Davide Ferrario • Director
"An exception"
by Cristiana Paternò - Cinecittà News
- The technological trickery of the cinema to come and the bewitching visions of the first moving images... Dopo mezzanotte Buster Keaton and high definition
Buster Keaton and high definition: the technological trickery of the cinema to come and the bewitching visions of the first moving images, from the time when people were still happy to see moving pictures of places, without any need for stories. Or stories that were inspired by places, like the Turin we see in Dopo mezzanotte. A surprising, nocturnal Turin, spanning from the Falchera to the Mole, the national film museum. Inside the Film Museum, inside the cinema. The self produced and somewhat risky film has brought Davide Ferrario back to fiction so to speak, five years after Guardami wooed the Berlin Forum.
Why Turin, apart from the Museum and the Film
Commission's participation in the production?
Because I live there and it's already the third film I've shot
in the city, along with Tutti giù per terra and the comedy
with Luciana Littizzetto, Se devo essere sincera.
Turin is an extraordinary set, with its
multi-layered feel, stretching from the industrial suburbs to
the Mole, a building initially conceived by Antonelli (the Renzo
Piano of his time) as a synagogue but never used as such...a dream
which was met by more dreams —it is now home to the Film Museum.
Your film is a tribute to silent movies (which it actually
shows) and a proof that you love Truffaut's Jules and Jim.
Even if I used to be a critic, I hate to show off my
film-pundit's konwledge. Yet, I must say the love triangle in Jules
e Jim is an inspiring archetype —I should ask my shrink...
Did digital give you freedom?
Digital is a tool that allows you to do certain
things, like working with very little light or reducing the
down time. Then when you edit the whole thing, no one notices
it anymore. This work is the exact contrary of what the Dogma
filmmakers do with their voluntarily dirty images.
Why did you define Dopo mezzanotte as a
non-governmental film in the closing titles?
Now I don't want to become a symbol of cinema produced without
any subsidies and I don't think Dopo mezzanotte can be a
model:
actually it's an exception. Any ministerial commission would
have refused me. But I really think that in Italy there are too
many films made without thinking of the audience. Even though
Ciprì & Maresco's films may not make a bomb at the box
office, they're art, and they make one film a year; but how
many completely useless films are there around? I would only
fund works of art: it's not as if the State asks opera to give
back money.
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