Cinecittà Personaggi

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29/4/2004

GIANNI AMELIO (director)

My father's lack of job security

[by Fabrizio Corallo]

The guest of honour at the "Linea d'ombra" festival, the director Gianni Amelio, took part in a seminar for students from the faculty of Communication Sciences at Salerno University. He used his recently published book, "Il vizio del cinema" (The vice of cinema. Einaudi) as a starting point for the lecture and he also talked about his two new projects, Le chiavi di casa and La stella che non c'è.
"Cinema is hard work, especially for those who try to talk about emotions without being obsessed about making a quick pile of money to buy a house by the sea", was the director's opening comment. And he gave the students his vision of the art, by saying "it's awful to watch a film on your own at home. I'm an avid collector of films, but I see them at the cinema first. The difference could be compared to the experiences of a practising catholic who follows the mass on television, or participates live from St Peter's Square in front of the pope".

 

What can you tell us about "Le chiavi di casa"?
It's produced by Alia Film and RAI Cinema and will star Kim Rossi Stuart, Charlotte Rampling and an incredible 15 year-old boy called Andrea Rossi. I call it "the two Rossis film", but in fact it would be more accurate to call it "the three Rossis" because the main musical theme running through the story is a song by Vasco Rossi, called "Quanti anni hai". I was asked to do a film adaptation of the book "Nati due volte" by Giuseppe Pontiggia. The story is distinctly autobiographical and is about a father and his relationship withy his disabled son. At first I thought I wouldn't be up to the job. I try to think why that was and I came up with the answer that I really had to go through a analogous experience to Pontiggia's, who wrote about himself and his son Andrea. There was a risk that the emotional distance between the book and the film would have been too big if I as a director had tried to portray something I hadn't personally experienced. Then I met someone who really moved me very deeply, Andrea Rossi, a 15 year-old boy who's a real force of nature. Then I spoke to Pontiggia and I told him I wanted to show my Andrea as though his father would have talked about him after seeing him for the first time. I gave him my film subject and he loved it, even though my story takes place over a week and his spans a 30-year period. I chose to set it in Berlin because in Berlin the pair of them would have both been strangers. Summing it up, I think Le chiavi di casa is a film where a son helps the father to grow up. It's not the first time I've touched on this theme in my cinema, but here it happens in a joyful and light-hearted way, you're almost always smiling. This film has nothing to do with rationality, it's all about emotions, the type I really love to watch.

Will the film be released in the autumn, after it's probable presentation at Venice?
It will be distributed by 01 from September, and as far as the festival is concerned, I know the selectors liked and obviously I'm really happy about that. Festivals are a necessary evil, they're good because they allow films to be known, but they often do harm because films are often seen like racing horses.

There was talk of it going to the Cannes Film Festival. What happened?
The definitive copy of the film isn't ready yet - we hope to have it by next week. Two months ago we showed the French selectors a working copy, but they said we would only know for certain if we were taking part in the competition on the day of the press conference. We replied that we couldn't wait until then to release the film at the end of this season. They assured us of a place out of competition, but I don't want a place out of competition, not even in heaven.

You're now working on "La stella che non c'è", the film starring Sergio Castellitto and produced by Cattleya and RAI Cinema. It will be shot in China at the end of the year, between Shanghai and the Sezuan region...
The story takes its inspiration from "La dismissione" by Ermanno Rea, the book about the last phase of operations at the great steelworks in Naples, called the Ilva di Bagnoli. It was dismantled in the '90s after almost 100 years in operation. It was a symbol of the defeat of the workers' culture of solidarity and work ethic. It's slow death is told from the point of view of Vincenzo Buonocore, a former worker who became a technician, called in to oversee the dismantling of the plant, which was destined to be transferred to China. Loss of work is like the loss of your soul. It's the cruelest thing that can happen to someone, and unfortunately today it is prevalent. I'm lucky, but my father had various unstable, before the so-called economic boom. They were terrible years and I they come back to me every time I face a concrete problem. I think of directors who have to courage to make films about this theme, like Ken Loach or Mike Leigh or Francesca Comencini with I Like to Work. But if today I made a film about the world of work, I have to invent a metaphor, because the cinema production system refuses this type of story. We're living in a difficult time, even if objectively speaking in the past two years, maybe starting with The Hundred Steps, there's been a rise in interest in seeing Italian films like the ones shown at the time of my The Stolen Children.

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