I came early to get a close seat in the first rows. I am surrounded with young film students in their early twenties that are busy texting and convivially chatting away. In the back are sitting some older folks with serious expressions. Photographers are everywhere with their cameras at the ready, which builds up a tension as if a spaceship from Mars is about to land any second.

With the customary 15 minutes delay, Debora Young, the Festival director opens up with a few words of introduction after which Maestro Bellocchio is ushered onto the stage that in instant becomes a focal point of million camera flashes.

Master class with Marco Bellocchio

Interviewing Bellocchio is Dan Fainaru (Internal Communications) that poses wide range of questions about various milestones in his rich career. No English translation is provided, so I am glad all these years of Saturday Italian classes are effectively kicking in. Here are some insights I found the most interesting:

• Cinematic approach taken by young students: Bellocchio sees today’s young film students as very proficient in mastering the technical aspects of producing an effective soundtrack or solid camera angles, giving an example of the other day’s Short films shown or a typical reality TV shows that generated an audience-wide jeer. What they most lack of is a good script and a credible recital. He points out that in the Neorealism period, non-professional actors although used banal dialogs, they were extremely genuine as they reflected real people telling their own stories in their natural habitat.
• Dubbing: Bellocchio outlines two stages in the evolution of dubbing (i.e., use of professional voiceover artists instead of the actors’ own voice): 1) when he started out back in 1965 it was a common practice. In the case of I pugni in tasca (Fists in the Pocket), it was rather a necessity as Lou Castel, the lead actor did not speak Italian fluently. He also gave an example of many directors including Fellini that shot scenes with complete dialogs only to change them entirely at the dubbing stage. 2) Around the 80’s he ditched dubbing, as it has become outdated practice no one considered valid anymore.
• Italian Cinema today: Bellocchio teaches classes in directorship and screenplay writing. Regarding global cinema, he points out that even back in the 50’s 3D movies were popular, they disappeared and now are back in vogue, referring to the other day’s opening of Toy Story 3 in the Teatro Greco (Greek Theater). He didn’t say it explicitly but I found it as an acknowledgment that these are all technology muscles, but with no soul. As for Italian cinema, he confessed that classic Italian cinema, namely Neorrealism, had to its advantage extremely tough economic post-war conditions as backdrop, which enabled to tell much more believable stories about human poverty, loss of job and other survival challenges. With the help of an audience member sitting at the front row he summed up a common quote that aptly summed up the current thinking:

“Italian cinema today is inferior to the sum of its parts”

I do hope we won’t need another war to improve quality, as I believe there are great contemporary gems from Tornatore, Ozpetek, Salvatores, Sorrentino, Solidini and many others that brought forward new directions and perspectives in tune with the times. That said, it was a bit unsettling when I stopped at a local DVD store and the only titles for sale were American blockbusters. It could be a coincidence or cold business sense but still telling.

The reality is that we’re all doing it all the time without stopping to consider the “what if scenario.” What if I give it a try and that could be anything; leveraging your passion for gadgetry and attempting to write a techno-mystery novel, sending your resume to a long shot position, opening a gallery that specializes in rain forest photography or simply bridging your Italian ancestry and creating your own first movie, say in Sicily. Why not?

And if you take a look at the title above, you’ll find three people that actually managed to simply DO IT.

The story behind the making of this film is quite extraordinary and almost overshadows the actual story of the movie. Say your best buddie comes to you and says, remember we saw that catalog of the latest SONY HDV cameras a month ago? Well me and my brother are leaving next week to Italy, actually to a small hill town in Sicily called Lucca-Sicula to get to know better our family roots. Well we figured this could be a good excuse as any to buy these killer cameras and shoot some movie-quality clips now that the technology is available. And by the way we’ll be meeting with a few friends there. Don’t worry about money, my cousin is giving us a house to stay there for as long as we want – are you in? You betcha!

Since no one has prior experience in film making, first month you all take turns in learning how to use the cameras, some try it as being directors, others as actors. Second month, you all feel pretty much comfortable with the equipment and start shooting with local non-professional actors loosely based on Sicilian gags your cousin’s friends keep telling you every evening over pasta, local wine, and old Sicilian songs. And since you’re in Italy why not shoot in Italian peppered with some of these charming old tunes that by now you can’t get out of your head? It sure adds some authenticity, right? This is at least my interpretation of how this film was made based on information the directors share here.

Needless to say the result received amazing feedbacks including awards, which clearly proves a simple truth. It all boils down to a solid storytelling, fun characters and triple dose of authenticity represented in this case, by usage of Italian-speaking non professional actors, the beauty of the rolling Sicilian mountains and the timeless heart-warming traditional music to tie it all together.

The film poetically tells the story of an orange thief (Andrea Calabrese) and his simple love for the land and music. He starts initially without the land, but his love to music finally helps him not only get the land, but also friends.

The fact that you most likely haven’t heard about this fim before tells the immense challenges any indie film faces today where peer awards are nice but insufficient to break through and gain wide public exposure. I found this film by chance, during my routine checks of the Italian category on Netflix catalog that tends to be either static or tilted more towards horror and peplum genres.

>Buy this film

Looking at emotional independence we may ascribe it to being completely over a past romance or in control of a current relationship. In Visconti’s White Nights – Le notti bianche (1957), we see how the character of Mario (Marcello Mastroianni) gradually and surely becomes emotionally dependent on Natalia (Maria Schell). Only when Mario acknowledges that Natalia belongs to another, we can start see the transition into emotional independence, or put differently, Mario’s rational takes over his emotions. When you actually need to compromise your emotional aspirations and keep them at bay. Similar symptoms we can find in Antonioni’s The Outcry – Il Grido (1957), yet with one difference; Aldo’s (Steve Cochran) complete emotional dependence on Irma (Alida Valli) is never resolved and drives him into his dramatic fate.

Sometimes financial independence is exchanged for emotional dependence; Cabiria in Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria – Le Notti di Cabiria (1957), appears to project both emotional and financial independence, but internally she is extremely vulnerable to the point she puts her heart and money in a scoundrel that robs her out of both. That’s not always the case, sometimes financial independence is solid, but through the passage of time, it empties up emotions and turns them backwards into nostalgic flair. The older Toto (Jacques Perrin) in Torantore’s Cinema Paradiso (1988) is a big shot director that carries an emotional void to his past – his old village, his mentor, first love and the cinematic masterpieces of his youth that serve as memory milestones of time and places long gone.

Whereas the family structure is missing in older Toto’s life, then in Gabriele Muccino’s Remember Me My Love – Ricordati di me (2003), we get to see a middle class, financially stable family, where time erodes emotional ties among its members. Each one is on a separate trajectory to find emotional compensation to add meaning to their existence. And like in Cinema Paradiso, searching the past to help the present, Carlo (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) turns to an old flame.

Political independence is also a recurring theme in Italian cinema, from heroic stories of resistance against all odds as depicted in Francesco Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano (1962), Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers – La battaglia di Algeri (1966) or Visconti’s The Earth Trembles – La Terra Trema (1948), to name a few. The ingredients include a deprived minority that struggles to better its conditions by being able to control its destiny and well-fare. The battle not always succeeds (La TerraTrema) and involves painful sacrifices in effort to attain an elusive independence.

Movies can attempt to tell a story that might appear as realistic, and authentic. Yes, I can relate to this emotional independence or its lack thereof – it also happened to me. Yet, the way I see it, behind every movie there is a personal story the director is trying to convey. Unfortunately, 99% of the time, we as spectators cannot possibly be exposed to the depth of details that caused the director for example, to pick those particular job candidates in Olmi’s The Job – Il Posto (1961), as an expression for his views about work, neorealism and choice of non-professional actors, in this case true job seekers that can easily convey genuine in-context facial and body language. So what we’re left with is viewing the movie independently through our personal past experiences or future aspirations – as guides to extract meanings. If there is a nice alignment, we may come out liking the movie, if not then this patchwork of moving images with musical layering – was simply unmoving.

Checking the dictionary, I found this definition:

The state or quality of being independent; freedom from dependence; exemption from reliance on, or control by, others; self-subsistence or maintenance; direction of one’s own affairs without interference.

Pretty much covering the usual suspects. Regardless, you know what your independence truly means, that fine balance between being in control and the need to depend on trusted sources in order to form a logical sense of it all.

This is an intense shot on reality. When we say the eloquence of silence. He makes the silence speak. Slowly, sweetly, deeply. Black and white, and we are already into a poem. Every single shot is a portrait of truth. It’s amazing the power of these images. We don’t need to speak to be understood if who is watching us can read a little deeper. Sorrentino can really drill through the soul of his characters.

A strong message towards the truth. A kind of, just be yourself. But also a message of being close to others, because anything in life is related to others. The match, with your companions, and the team work. And no matter who they are, young, old, father, friends, they are your team players. You have to trust all of them.

Very interesting the choice of a rugby match, an unusual sport in Italy, that gives the sense of team, of fighting together, where the compact strength of the group is very important.

A masculine message if you want, a message for men. However with no macho input at all. Instead an invitation maybe to reconsider the natural meaning of being a man, from the basic.

The location. A field in the suburbs of a big town. Where we think a strong message of hope is even more needed. And where the ground for simple values could be uncertain as well as more natural at the same time.

The characters. A simple working class family, very sweet and very true. There is this strong tight shred that links the whole thing. The grandma, the father, the mother, the son. What a cute picture. The family, an important value to support and to pursue for mutual benefits of all its components. Family as the first strong starting point for building a good sense of trust towards yourself, the others and the future. It’s a lovely movie, intense and rich. And artistically wonderful.

Buona visione.

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