MONDAY, 7th SEPTEMBER 2015 | 21.30 | 88′
LA PELANDA | ZONA ESTERNA
film
Le cose belle
written and directed by Agostino Ferrente e Giovanni Piperno
with Enzo Della Volpe, Fabio Rippa, Adele Serra, Silvana Sorbetti
photography Giovanni Piperno
editing Paolo Petrucci, Roberta Cruciani
with the collaboration of Alessia Gherardelli, David Tomasini
assistant director and second operator Sebastiano Mazzillo
sound Max Gobiet, Daniele Maraniello, Marco Saveriano
music Rocco De Rosa, Canio Loguercio, Alessandro Murzi
voce off written with Maurizio Braucci, Paolo Vanacore
read by Sebastiano Mazzillo
produced by Pirata M. C., Parallelo 41, Point Film
with Bianca Film, Ipotesi Cinema
produced by Antonella Di Nocera, Agostino Ferrente, Donatella Francucci, Giovanni Piperno
with the support of Pasta Garofalo
in collaboration with Ananas, Blue Film, Fondazione Bideri
with the financial support of REGIONE CAMPANIA Assessorato Al Turismo E Ai Beni Culturali, FILM COMMISSION REGIONE CAMPANIA
sviluppo progetto e organizzazione Antonella Di Nocera
italian distribution ISTITUTO LUCE – CINECITTA’
nazionality ITALIAN
year of production 2013
shooting format HD, DVCAM, SUPER 8
projection format DCP
Maybe time doesn’t exist. This is a popular belief, a superstition, a good luck charm, a trick, a song. You spend your time imagining, waiting, and then, all of a sudden, you spend it just remembering. So will the beautiful things arrive? Or have they already happened?
We compare four lives in a Naples of 1999 – full of hope, and then today, in a totally paralyzed Naples.
Four Neapolitan youngsters give an insight into the burden of becoming adults: Fabio and Enzo, two twelve year-old boys, still children… And Adele and Silvana, two little women of fourteen… Four gazes full of sadness, humor, ingenuity, cynicism, fear and beauty.
But even then, in ’99, when we realized “Interview with my mother”, a documentary on fragmented adolescents in Naples, our four protagonists wondered how they imagined their future: we responded with eyes radiant with that special light, still vivid at that age, as entities still able to dream “the beautiful things”…
But at the same time those eyes were filled with superstitious disenchantment. Perhaps because catastrophes are always round the corner in their city. It’s a threat, if not an alibi, that makes Neapolitan’s lives remain immoveable, and yet they were aware of this condition due to their instinct and their education.
Ten years and ten mayors later, passing trough a “cultural renaissance” that attracted artists from all over the world, trough Gomorra depicted by Saviano, we came back filming them, following our protagonists during an arch of three years and in 2012, Fabio, Enzo , Adele and Silvana do not believe in beautiful things anymore: maybe they had already shipped by. Or maybe the beautiful things are not to be looked for nor in the future nor in the past, but in that particular present lived with the heart breaking beauty of waiting, of uncertain living day by day, of the struggling for a decent existence or should, we say, “resistance”, dignified: swimming sometimes against the current and sometimes letting oneself go.
BIOGRAPHY
Agostino Ferrente is director, producer and artistic director.
Giovanni Piperno is a photographer and filmmaker.