man who thinks that once out of jail he can put his family back together, but who encounters a situation totally different from what he expected. In this case, it was about rendering with photography that atmosphere and that feeling, made with cold lights, almost freezing, and to do so I drew inspiration from the 70s French cinema, from the film of Dassin and Melville. Then there is the story of a girl from a bourgeois background which takes place in the suburbs. The challenge was to alternate the realistic light of the proletarian suburb with the coyness of the well-off world.”
The movie that we have in mind “This film in particular allowed me to draw inspiration from my referential cinema, to movies that I have loved all these years. When I start working on a film, suggestions already arrive during the reading of the screenplay. Then I propose my point of view to the director who evaluates the potential of my imaginary for the project. Il permesso – 48 ore fuori proved very demanding to me and also to Claudio Amendola, who was acting on the set as well, but I must say that working on three different cinematographic atmospheres in the same film was really amusing too!”
Indivisibili (Drama, 100 min. Italy, 2016) Directed by Edoardo De Angelis, with Angela Fontana, Marianna Fontana, Massimiliano Rossi and Antonia Truppo; Photography by Ferran Paredes Rubio. The film has been awarded six David di Donatello 2017. Cinema Castello
An original story of sisterly love which offers the opportunity to depict an area and a people who try with difficulty to separate their image from the criminal organisation.
Viola and Dasy are two conjoined sisters who sing during weddings and parties and, thanks to their exhibitions, ensure the living of all the family. Their dream is to be normal: an ice cream, travel, dance, drink wine without fearing that the other get drunk, make love. Being joined together ‘forever’, for Viola and Dasy, had been said to be an unavoidable condition. But that wasn’t true and when they realise that a surgical intervention is possible, their future appears not only unforeseen but also until that moment unconceivable.
Talk with Ferran Paredes Rubio
The preparation
“We had an important preparation before we started shooting, and in the process we realised that we needed to give more space and freedom of movement to our two leading characters and to the rest of the cast. With this decision, some technical difficulties appeared to me. We wanted sets free from technical obstacles, to use the camera more freely. Most of the time, it was long takes of almost 360°. It was complex of course, but we were all so convinced to give space to the actors’ spontaneous reactions, that we have put to use the problem to tell their stories. We needed to find solutions that allow to shoot like that and to help create an atmosphere to guide and “cuddle” our indivisibles on their journey.
The set
“The experience of shooting Indivisibili has been extraordinary for many reasons. All the various departments – the production, the cinematography, the make-up, scenography, costumes…all of us were enchanted by the story and the energy of Edoardo and of the Fontana twin sisters, who brought Viola and Daisy to life in the movie. Indivisibili is the third film that I shoot with Edoardo De Angelis, thus our understanding is by now really strong. A glance is enough to understand if the scene is working or if and how we need to modify it to make it more effective. For the camera to always be free and stable, we used a Mōvi, a sort of stabilizing module, that could move with agility. In this way, the actors were free to move around without any programmed position.”
The story time
“When the sun was high, we were shooting interior scenes (interior day/interior night). Inside, to frame everywhere, if we need to light up we use diegetic light, from the top, out of the frame or from the windows, creating a natural effect. We didn’t want to ‘judge’ our characters with a contrasted photography and hard lights. Using daily hours without the direct sun or cloudy days, we have developed an imaginary of suspension, faint, delicate and that includes this story of growth. In exterior, we usually exploited dusk, after the sunset and at dawn, to give the scenes the smoothness and soft colours that we were looking for. Then, at the end of the movie, there is a marked change of style. There is an abrupt leap in the story, and from there on the atmosphere becomes darker and darker, the contrast between light and dark rises until the last sequences.”
Blessed places
“The place where we shot was of precious help in the quest for an image and the memory of a place that, not so long ago, was a dream come true. We find ourselves influenced by the type of atmosphere that arises sometimes in Castel Volturno, with its colours eaten by years of salty air, its buildings markedly deteriorated that nevertheless maintain a sort of dignity. Atmospheres feel almost magical and then… Edoardo has the set blessed! On the first shooting day came a priest, a friend of him, to eliminate all bad omen or curse!”
Veloce come il vento (Drama, 119 min. Italy, 2016) Directed by Matteo Rovere, with Stefano Accorsi and Matilda De Angelis; photography by Michele D’Attanasio. Cinema Castello
The film has been awarded six David di Donatello 2017, including the best director of photography. With intelligence, sensitivity and taste, Rovere goes at breakneck speed in a layout of dangerous turns, holding firmly the steering wheel.
Giulia De Martino lives in a farmhouse in the Emilia-Romagna countryside with her little brother Nico. Her mother has left the house (more than once), and her older brother Loris, a rally legend, has become a drug addict parked in a caravan. When even her father abandons her, Giulia finds herself alone to manage an imminent eviction, the confused little brother and the older one greedy for the father’s inheritance. But the true legacy of the De Martino family is the gasoline that runs with blood in their veins and the family talent, stubborn and angry, for the four-wheels.
Talk with Michele D'Attanasio Preparation of the race-track
“We wanted to make a movie with a nice look, with a realistic and at the same time refined cinematography. The first thing that I did was to watch the Gran Turismo championship in the circuit of Imola, Monza, Mugello, that same circuits we are used in Formula 1. In the film, I had to emphasise the races, because they are the leading theme of the movie, and the relationships among the various characters, who live for the races. We needed to give this world an aesthetical and poetical strength. I have studied the type of shooting to perform together with the director Matteo Rovere. We started from the races, to treat everything else in a homogeneous way. We wanted it to be one: the life and the race.”
Colours, frames and drivers “I have worked a lot on colours. I prepared the calibration before rehearsal in the circuits. In the film some of the races were recreated, for example the final illegal race that was shot in the surroundings of Matera. Others were with real drivers. We often looked for framings with backlight images, or with lateral light that I didn’t want to be flat, I needed to emphasise and make the motor racing world magic.”
The camera in the engine
“A sure difficulty in Veloce come il vento was to find a way of shooting in the cabins. We needed a small camera that fit in the cars. We shot the movie with five or six cameras, but there were two basic ones. The main one was the Alexa, but many things were shot with the Black Magic, for it was small and thus allowed me to shoot in reduced spaces and at high-speed. Our idea was not to do a film with special effects, we were not interested and we didn’t have the means to do a colossal American movie. We wanted to shoot mostly live and we needed to find an efficient way to do it. We rebuilt a car to adapt it to our specific demands. With the help of a great craftsman we transformed a BMW, renamed Fast Car, cutting off and taking off some parts to put the camera in different places and with different angles. Usually, racing cars that are used to shoot are hyper technological vehicles with a high renting cost, too far from the project.”
Stefano Accorsi and the Peugeot 205 GT Turbo 16
“I have a particularly nice memory linked to the final scene, the one of the illegal race. The car that Stefano Accorsi was driving had won the World Rally Championship, in 1985 I think, a Peugeot 205 GT Turbo 16. In the cabin, there was myself with the camera and Stefano who is a good driver. We were passing through the lunar landscapes of the Matera countryside, without talking, because we were recording the audio with a small portable recorder for the sound engineer who couldn’t fit in the car. It was a twenty minutes trip where I stayed still to observe the actor driving and playing. It was really poetic and symbiotic with Stefano, the turbo of the car and the enchanting landscape.”
“I can’t forget another episode that occurred linked to the Peugeot 205 GT Turbo 16 that was a classic car worth 700.000 euro. Everyone was really careful when dealing with it. On the set, there was the French technician who has it in custody. It was the last framing that we were shooting following the Peugeot from our Fast Car with a Black Magic on its bonnet. At a certain point the Peugeot slowed down… I was turning my back because I was shooting the street behind with another camera, I turned and I saw an optical rolling down. With the impact, we did a hole on the plastic bodywork of a jewel car! By the way, that scene is in the film, when during the night of the illegal race there is a moment where everything goes black… that is the moment where the optical rolls and also the last shot with the Peugeot 205 GT Turbo 16.”
I Quarzi del 2016: Light Award a Paolo Carnera Piazza Duomo
Gloria De Antoni meets Paolo Carnera, the winner of the Quarzo di Spilimbergo - Light Award 2016 for Suburra directed by Stefano Sollima, and Vladan Radovic, the winner of the Quarzo dei Giovani - Film Commission FVG and of the Quarzo del Pubblico for La pazza gioia directed by Paolo Virzì.
The prize Quarzo di Spilimbergo – Light Award is assigned to Paolo Carnera by the technical jury composed of Pupi Avati (chairman), Ulderica Da Pozzo, Oreste De Fornari, Antonio Maraldi, Daniele Nannuzzi, Nicoletta Romeo, Debora Vrizzi and Luca Zingaretti with the following justifications:
“for the capacity to return an image of a city like Rome, in a vivid light and always…ready to get dark, as in the noir film tradition, to follow power games where no one could find salvation”.
Talks with Paolo Carnera
A dark and wet set
“The first difficulty related to the narrative challenge of Suburra, was to shoot the film almost constantly under the rain. Rain inevitably recreated by us and almost always during the night. As it is known, to film rain during the night, if you don’t illuminate it, you can’t see it. Since we wanted to tell a story about a world under the rain and at a wide angle, I had to illuminate every single centimetre of the set, with carefulness, with taste and I hope also with visual effectiveness. Especially every fragment of the sky, even if it’s black, to show a lot of water dumping on the roman suburb. And with this pale, dark, but enveloping image, tell a decaying world. The pouring rain falling constantly on Rome is the visual materialization of the moral putrefaction of the city.”
Crane and caravan
“We had different cranes on the night sets: one for the light and the water, often very tall for the huge headlamps that backlighted the rain. Underneath was another crane, with a big rolling head that spilled water on the set. We also had invented a sort of caravan: a tanker connected to the prop car with cameras, to provide the scene with the continuous (fake) rain on the windows and on the windscreen; so our prop cars were running across Rome.”
Roma, protagonist
“With Stefano Sollima we were trying to make a film that has powerful and painful images. The visual magnificence was essential to translate the emotion of the story. In his film, which follows traditional 70s genre cinema, action is necessary, it captures the viewer’s attention. However we especially need to tell Rome’s pain and its torn beauty. The real protagonist of Suburra is Rome, a dark Rome, a Rome that is a marvellous living body, crossed by criminal gangs, wolfs who bite themselves and bite the city.”
A common ambition
“We knew that cinema also has to be a show and therefore we needed to show off. At the same time we wanted to astonish, while following the mindset of the story, and aware that we had to tell the violent story of Suburra. In this narration, Stefano and I, have always worked intensely, together, trying to give the best of us in every situation. We were ambitious and the technical difficulties didn’t scare us but on the contrary stimulated us.”
Reality devours fiction
“I remember that we were shooting a complex scene, a dog devouring Anacleti, the gypsy, under a pouring flood. It was a difficult scene because we shot it live-action with a trained dog who was really biting a stunt double, the trainer (obviously protected). It was a scene we had prepared for weeks and we didn’t know if it had been working. It was late at night when we received the news, on the first newspapers’ editions, about the arrests for the investigation on Mafia Capitale. We were there, inside the fiction of reality and the reality reached and overtook us.”
8 ½ Meetings: youth in reverse shot By the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and the magazine 8 ½ Piazza Castello
Tutto quello che vuoi (Comedy, 106 min. Italy, 2017) Directed by Francesco Bruni with Giuliano Montaldo and Andrea Carpenzano; photography by Arnaldo Catinari.
One of the best Italian comedies of the season, which compares two generations: grandparents on the one side and the young persons in their twenties on the other, avoiding rhetoric and sentimentalism.
Alessandro is a twenty-two years old young man from Trastevere, ignorant and troubled. Giorgio is an eighty-five year old forgotten poet. They live close-by, but never met until Alessandro reluctantly takes on a job as a companion to that elegant man during his afternoon walk.
Talks with Arnaldo Catinari
Immagine e scrittura, un’unica narrazione “I’ve shot all movies directed by Francesco Bruni. We knew each other very well and we often looked for each other. Francesco comes from the written page, the screenplay, I come from the image. The film comes to birth from the meeting of these two cultures interacting. I believe that the director of photography has to become the director’s eye and he has to transform what is written into images. What I have been trying to do lately, not only with Francesco, is to make the best use of the natural light. By combining this latter to artificial light, we can dive characters in a formal naturalness. I never try to look for the effect with the light, but to find the way to make it effective in the narration, as it is in the written text. In the end, our work is hermetic, we want to arouse feelings by inducing interpretations that don’t arrive with words, and thus emotion is sometimes more direct and sometimes more moderated. With Francesco, in all movies we have done, we aspired for the visual narration to converge in the written one, until the one’s hand is confounded in the other’s. The movie has to prevail on everything and emerge in its entirety. When I am told that a film I’ve shot has a beautiful photography, I wonder about the meaning of this statement, because I always hope the photography to be an element that merges with the whole.”
The film location
“When I go scouting for a location, the first thing that I look at in an inside place is where the windows are located. It is fundamental that sources of exterior natural light be present, otherwise I study the possibility to put some headlamps instead of windows, recreating a visual and emotional environment that I think is in accordance with the story. The house of Giorgio, interpreted by Giuliano Montaldo in Tutto quello che vuoi, was a different house at first but, according to me, it did not have the right atmosphere and I said so to the set designer and to Francesco. After that location scout, passing by Gianicolo, I saw a curious house that I thought could be suitable and I showed it to Francesco. The set designer went there to talk with the house’s occupants. We shot there. It was a small house but perfectly in line with the character. Sometimes, things that seem like difficulties – there wasn’t room – become functional to shoot at best the life of the characters. In that house, we filmed the actors up close, using a handheld camera and by moving from one room to the other using the steadicam, with a lot of continuity and following the events of the story. We were trying to be consistent with the timing of the character played by Montaldo. He was losing his memory little by little and we were following that progressive fading. It was an honor for me to have Montaldo on set as an actor. I’ve shot two of his films I demoni di Sanpietroburgo and L’industriale, and I consider him one of the great Italian film directors.”
The necessary evolution
“I think that Tutto quello che vuoi is a very “real” film. During the shooting we often couldn’t perceive the difference between the actor and the character and I think this is the reason why some scenes are so captivating even for the audience. At that time Francesco was really good, for example he accepted that dialogs could be changed for other lines according to the reality of the moment. In the end, even the script is at the service of the film. This is the charm of our job: starting at the beginning of the working day with a final frame and arrive at the end seeing how it has evolved and how all which had been fixed before has transformed. We try to create with great freedom and to let ourselves be surprised by effective solutions, even if unexpected.”
The director of photography and its timing
“The work of the director of photography is changing a lot. If we don’t defend it we might lose the sense of it. However the greatest change was not digital, of which I am a supporter – by the way my first digital film was another film of Montaldo, L’industriale – but a change linked to the specificity of the role. Formerly, what was shot during the day, what we call “giornalieri”, was screened only by the film director and by the director of photography, and together they commented on the filming. It was undisputed that the discussion about the images was between the two. Now, already on the set, everyone can somehow see and evaluate the filming and, even if this participation has extended it can be a nice confrontation among all divisions of the crew. It is important not to forget the specificities linked to the profession that must be acknowledged.”
Focus - Lorenza Mazzetti
Lorenza Mazzetti Adopted as a child from the Einstein family, that would be killed by SS right before her eyes, she ran away to London in the early 50s to forget. She succeeded in entering the well-known Slade School of Fine Art by asking to be accepted: “Because I am a genius!” – she didn’t know what else to say. She stole a camera, played the film director and shot K, a film on the person she felt closest to, Kafka. She founded the Free Cinema and revolutionised the English cinema with Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson.
Il cielo cade (Drama - 97 min - Italy, 2000) Directed by Andrea and Antonio Frazzi, with Isabella Rossellini and Jeroen Krabb; photography by Franco Di Giacomo. Cinema Castello
The second world war in Italy seen through the eyes of two little sisters.
Toscana, summer 1944. Having lost both parents in a car accident, the two little sisters Penny and Baby move in with their relatives who live in a huge country house. Katchen, their mother’s sister, has married Wilhelm, a German intellectual and a music and art lover. They have a teenage daughter. For the two girls, a new life begins, but they have some difficulties to fit in.
Talks with Antonio Frazzi
Il cielo cade, the beginning
“It is all thanks to Suso Cecchi d’Amico that we joined the project Il cielo cade produced by Silvia d’Amico. Suso had seen our Rai movie on Don Milani and she liked how we made so many children act, playing the pupils of the Scuola di Barbiana. The protagonist in Il cielo cade is an eight years old girl and we wanted to narrate the film with her eyes. A happy and carefree look during the first half, a dark and desperate look when she is forced to stare at the horrors of war.”
Lorenza, the wounded innocence
“Lorenza is a good friend who has preserved her innocence even if wounded through all her life. This way to relate to others allowed her to survive to the terrible massacre of her family. Lorenza feels like a survivor and it’s with that burden, carried with apparent lightness, that she can love and make ‘the others’ love her, included us.”
The beauty of the light
“With Franco Di Giacomo, we have tried to glorify the light and colours of the Tuscan countryside in every frame of the film. We needed to make a sunny movie, open to the world and confident like the look of a little girl. And this sunny beauty had to be sustained even when the horror was going to devastate the character of the story. Isn’t that how our country has preserved its identity in spite of the wars and every sort of disaster?”
The secret of little actors
“The making of a movie is so special that it would be worth being told fully. However I want to reveal a secret to work with children. These little actors, capable of stealing the spotlight from their older colleagues, become extraordinary if they feel like they are part of a great game of which they are the protagonists. Yet a greater game when everyone plays, really everyone has to participate (all crew members included). So if the set becomes a huge playground for them, they will be able to channel such a flow of energy, spontaneity and truthfulness in the film as to force the adult actors to give the best of themselves to capture the attention of the audience anew.”
Perché sono un genio! (Documentary, 62 min. Italy, 2016) Directed by Steve Della Casa and Francesco Frisari, with Lorenza Mazzetti, Bernardo Bertolucci and Malcolm McDowell; Photography by Martina Cocco. Cinema Castello
Presented at the Mostra d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia 2016
An intimate portrait of the ‘genius’ Lorenza Mazzetti, of her fairy looks and her lightness infused with deepness. It is Lorenza herself who tells her story, while leading the viewer through her past places and in today’s life, with her twin sister Paola and her world made of meetings and memories, always with the freedom of childhood.
Who was and who is Lorenza Mazzetti
“To me, before shooting the film Perché sono un genio!, Lorenza Mazzetti was an artist of whom I was slowly discovering the works and thoughts. I knew her as one of the big names who had signed the manifesto of Free Cinema, but I have discovered that she was a writer too, then a painter, and that she was a very high level journalist with Pasolini, and that she has done puppet theatre as well… An overwhelming personality that today we would call multimedia. At the end of the film, I realised that she was able to do all that, and she has kept doing it in her long life, because of her charge of humanity, sympathy and lively intellect that I have met in very few people in my life. The title of the film, which comes from her famous exclamation, could only be that one.” Steve Della Casa
Son morto che ero bambino. Francesco Guccini va ad Auschwitz (Documentary, 67 min. Italy, 2016) Directed by Nene Grignaffini and Francesco Conversano; Photography by Roberto Cimatti. Istituto Superiore Il Tagliamento
A trip made of thoughts, words, memories, remembrance, questions, stories and reflections on why this matter still lives in the new millennium, and still repeats itself today in other forms in the Occidental world.
It is in 1966 that Francesco Guccini writes Auschwitz, the song of the child in the wind. Fifty years later, with the students of the junior high school Istituto Salvo d’Acquisto in Gaggio Montano and the bishop Matteo Zuppi, Guccini has experienced directly the horror of the death camp that he had described.
Talks with Francesco Conversano
A travel movie
“Son morto che ero bambino has been shot in a small lapse of time, two days of filming. It didn’t feel like a limit, it was the right way to do it, we needed immediacy. That story needed those direct times. For other films you need more time, a greater reflection, with long rhythms and modulated vocabulary. The first part of the film occurs in the train, from platform 21 in Milan you arrive in Auschwitz, there is a location unity which is the train wagon. In the second part, the locations are the awful Birkenau and Auschwitz camps.”
The film and the song
“The musical piece by Guccini that gives the title to the documentary has marked and formed at least three generations. Many among us knew about Auschwitz from listening to this song. The Bologna bishop himself, monsignor Zuppi, says so in the film. Even when you have read books, it is through this song that you can experience the emotional burden, just like the great American songs about important historical events that are able to tell a story and that have marked the life of many people. We went to Auschwitz fifty years after the song came out (in ’66, but it has been written in ’64).”
The first time
“It was a unique experience for me and the co-director Nene Grignaffini, which we had for the first time because of the film. We were with Francesco Guccini and his song, for him it was also the first time. All that we had imagined for decades now we saw, like we never could have seen it, with Francesco on the one hand, and the bishop and the school boys on the other. It was a very meaningful journey.”
Shooting
“With Roberto Cimatti we have shot many films, we know each other and there is a similarity of views, a great complicity. When I chose to work with him, Roberto immediately understands the type of images that I need for the story. We had just finished the work on Ritorno a Spoon River, about the places of the writer Edgar Lee Masters, and there is a sort of continuity in the choice of image of this new film. Photography, even if it is in colour, has no colours, the result is livid, crude. The editing is based on the continuity of glances that goes back to archive images that we don’t see, but that we can only imagine.”
Engraved in memory
“From the cinematographic point of view, there is an adherence to what we have already seen, images in our memory, nazi camps archive photos. We have seen so many images that everyone could think they have been everywhere, even in Birkenau and Auschwitz. Then, when you are in front of that open air cemetery, everything is so dark and silent that it is deeply oppressing. I could tell many of the events that happened in this two days journey but nothing is more engraved in my memory than the direct experience, nothing can be taken for granted. For this reason, every point of view on the holocaust is new, because it is personal. In this sense even our work, with the look of Guccini, the bishop and the kids, is an additional contribution that I hope could help with reflexion.”
Focus - Carlo Di Palma
Carlo Di Palma Carlo Di Palma (Rome, 1925 - 2004). Great director of photography, he has worked with the greatest Italian film directors. He worked in more than a hundred films, throughout which you can make a real journey through the Italian cinema history. His first experiences on the set, as assistant operator, were in Ossessione directed by Visconti, and Roma città aperta directed by Rossellini. Among the titles photographed by Carlo Di Palma we remember La lunga notte del ’43 directed by Florestano Vancini, Deserto rosso, Blow up, Identificazione di una donna directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Divorzio all’italiana directed by Pietro Germi, L’armata Brancaleone, La ragazza con la pistola directed by Mario Monicelli, L’assassino directed by Elio Petri, La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. In the 70s, Di Palma was also the director of three movies with Monica Vitti: Teresa la ladra, Qui comincia l’avventura and Mimì Bluette... fiore del mio giardino. His long partnership with Woody Allen, starting from the 80s, gave us twelve films such as Hannah e le sue sorelle, Radio Days, Settembre, Alice, Ombre e nebbia, Mariti e mogli, Misterioso omicidio a Manhattan, Harry a pezzi.
To remember the maestro Di Palma, during the Days of light, the critic Lorenzo Codelli got to talk with the director of photography Daniele Nannuzzi before the projection of the film Acqua e zucchero: Carlo Di Palma, i colori della vita, directed by Fariborz Kamkari, a movie dedicated to him.
Carlo Di Palma, Here starts the adventure
“Carlo Di Palma was born the same year as my father. (editor’s note Armando Nannuzzi, well-known director of photography and filmmaker). As all of their generation, they learnt very young on the field, they had an extraordinary self-taught culture, great intuition and talent. Even working with great directors, they did it with instinct. I had the possibility to work with Carlo Di Palma only once. I was assistant operator for the film Qui comincia l’avventura, with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale, directed by Carlo Di Palma. We had a nice sympathy, he even made me act in a small part. It was a scene where an unlikely Clark Gable arrived with two blondes in a car in front of a cinema. Carlo looked at me and told me: “Here, you are a young Clark Gable” – and he asked for the make-up, with the moustache… it was really funny. They still tease me to this day!” Daniele Nannuzzi
Acqua e zucchero: Carlo Di Palma, i colori della vita (Documentary, 90 min. Italy, 2017) directed by Fariborz Kamkari, with Carlo Di Palma, Woody Allen, Bernardo Bertolucci; photography by Fariborz Kamkari. Cinema Sociale – Gemona del Friuli
Presented at the 73a Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia, the film is a love letter to the cinema.
The documentary is not only the story of the artistic life of Carlo Di Palma, director of photography, artist- artisan, but it is a real small atlas of worldwide cinema, thanks to the more than a hundred films that he worked in. Anecdotes and comments of worldwide cinema protagonists such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Woody Allen, Wim Wenders, Gilles Jacob, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach that guide us in this fascinating journey.
“This is not a biographical film. To retrace and reconstruct Carlo Di Palma’s life and work was a way to remember and recall methods and values of Italian cinema “degli anni d’oro” (of the golden age) that has fascinated cinema workers from all over the world. It is also a life lesson: to live and work with passion, simplicity and precision. Carlo Di Palma, deeply rooted in Rome, has an international vision thanks to his strong bond with his origins. It is an art lesson which refuses compromises. It is the story of a long search for perfection, through language experimentation and innovation, both technical and artistic, always in search of the best way to tell a story. With rigor, without ever sacrificing the quality of the work. My first contact with Carlo Di Palma occurred when I was a first year cinema student. I had watched Blow up, which struck me so much that it has entered in my life forever. The cinematography struck me a lot and, without knowing Carlo Di Palma, I have written a thesis on that film. After many years, I’ve been asked to realize this new film. It was the opportunity for me to talk not only of Blow up and Michelangelo Antonioni’s films, but also of all those films that have built the history of cinema and impacted all directors in the world and made them fall in love. Across the more than a hundred films that Carlo Di Palma has shot and participated in, you can have a complete vision of neorealism, Italian comedy, Antonioni masterpieces and the best films of Woody Allen. During the five years of this project, I have better and better understood the values evocated by Carlo Di Palma during his interviews and how the example of his work is contemporary and necessary for the cinema, today probably more than ever.” Fariborz Kamkari
Daniele Nannuzzi: the AIC and the work of the cinematographer Talk with the president of Associazione Italiana Cinematografia
AIC and the copyright
“The AIC (Associazione Italiana Cinematografia) brings together all directors of photography, to act together on our profession, to exchange opinions and to confront the transformations of our work. In 1992, thanks to the AIC president at that time Luciano Tovoli, the Imago - Federazione Europea delle Associazioni degli Autori della Fotografia Cinematografica, comes to birth. It federates associations from 52 countries all over the world. One of the important issues that still remains unresolved, and for which we are still fighting, is to create a cinematography copyright. It has to be clear that this is neither a battle for vanity, neither a venial battle, but it has to do with the recognition of our work and motivations are strictly alike what is already occurring. Today when a film is restored or remastered, the film is treated by others who thus decide on the integrity of the image and often they do it without consulting the director of photography. This is because it remains, wrongly, considered that it is not necessary for who has worked on the cinematography of the film to validate the process. On the contrary, our work has to be preserved even in this phase, so that films stay intact throughout the years, such as we have created them.”
Who are we?
“Saying “direttore della fotografia” is not correct, but in Italy it is the term in use for linguistic reasons. In the USA the directors of photography used to be called cinematographers. In Italian that would have been the literal translation of “cinematografo”, etymologically meaning the one who writes movement with the light, and that would have been the right definition of our work. However in Italy at the time, they used this word to define the place where the projection took place: you use to go to the “cinematografo”. Thus, they found an alternative term and we used “direttore della fotografia” that was already in use in USA, because in the 30s the cinematographers wanted a copyright, they wanted to be recognised as authors, like the director. And the translation of “regista” in English is director, thus director of photography. I like to sign my work with the term “cinematografia” to date, still the more correct one to use. Even “fotografia”, which is often used is incorrect and should been associated with the work of the scene photographer. The term “autore della fotografia” (photography author), that we could use, has not been widely accepted and we continue to use “direttore della fotografia”.”
Film aim
“The director of photography chooses the assistants, the camera operators, the stagehands, the equipment. Years ago, these choices were observed by the production and by the crew. Over time the attitude has changed, there is a tendency not to respect the requested conditions, calling into question and justifying that it is possible to do the same thing with less. Actually the opposite is true, and whoever is responsible for the cinematographic department always demands for the good making of the film. I try to be cooperative, especially when I work with a novice who might need additional advices. In that case I also want to be the camera operator, so as to quickly propose visual solutions. The film director watches the monitor and can immediately tell me what he thinks.”
Babak Karimi: an italo-iranian in Hollywood Meeting with Oreste De Fornari Cinema Castello
Il cliente (Drama, 125 min. Iran/France, 2016) directed by Asghar Farhadi, with Babak Karimi, Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti Photography: Hayedeh Safiyari Oscar 2017 of the best foreign film
A situation for which theatrical action and everyday life end up to be symmetric.
Emad and Rana are a young couple of actors forced to leave their house in Teheran city centre because of restructuring works. A friend helps them find a new accommodation, without saying anything about the former tenant who will be the cause of an “accident” that will turn their life upside down.
Fish & Cat (Drama, 127 min. Iran, 2013) directed by Shahram Mokri, with Babak Karimi, Saeed Ebrahimi Far and Abed Abes; Photography by Mahmoud Kalari. The film has been awarded “Premio per il contenuto innovativo” at Mostra d’Arte Cinematografica in Venezia 2013.
A black tale, shot in only one shot, explains contemporary Iran through a brave and effective metaphor.
Some students go to the Caspian region to participate in a kites gathering during the winter solstice. Not far from their camping site, there is a small cabin occupied by three cooks who work in a nearby restaurant and look for meat to cook. There is no one in the surroundings except for the young students.
Talk with Babak Karimi Cinema between Iran and Italy
“Similarities between the Iranian and the Italian cinema are quite obvious, Iranian cinema is the offspring of Italian neorealism. Everything started there, the Iranian cinema has continued what had been started by Italian neorealism, which later became Italian comedy and a lot more. We can say that they are strongly connected.”
The actor and the shooting
“One of the sets where my work as an actor has been more related to the cinematography was that of the Iranian film Fish & Cat directed by Shahram Mokri. It received an award for its innovative content in 2013 in Venice. It is a film in one sequence shot, thus without cut, shot entirely in digital, with an audacious and risky play on time and space. Being a one sequence shot, shooting continuously for two hours and ten minutes, the actors participated directly to the success of the filming. A single mistake made by us would have ruined everything and forced everyone to start again. This was a most sensational situation where the filming was strictly linked to the expressive work of the actor. The success of very complex and unrepeatable scenes was linked to the acting and the film was depending on and taking shape from the synergy without appeal.”
A narration by images in time
“I have been working for more than 13 years on a film about my father, Nosrat Karimi. I illustrate the Iranian Twentieth Century through his figure, the social and cultural evolution of the Country. In this work, almost automatically, you can see the visual and technological evolution that has accompanied all Iranians in those years. I have been collecting many interviews and there is lot of archive material. Obviously, from the image point of view it is very heterogeneous. Materials come from different sources, from different periods and were shot on supports and technologies of any type. The oldest images are 1920 black and white photos, all the way to contemporary filming in 4K. I include in the work any other type of support and image recorder that has been used in that lapse of time, from the photographic plates on glass until the mobile phone videos, via photo-cameras and various types of camera. Over the years working on this project, many operators came one after the other. I have done some filming too, thus even the recent material and the non- archive are the result of many views. We can say that it is a historical visual patchwork, beyond being my father’s story.”
Oreste, veiled and sharp irony
“I have known Oreste De Fornari for many years. I was an operator, then an editor, before discovering myself as an actor. He is a really cultured person, with a veiled and sharp sense of irony. With Gloria De Antoni they are one of the best television couples that I have ever watched. I was following all of their shows and I was astonished by their sense of humour, the topics covered and the energy. Now TV has lost these types of form and content, now the offer is often composed of low variety shows.”
Talk with Oreste De Fornari
Professional crossroads
“Babak Karimi has a novelistic life. His father was a well-known Iranian film director, he has travelled the world with him. He was born in Prague and grew up in Italy, and we can say that he is a real Italian, even more so a real Roman. We met in Rome in 1984, during a meeting organised by the Officina Film Club. He was filming. In 1990 we worked together for a television broadcast for Rai1, “Italia ore 6”. It was a reporting broadcast from all around Italy and I was in Genova with him, once more as an operator. Then he was a guest in “Pacem in Terris” that I presented with Gloria De Antoni. It was a sort of “Games Without Frontiers”, with various countries represented by immigrants in Italy from all around the world. Babak represented Iran and he was the one telling jokes! Afterwards our paths crossed while working for Rai International. Still, the greatest emotion was when I heard and recognised Babak’s voice at the cinema, in a film directed by Abbas Kiarostami, the most famous Iranian director. Indeed he did a walk on in the film, he was a dubbing actor as well. I found out that he was involved in bringing the new Iranian cinema in Italy, by accompanying films that would later have a huge success in Europe and around the world. Finally, in the last movies of the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi that have arrived in Italy, I find Babak again among the main actors. These movies were awarded the Oscar of the best foreign film, Una separazione in 2012 and Il cliente in 2017. Watching Babak on the silver screen in such beautiful films moved me and I remember that I told this with great pride to the persons sitting next to me at the cinema!”
Days of light with Babak Karimi
“In Spilimbergo we had a public talk. We talked about cinema in Iran and how it has come to birth again after the Islamic revolution in ‘79. It seems like a paradox, because it was difficult to make films following the dictates of religious morals, and at the beginning very few films crossed the national borders. According to Khomeyni’s directions they need to shoot realistic and edifying films, for example Gâv (La vacca) directed by Dâriyush Mehrju'i, the story of a peasant who travels with his friend, a cow. I have watched that movie in Venice in 1970 and it was awarded the Premio della Giuria Fipresci (editor’s note without the censoring authorisation, it was distributed only the year after). Now the panorama has changed, sometimes I am surprised by some films that I couldn’t believe would be permitted in Iran. However Babak explains very well that in Iran the high culture and the popular one magically meet, that the passion for cinema is huge and the Iranian society today is young and lively, a view which is different from the one we often have about that Country.”
Babak, a cinema man
“Babak who has been operator and editor, now has an actor’s career, but I see him as a director. I have known him for a long time, and even if our encounters are sporadic, I have always found a great humanity in him. I don’t know if it is for his look, the tone of his voice, the way he says things. Babak has a seemingly innocent attitude that makes him an Italian! Once he confessed to me that Teheran inhabitants were really similar to those of Naples. So no wonder that his smart and calm look which characterizes him is also the way he adapts to life, even if in this adaptation he adds his personal touch. That is, I would love to be like him in this!”
Cinema at North/Northeast From the Renon to the Trieste sea
Fräulein - Una fiaba d’inverno (Comedy, 93 min. Italy, 2016) Directed by Caterina Carone, with Christian De Sica and Lucia Mascino; photography by Melanie Brugger. Cinema Castello
A sensitive comedy that tells a contemporary and original fairy tale.
The greatest solar storm that mankind remembers falls on Earth, creating power surges and blackouts. An even deeper storm occurs in the mind of Regina, grumpy and lonely spinster, whom everybody calls Fräulein, when a mysterious tourist in his sixties, a lost and childish man, crosses the gate of her hotel, closed for years. The one night “clash” soon transforms into a stormy and astonishing cohabitation.
Talks with Caterina Carone
From documentary to fiction “Fräulein - Una fiaba d’inverno is my first fiction. I have attended a documentary cinema school, the Zelig in Bolzano; my first works were documentaries and the director of photography in Fräulein, Melanie Brugger, was my classmate. For both of us it was the first experience and we have worked in symbiosis, since we had studied together and we started our professional career on common bases. In documentary works, there is a great spirit of adaptation to reality and we kept this attitude of flexibility even in fiction.”
Screenplay and photography “Starting from the screenplay, we have imagined how we would have loved to frame the film, what type of cinematography we wanted and even the type of light changes that we needed at a certain point of the story. Fraulein is a movie based on personal growth and on transcending fear. We wanted the light to arrive gradually from the dark. We have used an Alexa camera that allows a non-dramatic transition from black to white. The film location is a real place, which has to appear imaginary, out of time, fairy. To do that we have worked on colours, we were looking for a realistic photography but not too much, something on the edge, useful for the story.”
Actors and relationships “It was my first time working with actors and it went fine. Directing a film, documentary or fiction, requires a deep work on relationships between people, behind and in front of the camera. There is always a particular relationship among director, actors, crew and production department. Everything grows and evolves according to the quality of the relationships built on the set. The bond that I formed with my protagonists is unforgettable. I was a beginner in fiction and it was so helpful directing such enthusiastic actors as Lucia Mascino and Christian De Sica. During the shooting, one day I woke up at 5am with great anxiety, I thought I was the only one awake. I looked over the balcony and down there was Christian. He was walking around the snowy square waiting for the shooting. We looked at each other, we were ready to start! Lucia prepared herself by using her character’s costumes for days and practising with the three-wheeler van – Regina’s means of transport in the film – on the Renon, the plateau near Bolzano where we shot. I think that in the cinema profession, reality and fiction mix up without norms and it is good that this occurs.”
L’ultima spiaggia (Documentary, 135 min. Italy, 2016) directed by Thanos Anastopoulos and Davide Del Degan; photography by Debora Vrizzi and Elias Adamis. Official selection Festival Cannes 2016. Cinema Benois Cecco - Codroipo
The portrait of a unique reality becomes the touchstone to address many contemporary problems.
A year spent on a popular Trieste beach, where a three meters wall still separates men and women. A reflexion on borders, identities, generations. A tragicomic on human nature.
Talks with Debora Vrizzi
A continuous observation
“The director Davide Del Degan and I have often collaborated in the past and he contacted me for the film L’ultima spiaggia. I focused my work mostly on the women part, because the wall separates men from women. It wasn’t easy to get into the intimacy of people, a great work on preparation and approach was needed before the filming. After having observed, the shooting lasted one whole year, even if I worked only during the summer. I wasn’t choosing a certain hour of the day to shoot, I was filming with every type of light. We already knew the bathers and we knew where to go, but as it happens in reality, things happen that you can’t foresee, that is why it was so important to be in the right place at the right moment and chose the right angle. We needed awareness both in terms of image aesthetics and to capture what was going on.”
Portraits
“I chose to film the bathers very close, I liked the reportage approach with close shot and wide-angles both on the still women and while following their movements. We had very small and light equipment. At the beginning the crew was larger and we had sound technicians using boom as microphones, but we soon realised it was intrusive, people did not feel comfortable and they were constantly looking at the flashy microphones. Thus we opted for a minimal equipment, even with small and non-showy cameras, trying to be invisible. The Pedocin, the beach we describe, is really well-known by the inhabitants of Trieste, they are proud because whoever likes to show him/herself can do it without judgement. The film is an observation documentary and consists in stories of many people, mostly aged.”
Dipped in reality
“It happened that a woman we were filming a lot suddenly died. In this case, we went back to finalise the sequence about her through the eyes of the other bathers. When you get that close to people you get to know, you can be deeply involved in the sometimes difficult human stories. It has to be said that there were really funny and surreal moments, where it seems that a crazy pièce was improvised just in front of our cameras.”
Isonzofront. La mia storia (Documentary, 56 min. Italy, 2016) directed by Massimo Garlatti-Costa; photography by Massimo Garlatti-Costa. Istituto Superiore Il Tagliamento
A hundred years ago, almost a Spoon River Anthology story of the Great War.
The annus horribilis. It occurs in 1917, from that autumn until the following one. On the 30th of October the Caporetto defeat marks the point of no return with the gut-wrenching image of the 600.000 Italian prisoners gathered on the piazza Libertà in Udine. This is the First World War on the Isonzo front through the testimonies of the people involved, Italian soldiers, Austro-Hungarian and ordinary civilians.
Incubo (Cineclub Spilimbergo, 1956) directed by Pietro De Rosa
Tanks in Tagliamento: classic instant movie realised in 1956 by a group of really young amateurs from Spilimbergo inspired by the contemporary facts happening in Hungary.
Bora su Trieste (Documentary, 14 min. Italy, 1953) directed by Gianni Alberto Vitrotti Cinema Castello
Silver Leon award at the Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia in 1953, it was the most famous documentary of the film director Gian Alberto Vitrotti, native from Trieste. Shot throughout several years, it tells the relationship between the wind and his hometown.
Vitrotti, a family for the cinema
Giovanni Vitrotti (Torino 1882 - Rome 1966), was a pioneer in the Italian and European cinema, active from 1904 until the mid-60s. Father of Franco and Gianni Alberto Vitrotti, he was the author of more than 3.000 productions such as fiction films, documentaries and short films. In 1913 he became producer and founded the Leonardo Film in Torino with other partners, producing around twenty films until 1915. At the end of the First World War during which he was an operator and photographer on the front, he collaborated with UCI Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Among the films he realised as a director of photography, the most important one is Teodora, a colossal piece directed by Leopoldo Carlucci. With him on the set and his brother Giuseppe as second operator. In 1928, at his place in Germany, he received the young Alessandro Blasetti, with whom he became friend. Blasetti defines Vitrotti as his master. Giovanni leaves to his sons Franco and Gianni Alberto, both television operators, the task to continue his work of cinematographic documentation. Gianni Alberto Vitrotti (Charlottenburg (Berlin) 1922 -Trieste in 2009), was initiated very young to the work of a cinematographic operator by his father Giovanni. Between 1940 and 1943 he worked as an operator in many fiction films, it was the famous period of the “telefoni bianchi” (white telephones). As the war ended, following the Allied troops, he arrived in Trieste which became his adopted city. He moves from fiction to news and documentary, relating post-war events in Venezia Giulia as a reporter for the American press, a period characterised by strong political and national tensions. For the Rai, in more than thirty years of activity, he has realised several inquiries and reportages turning him into a witness of the Italian history: not only De Gasperi, Carnera, Tito and others passed in front of his camera but also legends like John Kennedy and Albert Einstein. He was awarded the title of Cavaliere della Repubblica because of the information work done for over fifty years and in 2002 the City of Trieste rewarded him with the Sigillo Trecentesco of the city. Valentino Vitrotti, a telecine-operator and Trieste Rai journalist, and his sister Elisabetta, both received from their father the love of cinema and of information dissemination. Up until now they still uphold this priceless knowledge and professional heritage in the field of television and cinema, received from their father. In 1996, Valentino discovered his father’s unfinished film Mine alla deriva in the family archive, about underwater mine-cleaners in the port and gulf of Trieste. Filming with underwater equipment was pioneering in 1949. Valentino decided to edit the images and finish an extraordinary work.
Closing film
Nobili bugie (Comedy, 100 min. Italy, 2017) directed by Antonio Pisu, with Claudia Cardinale, Raffaele Pisu and Giancarlo Giannini; photography by Dario Germani. International award of photography for the cinema Gianni Di Venanzo 2016.
Two desperate families help each other for survival.
Taking place during the Second World War in the hills surrounding Bologna, the film tells the story of an impoverished noble family who survived the economic decline only because they are still in possession of the estate Villa La Quiete.
Nada: sad ballade Palazzo Tadea
For Michela The songwriter Nada interpreted a cappella her song Ballata triste dedicated to the memory of Michela Baldo, killed by her ex-boyfriend last year in Spilimbergo. Ballata triste by Nada is the 2017 winner of the Amnesty International Italia award, launched in 2003 by Amnesty International and the cultural organisation Voci per la Libertà to reward the best song on human rights published the previous year, in this case on the topic of violence against women.
“As a woman I try but I can’t make sense of what is often happening to women, usually within their family, they are destroyed by those who say they love them. Ballata Triste tells the story of an apparently normal day that ends up in tragedy. I wrote it one day after hearing for the umpteenth time about the killing of another woman. At the beginning I didn’t know if I was going to record it because it hurt. Then I thought that with a song we can tell feelings of rebellion toward these dramatic situations, hoping that one voice among the others could raise awareness. I hope that in the near future we can understand and comprehend each other, that love would prevail upon incompatibilities, and if not love at least respect. How to do that? I am convinced that we need to get educated from childhood about how to face the difficulties encountered by when living together, and learn that when love ends we need to have regards for the other and for the suffering”.
Ballata triste
Era una giornata nata per andare come sempre a lavorare ma poi una parola tira l'altra e la storia si macchia di qualcosa che era da venire e una parola tira l'altra e diventan pietre che saltano sui muri e si mettono di traverso
È così che comincia la discussione la discussione precipita in un disastro e il tavolo vola e poi si rompe un piatto lei grida e i denti mordono i santi E il sangue corre alla testa non si può fermare i figli sono a scuola, nessuno può sentire
Che amore che amore finito così tra le pareti di una stanza e una miseria prepotente amore che amore finito così tra una spinta una caduta un pugno e una ferita
Le ore le ore le ore senza parlare nessuno la va a cercare che cosa succede le ore le ore che passano nel dolore nessuno che va a cercare nessuno che va a vedere
Lei l'han trovata con una mano sulla porta e una sul cuore sul cuore che si è spaccato quando l'ha colpita perché nessuno l'ha fermato?
Le ore le ore le ore senza parlare nessuno la va a cercare che cosa succede le ore le ore che passano nel dolore nessuno che va a cercare nessuno che va a vedere
Concert: In front of the silver screen Piazza Duomo
Famous soundtracks with projections on the façade of the Palazzo del Daziario by Filarmonica dell’Istituto Musicale Guido Alberto Fano di Spilimbergo. Director Enrico Cossio.
The Filarmonica Città di Spilimbergo is reborn on the 27th of September 1995, like many times during its history between 1897 and 1951, in order to bring together all the enthusiasts and instrumental music lovers, both symphonic and folk, and to promote the knowledge, the study and the practice of music, by organising musical and cultural events.
The Cineteca del Friuli turns 40 years old Tenuta Ferdinanda Cappello, Sequals
During the Days of Light we also celebrated the 40 years of the Cineteca del Friuli, with the projection of rare classic films, with the presence of Livio Jacob and Lorenzo Codelli. The Cineteca del Friuli adventure started amid the earthquake rubbles. The 26 February 1977, a few months after the 1976 May and September shocks that destroyed Gemona and a large part of High Friui, seven young film-lovers from Gemona - Giuliana Fabiani, Renato Gennaro, Livio Jacob, Paolo Jacob, Piera Patat, Flavio Rossi and Maria Sangoi – signed the founding articles of the film club association Cinepopolare, that would soon become La Cineteca del Friuli.
The film club had the ambitious objective to give a cinema theatre back to the city. A fundraising was organised and a press call (Tullio Kezich and Ettore Scola were among the first to answer) and a press release in spring asking for subscriptions, read by Piera Patat during Incontri Cinematografici in Monticelli Terme. The few millions lira were not sufficient to build a cinema theatre but, thanks to Angelo Humouda’s advice (the founder and then director of Cineteca Griffith in Genova, present in Monticelli, who arrived in Friuli in the summer of 1977 with a hundred film, screen and projector in the makeshift camps), the amount of money was used to buy several original movies on the American market (Lumière brothers, Méliès, Edwin S. Porter, Thomas A. Edison, D.W. Griffith, Mack Sennett, Max Linder, André Deed, Ferdinand Guillaume), thanks to which they could organise projections and cinema history classes in school, laying the foundation for the Cineteca. With those films was organised in 1982 in Pordenone, in cooperation with Cinemazero, the retrospective on the French comedian Max Linder that would become the first edition of the now internationally known festival Giornate del Cinema Muto. Over the years, the Cineteca del Friuli has developed, becoming one of the fifth most important Italian film library, member of the Associazione delle Cineteche Europee (ACE) and of the Federazione Internazionale degli Archivi del Film (FIAF). It is an important research and documentation centre, not only thanks to the considerable films and books collections, but also because of the publishing work since 1981, of the television production (seven documentaries produced since 2004) and of the management of the Cinema Teatro Sociale in Gemona, digital since 2014.
Workshops and masterclass Cinema Castello
Comparing reportage and documentary From live-recording to the writing of a story in cooperation with Ordine dei Giornalisti Fvg.
A roundtable in presence of Caterina Carone, Massimo Garlatti-Costa, Pietro De Rosa, Ferdinando Vicentini Orgnani and Valentino Vitrotti. Coordinated by Andrea Crozzoli.
Taking pictures of Friuli Venezia Giulia The cinema and the photography as a means of promotion of the area in cooperation with Confartigianato Imprese Pordenone
The meeting coordinated by Giuliana Puppin hosted five speakers (directors, photographers and directors of photography) who have centred their objectives on the Friuli Venezia Giulia region: Elio Bisignani, director of photography of the documentaries and films by Elisabetta Sgarbi; Ulderica Da Pozzo, photographer native of Friuli; Daniele Nannuzzi, president of AIC; and Valentino Vitrotti, journalist at Rai Friuli-Venezia Giulia. Many themes were explored concerning the different professions, emphasising the attractive power of the region on the cinema and photography production.
The lesson I have never given A full immersion in the cinema with the masterclass, presented by professionals – the directors of photography Francesca Amitrano, Giuseppe Lanci and Gogò Bianchi, and the film director Claudio Giovannesi. Coordination: Marco Pelosi.
Talks with Gogò Bianchi
Studies, early days and career
“I studied at CSC and then I became an assistant of Luca Bigazzi. My first experiences as a director of photography were with documentaries, only later with fictions, via “music promo” and “commercial”. For those who work on the cinematography in a documentary, observation and spaces are important. At the beginning you start to film in a specific place (geographical and/or “human”) expecting to find something specific but finding something else, or better, finding the thing you were looking for but in a different form. This happened with Alessandro Rossetto, with whom I have worked on four films: Il Fuoco di Napoli, Bibione Bye Bye One, Chiusura and Feltrnelli. With Alessandro it was necessary to be open physically and mentally to capture what reality and life were offering. The most important thing was to have a perspective on what we were doing, that for me was also a cinematographic perspective. Even in fiction much depends on the type of project and the eye of the film director. For the film Estate Romana directed by Matteo Garrone, as in the film Pranzo di Ferragosto directed by Gianni di Gregorio, we were working with amateurs actors; the filming included a lot of improvisation and often with natural light. In these cases the working frame was not so different from a documentary film. I happen to also film fictions with very strict screenplays where final decisions on where to settle the camera and the type of light were taken during the site visits already. This is to optimise the timing on the set, maybe because in the presence of a famous actor for whom it is important to optimise the filming… no improvisation but everything decided in advance before shooting. Needless to say that in this case the site visit is fundamental. Thinking back to my first years, I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to experiment from the beginning with such different projects and I still believe that diversity is a great asset of my work.”
Light, between digital and film
“It is fundamental to enhance at best the natural light, it is a great mastery. My work consists in being flexible, to know how to work with light in various ways. There are fiction projects that need a documentary realism, others a glamour production, like music videos. In the digital switchover, having worked in long sessions for video clips helped me a lot. Postproduction intervention in digital is really longer than what is expected with the chemical process of a film. This great possibility of intervention in digital has to be handled really carefully. Otherwise there is the risk of having images that are too artificial, this couldn’t happen with the film that, thanks to its nature and the chemical process, carried you directly in an emotional space far from reality and close to dreams.”
The relationship with the director
“The screenplay could be really precise even on the visual plan, but for me the meetings with the film director and the visits to locations are the most crucial part when you can focus on the cinematographic choices in a deeper way. For me, a director’s indications are not a limitation: the more directions I get and the more encouraged I am to find creative solutions. They don’t have to be technical indications, but often suggestions that start from a painting or an exhibition, from a book or a piece of music, only to give the spirit of the film. It happened that I’d work with film directors having a strong visual idea on the film and to discuss with them which optical to use, or the focal for a certain chromatic effect. The important thing at the end is to find an accord on what to tell, to have a look and an action that satisfy, first of all, the film director who is the first viewer.”
Timing and ways of working
“Directors have a great determination and perseverance on film projects. Many years could occur from the production to the promotion of a film. I prefer to be called at a certain point of the creative process and share visual solutions that, at that moment, are only images in the heads of the director and the screenwriter. One thing that I believe to be unavoidable in the cinematographer’s work is never to impose a visual scheme that is already succeeding but to be at the service of the film director and of the story he is willing to tell. Being able to listen and being ready to question everything. It is not as easy as it sounds but in my opinion it is ethically unavoidable. This necessary lucidity arrives with experience, with learning to accept new challenges and also thanks to good teachers. When we were working with film, I saw that Luca Bigazzi was experimenting both chemical processes and lighting technics that were very different from film to film, often going against academic rules, always with persistence and awareness.”
The search for film
“Nowadays many films are shot live, cameras capture images like the human eye and from the production point of view there is no more meaning in building stages. Thus the upstream choice of the right location is fundamental. However, alas, productions try to reduce to the minimum the preparation phase, on the contrary, in my opinion, visiting locations is an even more crucial phase: it is not choosing only the right location for the story, but also finding a place that can fit a crew of fifty persons, offering the best light, and the contribution of the director of photography is crucial. Going more than once on the location with the film director optimises the shooting phase. Viewing the location together helps creating complicity and reciprocal trust that will smooth the later work on the set. The people involved on the visit are usually the director of photography and the film director, as well as the assistant director and the production director. This becomes the nucleus of an organisational work that will include more than fifty people. Thus a good search is necessary, with the right timing, not only from the creative point of view but also from the production one, because often on set there is only time to film and any mistake in the shooting phase could be paid at a higher cost than a good preparation.”
The Days of light in Spilimbergo, a city for cinematography. Impressions from a festival that honours Italian cinema photography authors
“There was a diversified audience in Spilimbergo, even students from cinema schools. Everybody talked about his professional backgrounds and it has emerged how the very idea of the direction of photography has changed with time. Making a festival where the direction of photography is in the spotlight helps the audience to be more prepared. Usually the general public immediately understands the work of a film director or of the writer, sometimes also of the editor. Explaining what the photography department does is less immediate. The fact that there were representatives of other cinema professions to confront, such as for example direction and editing, has avoided self-congratulation making the festival rich in different points of view, nevertheless converging with the work behind the realisation of a film” Gogò Bianchi
“I have experienced in the past, as a student of Centro Sperimentale, the birth of the event “Una città in cinema” in Aquila, founded by Gabriele Lucci, Luciano Tovoli and Nestor Almendro, and I have contributed to the following editions. With Gomorra – la serie I was selected at Camerimage of Bydgoszcz in Polonia. These types of meetings are great moments for sharing ideas, transmission of knowledge, bringing together a public composed of enthusiasts of the cinema professions.” Paolo Carnera
“A festival like this one helps to understand how films are combinations of facts and contents through a form. The choice of the form determines the genre: fiction or documentary. Nothing is granted and the formal choice is essential. In those days in Spilimbergo, in addition to Fräulein - Una fiaba d’inverno, I have participated in the seminar “Comparing reportage and documentary”, presenting my first documentaries, and I was with people of heterogeneous experiences. There was an interesting exchange, because when we talk about documentary films we refer to a really cinematographic world and a vast genre, and anyone can define it with his own point of view regarding the form, the contents and the production.” Caterina Carone
“In the history of our profession, Vittorio Storaro has made a great contribution to clarify what is photography direction to professionals. Now it would be nice if the general public as well, thanks to initiatives such as this one in Spilimbergo, could understand better and more precisely our work and how we move behind the camera.” Arnaldo Catinari
“For our students at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, it is important to participate in a festival like that of Spilimbergo, dealing with a single cinema study subject, the photography, because it stimulates attention, reflection and dialogue. During the academic year, the school students spend a lot of time confronted with professors, but at the same time they live in a multi-faced community because the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia offers classes for every cinema professions and this is beneficial. It is beneficial too to have a break and concentrate on a specific field. At the festival, the students make up the jury for the award “Quarzo dei giovani” for photography. They watch and evaluate the films, taking into account the professional field; moreover they attend high level meetings and masterclasses presented by professionals. Another interesting aspect of this festival is that students meet colleagues from other cinema schools, even from other countries, and discover how the real job is. This confrontation is very useful, it broadens their experience and develops the didactic plan.” Caterina d’Amico
“The idea of a widespread festival is a great idea. It is important that it occurs in different cities of our region. We are at the beginning but we see the growth and the positioning in a specific field, besides filling a void, it allows a large and fruitful exchange. Students, general audience, professionals, photographers, all can live the experience of meeting directors of photography as cinema authors. In Spilimbergo, the themes linked to cinematography are important, thus tradition is enriched with new depths.” Lorenzo Codelli
“When we watch a film, we remember only images and those images are the true memory of the film. Few festivals in Europe focus on cinematography, for example Camerimage in Poland and the Premio Gianni Di Venanzo in Teramo - Italy, one of the firsts. I am passionate about my work and about its dissemination, I was vice-president of Associazione italiana dei direttori della fotografia and I have started a section “Italian Cinematographer” in the magazine “Tutto Digitale”, on photography in Italian films.” Michele D’Attanasio
“In order to continue for a long time, the Spilimbergo festival has to stay as it is: passionate and participating. Being a festival where guests are at their ease, it is immediately clear that commitment, willingness and expertise of the organisers make feel the guests as protagonists. It is filling a gap to honour photography authors because usually image is a neglected aspect of cinema. This characterises the festival and differentiates itself from a simple celebrity show, it develops a specific point of view on cinema and it offers new elements and knowledge at participants, which should be the objective of all festivals.” Steve Della Casa
“When we talk about cinema, we usually talk about film direction or actors, topics on image creation are not often treated. Actually the image is the central focus, especially it has to be in Italy, which is the country of great directors of photography and because the culture of image goes back to the Renaissance and ever further. The existence of festivals and initiatives on this subject has to be, in my opinion, necessary. I was one of the first collaborators of “Una città in cinema”, that was the first festival focusing on directors of photography in Italy. It was being held in L’Aquila and it has become nowadays a cinema school, which I think is an excellent evolution. We talk about almost thirty years ago, and when I came to know about a festival like The days of Light in Spilimbergo I was really happy and thankful for the invitation to participate.” Babak Karimi
“Spilimbergo’s festival keeps alive the attention on our work and it does so even if it is not easy to centre the public attention and to make them participating to events. To make the festival more attractive, not only additional investments to develop a nowadays unavoidable communication, but also the creation of a big event could increase participation.” Daniele Nannuzzi
“If it is true that the Italian cinema industry was born and developed in Rome with Cinecittà, it is also true that the events dedicated to cinema are historically born in the North of Italy. The two Italian international film festivals are Venice and Torino. Venice is without any doubt one of the most important worldwide festival and Torino was one of the first, with Rotterdam, to give space to young and to independent cinema. The intent of the Trieste’s festival that I direct with Fabrizio Grosoli was to reflect the historical, geographical and cultural background of the city. Trieste has been the Hapsburg Empire port reference for countries like Slovenia, Croatia and Austria making the city an icon for centre Europe. Trieste’s festival looks towards not only to these countries nut also to Balkan countries, to linguistic and cultural minorities that are an indivisible part of the city history. Spilimbergo has decided to honour Italian cinema photography authors in a territory that has traditionally paid attention to photography. Nevertheless attracting a large public is difficult for small city and the true test will be to increase the audience, even before developing the economic resources founding. Inviting cinema schools it is a good idea and a valuable resource. We need to attract a young pubic who is moving away from the cinema and who will be the future audience.” Nicoletta Romeo
“Talking about the work of a director of photography to the large public explains his role in the realisation of a film, helps exploring different aspects of his work, increases the awareness on what is “doing cinema” and the collective work that makes it possible. For us, directors of photography who participate, it is a great enrichment and an opportunity to confront. We exchange ideas, even on the equipment used, and it becomes a moment for inspiring research.” Debora Vrizzi