Whoever is involved in filmmaking today, remarks Giuseppe Piccioni, can't help but think that films will change significantly and will become a richer and more artistic expression.
How important are painting references in your films which are always very accurate in their visual composition?
In some moments, as when we are writing something, we try creating a process where we come closer. We try to materialize what we have written on paper which still remains quite improbable. I am talking about a process based on a classical type of work. Subject, script, location scouting, and then actors, bodies, faces and lights. The character in this way becomes alive. Within this search, pictorial or photographic references can be very useful, just like an idea of a particular scene. One sees a painting by Velasquez, and thinks of depth of field, of certain scenes. This approach depends also on the passions one has experienced, not always consciously, since perhaps one has been struck by a painting, Rembrandt’s light. Even in film editing, for example, in certain allegorical references to paintings, there is already an idea for a film.
Do you think new professional figures are emerging in Italy and abroad that can combine into only one artist the roles of the film director, the photographer, the video maker and the video artist?
I think so. I am very curious towards this type of work approach, but am also afraid that I belong to those who refer to an old type of filmmaking. The idea that the movie theater is the only place for a film is being increasingly questioned. This holds true also for the architecture of a film, subject, script, rehearsals. I believe that with digital technology, with the possibilities of processing increasingly personalized images, there will be many more things to be said: different duration, different formats, stronger art elements compared to a conventional script. I believe that today, whomever is interested in filmmaking, can’t help but think that it will significantly change in the next years and film expression will be richer and closer to art forms. I hope.
Do you feel that Italian filmmaking, as other European filmmaking, can find visual ideas in contamination with photography and ideas from the works of major contemporary artists?
It would be interesting, but not only from the visual aspect. I believe that it would also be that way in the creative and writing aspects. In digital technology, for example, the moments for organizing and making a film can be less hierarchic and much closer. Even the camera no longer carries such a strong hierarchic weight and I feel that with actors and other collaborators there is a broader search, greater flexibility, at the time of editing, special effects can be used. In Italian filmmaking, it is the approach that is old: director, production designer and assistants. Perhaps it is now time to collaborate with writers, painters and artists in general that can help to develop the imaginative and creative aspect. This can be seen largely only in the big American stories, that are hyper-realistic.
Your films often focus on contemporary love stories. How do you express the contemporariness of daily life by filming private stories?
In my personal life I have always taken a stand, but I find it difficult to think of my films as products that build consensus around a topic, a social issue. I always feel the need to talk about today also through things. I try to make films that are not only love stories, but that are also about the impermanence of the world we live, through a glance, in the choice of lights and of settings. I tell stories about people and that is what I know how to do best. I need to be disguised through a story to be able to talk also about myself, in the hope that some of my emotional states and thoughts, my vision of the world can be interesting to the viewer.
How do you work on your projects, what is your source of inspiration?
I am not like many of my colleagues who once they finish a movie they immediately begin thinking of their next one putting scriptwriters to work, in this way thinking they can do more things at the same time. I work on one project at a time, I live the experience, all of its negative and positive aspects, often excessively and then I accompany the “body” which is my movie, also in its last moments of life, when it is in agony. Only then can I begin thinking about a new project. Then I begin to look around, I read books, take notes in a simple way, almost making a grocery list of projects. Then I begin selecting, two or three ideas resist this process until the final choice. The final one then begins to become my concern. I have chosen a way to be part of the film world by crossing a narrow door which is being between industry and art. I also think that filmmaking is also this: a sort of funfair, a carnival. There is always a promise of entertainment and show even in the most rigorous film. I would like films to resemble more the work of an artist, faithful to his project, with the direct and total control an artist has on his artwork, instead, in films, mediation is very strong and there is a possibility of loosing your initial project, just like an ambush, attempts to throw you off track. The collaborator can help you enrich and enhance an idea but also to sabotage it. I defend my ideas in an extenuating dialogue with myself and with others and make choices through the total accumulation of uncertainties and discarded ideas. Succeeding in saying no. Our work is measured in the capacity to make choices with the least number of regrets. I think that today with electronics and digital technology, films are increasingly closer to the possibility that there is a more personal participation, a stronger control on the part of the director of his work. Films often have a group and team aspect, but I still like to think that as for an artist, also the director can be recognized by certain traits and style in his way of directing, of working with the actors and of writing the dialogue, that a profile of the director can be traced. I think of directors like Hitchcock, Billy Wilder or John Ford. For example.
The Terna Prize 02 intends to join the best corporate practices with cultural ones encouraging a reflection on the need to look ahead to our planet’s future with a responsible attitude to the environment and energy. Do you think this objective is attainable and is art today still capable of encouraging a greater critical awareness?
I hope so and I hope that art can bring man back to his habitat, to his world. I hope that patronage of the arts and the role played by industry can promote greater freedom also in films, with respect to the market, and that politics can become less invasive. Films today depend on state funding, on political mediation. But I would also like to point out that many films would never have been made without public funding. Nonetheless, I think that it would be interesting to image this type of funding for films also from the private sector, as in the past occurred with the major producers, not in their role as finding funding, but as actual producers that attempted to make high level films, without only thinking about their own profits.
2009-06-12
