PALOMAR PRESENTA A NEW FILM BY GIORGIO DIRITTI ON THE LIFE OF PAINTER ANTONIO LIGABUE A KISS … GIVE ME A KISS, JUST ONE! SO THAT ONE DAY EVERYTHING WILL BE SPLENDID. FOR ME AND FOR YOU Antonio Ligabue 2 I WANTED TO HIDE THE PROJECT Antonio Ligabue (1899-1965) Born in Zurich, he was immediately left in an orphanage Antonio Ligabue’s art is born out of impossibility: the impossibility by his birth mother, who was originally from Belluno, and was later of living a happy childhood, the impossibility of communicating, the given to the Göbels, a Swiss-German couple without children who impossibility of loving. This is the story of a man who was considered lived near San Gallo. There he had a troubled and unhappy childhood, mad, who lives on the margins of society, who is one of many destined which forced him to pass from one institution to the next to cure his for oblivion. It is a story that seems to have already been written, but serious behavioral issues. Ugly and deformed, he lived as an outcast in it ends differently, in Rome, with a great exhibition and the blessing the woods of the Lower Po. His encounter with painting came early of both critics and the public. and was his salvation. From 1920 on, it would be his travel companion Today he is considered one of the most interesting figures of and would lead him to garner interest from other artists, critics and Twentieth-century art, and his paintings are the subject of exhibitions merchants, who slowly began to support him. and events in countries all around the world. 4 I WANTED TO HIDE FILM DIRECTION Giorgio Diritti Giorgio Diritti is a director, screenwriter and film editor born in Festival in 2009, where it won the Grand Jury Prize, the Marc’Aurelio Bologna on December 12, 1959. d’Argento award, the Marc’Aurelio d’Oro del Pubblico award and the He made his film debut with The Wind Blows round (2005) and has ‘La Meglio Gioventù’ Award. Released in cinemas in January 2010, it participated in more than 60 national and international festivals, won many awards, including Best Film, Best Producer and Best Sound where he has won around 40 awards. He received 5 nominations at at the David di Donatello Awards in 2010 and Best Producer, Best the David di Donatello Awards in 2008 and 4 nominations at the Production Design and Best Sound at the Nastro d’Argento in 2010. Nastro d’Argento Awards in 2008. The film also garnered a lot of Then in 2013, his film There will come a day, in which Jasmine Trinca ‘national interest’ and remained screening at the Cinema Mexico in as the main character journeys into the Amazon to indigenous villages Milano for more than a year and a half. His second film, The Man in search of the meaning of life. It was entered in the Sundance Film Who Will Come (2009), was presented at the Rome International Film Festival. 5 I WANTED TO HIDE CAST Elio Germano Considered an Italian film star, he has won numerous recognitions (Tenderness), Stefano Sollima (Suburra), Ferzan Özpetek (Magnificent throughout his career, including three David di Donatello awards Presence), Giovanni Veronesi (The Fifth Wheel, What Will Happen to for Best Actor for My Brother Is an Only Child, Our Life and Leopardi. Us), Emanuele Crialese (Respiro), Gianluca Maria Tavarelli (Break Our Life also won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival Free), Michele Placido (Romanzo criminale), Gabriele Salvatores (Quo in 2010 and the Nastro d’Argento for Best Actor. He is admired for vadis, Baby?, As God Commands), Paolo Virzì (N – Napoleon and Me, his extraordinary versatility and has worked with the greatest Italian Your Whole Life Ahead of You) and Daniele Vicari (The Past is a Foreign directors, such as Ettore Scola, (Unfair Competition), Gianni Amelio Land, Diaz). 6 I WANTED TO HIDE LOCATION The Lower Po and Gualtieri surroundings Antonio Ligabue’s life was inextricably tied to his homeland, where snow. All these elements along with others of pure imagination are he returned to as a boy from Switzerland. Gualtieri, its homes and its the heart, the creative air, the fire for Antonio’s painting. The film, piazza, the long perpendicular roads, the nearby and ever present river therefore, must feed on those places. In this case more than ever, flowing slowly and continually changing, the fields and farmhouses being able to film in the towns and fields where Ligabue left traces, that encircle and define the limits of this land, its rural and farming from Guastalla to Reggio Emilia and the Po river floodplain, is the rhythms that mark days, weeks, months and entire existences, the most honest way to bring to life the splendor that they represented in evolving seasons, the work animals and livestock that are an integral the mind of this artist. part of this world, the sun, the cicadas, the fog, the cold and the 8 I WANTED TO HIDE DIRECTOR’S NOTES Director’s Notes Toni, defined then and often also today as crazy, was more than see it as a continuous fight to not give up and contain a strong desire anything a child who was rejected many times over and born with for redemption. His sculptures are not only realistic but convey physical problems that made him an outcast and that led to his intense vital impulses. His self-portraits are photos of his state of marginalization and probably also his mental disorders. He was, mind and his face, with small changes in expression in each piece. however, a man who could express, through his characteristic art, His eyes, turned toward the observer, question, ask for a listen, an incredible talent, a strong and original perspective of his life. He acknowledgement, a sign of affection. started painting without any specific method and without knowing Reexamining the path of his life, it seems obvious how much his Van Gogh or les Fauves, whose style his work seems at least in part ‘otherness’ is the source of a large part of his suffering but is also the to resemble. His paintings express a particular outlook on life. They generative force behind his artistic identity and success. 9 I WANTED TO HIDE DIRECTOR’S NOTES The story of Toni Ligabue has an intrinsically strong and spectacular claiming a recognition that would after his death make him much value given the extraordinary circumstances that have characterized more important than all those who, in life, belittled and mocked him. his life, and it also offers, through his journey, an important reflection But rural society of the Lower Po region, although in part accepting on the value of ‘diversity.’ Every person has a precious uniqueness of his oddities, showed little interest in his work if not for the acclaim that, beyond appearances, can be a gift for the collective whole. ‘…if I he would come to achieve as a renowned painter. The middle-class am different from you, that means I can also give you something you society, the local intellectuals, who were more culturally prepared to aren’t familiar with…’ these were the words a disabled boy said to me understand him, flattered him as an artist but excluded him as a man, years ago. with a few exceptions. Toni’s story is a ‘bitter fairy tale’ from which a great devotion to Even during his success, Ligabue remained the mad painter with life and the ability to never give up emerges. He resisted loneliness, fantastical visions of faraway worlds. The Salgari of painting. cold and hunger when he lived for years in a shack on the river. He Although he felt inadequate, Ligabue did not refuse to interact with overcame humiliation, including stays in re-education institutions the rest of the world. He lived, until his death, the contradiction of and asylums. being a primeval man and drifter afflicted with the anxiety of identity. The story of Ligabue enchants and questions. It presents an apparent Maybe his so-called madness was all there. contradiction between an ungainly physique, a mind shrouded in The story of Toni Ligabue, an imaginative and mad painter who slight madness and a bright talent, one that is left hidden for a long depicted tigers, gorillas, lions and jaguars on the banks of the Po time until it finally emerges and becomes an extraordinary element river, is scattered with bitterness, but is also a fairy tale, the story of a in the construction of an identity and the opportunity that he dreamt rejected and isolated child who found a form of social redemption in of, anticipated, longed for and that ultimately saved him. On various painting that allowed him to express himself and win the love of the occasions, Toni proudly expresses the feeling of his being an artist, world. 10 I WANTED TO HIDE DIRECTOR’S NOTES himself embodies, in a certain way, starting with how he dresses, but also in the way he expresses himself, gesticulates and moves. The world that surrounds him also recalls the archetypes of fables in which example figures can be recognized, such as the stepmother, the ‘pedophile’ father, the boarding school director, the mean children that tease him and the adults who mock him. Once he was an adult, Visual approach a chorus of characters surrounded him – the country people – mostly repelling, some themselves surreal and fabled, but from which friendly figures slowly emerged who would be fundamental to Toni’s redemption. Ligabue even recalls some characteristics from the films of Chaplin: at his core, he is the same, someone different fighting for their place in the sun.