Cinema: the young talents and mentors of “In progress”

«VI invite you to consider this moment as absolutely extraordinary.” Carlo S. Hintermann, director, producer and screenwriterauthor of The Book of Vision and former assistant to Krzysztof Zanussi and Terrence Malick, for some years now he has had a new role on his curriculum: “Mentor”. Right now he is practicing it in the company of young authors Agnese Làposi and Radiana Basso, 28 and 31 years old. The object of reflection is Radio Bowelsa project that could, tomorrow, become a film, the story of a border story (Agnese is Swiss and brings her grandfather’s precious archives as a dowry, at the helm of an oil company in Ticino, Radiana is Italian and a frontier worker) and the story of an era and a region «shaped by oil».

With Hintermann, Michelangelo Frammartino, Special Jury Prize in Venice in 2021 with The hole, Leonardo Di Costanzo, author of Still airDavid and Flaiano for the screenplay in 2022, e Alessandro Rossetto (Domino effect, Little Homeland)form the Mentor pool of “In progress” development laboratory, directed by Alice Arecco and Luca Mosso and founded in 2013 within the Milano Film Network, a network that brings together the Milanese film festivals.

Today they arrived at the last meeting with the young authors of the 14 selected projects (out of 105 arriving from all over Italy and 34 are projects by authors). Together with the tutors, figures with the most diverse experiences (there are producers, cinema organizers, critics, festival directors and selectors, clike Gaia Formenti, Raffaella Milazzo, Giulio Sangiorgio) propose (and judging by the results achieved in past editions, they succeed) to fill a void: accompany future authors in the most complex phase, the development of the filmwhen many get lost, someone derails.

Here all cinema has the right of citizenship, from fiction to documentary to experimental projects, as long as they are “unformatted”. «In film schools we teach to go from the people who inspire us to the characters. I think the opposite,” explains Hintermann. «Conquest is when the characters become people. And it is extraordinary, because from then on we will be guided by them, leaving them the space necessary to find their own language».

All 14 projects, completed the development of the creative idea, put the artistic-production dossier on paper (synopsis, subject, treatment, possible moodboardscollage of images that serves to show the project in a visual format) will land at the Venice Lido where, in collaboration with the Giornate degli Autori, a jury of industry professionals will decide the winners on 2 and 3 September. The prices? Scholarships, archival materials, legal advice, technical means, and 5,000 euros from the Network. But the greatest reward is to return from Venice with a producer. It happens often.

And the story of this laboratory also has other successes: it comes from In progress Diego Scano, one of the assistant directors of the series We Are Who We Are and of Queer by Luca Guadagnino, a set recently closed at Cinecittà, e a film that took shape at In progress in the 2021 edition will open the Giornate degli Autori: The oceans are the real continents by Tommaso Santambrogio (then at the cinema on August 31).

The film as a therapeutic journey

Michael Petrolini, 31, for his project, Mater, the producer already has it, it’s Francesco Cibati, they’ve known each other since they were 16, the meeting on the soccer fields. Together they work with Leonard DiCostanzo at the story of Michael’s two mothers, natural and adoptive, and his third mother, Valentina, his sister, adopted like him, who recently had a baby. «Three worlds, three women, of which during the workshop I began to want to know more. I understood that I needed to know my biological mother, but also my adoptive mother, because there are many issues that I have never faced with her: my story has led me to build walls. Valentina, my adoptive sister, is the mirror of my past: she is following a path like the one I did, she has decided to request the adoption dossier from the State, which can only be consulted at the age of 25. And I’m helping her.”

Among the things that Michael discovered when the folder that contained his past was delivered to him is his mother – Maria Antonietta, from Benevento – and there is his father – Tunisian. “For a while I thought I was Brazilian,” he says. «My biological mother is now homeless in Turin, she has found accommodation in a tent at the terminus of 3, we have resumed contact. The dossier told me something else: I have brothers and sisters and my father didn’t recognize me. Working on the project for this film, I understood the coldness with which I was treated: you apply, an email arrives after a few months, you go to court and that folder explodes in your face. In the end I think what I’m doing is a therapeutic journey, the film is my way of facing my story».

Undomesticated projects

“The authors get involved together with their film,” explains Hintermann. I see it at every meeting, the growth of the project goes in parallel with the personal growth of the students. And Mentors too! I’ve been doing it for a long time, and the feeling of giving life to something new affects everyone, even us. But I think the only real help we can give these young authors is to respect the initial request. Every film starts from an urgency: it’s that fundamental idea – which can even become an obsession, something we live with day after day – that we must remain faithful to. That’s the only way they are born eccentric, strong, urgent, original projects. Training courses often tend to standardize projects on something already seen, to tame the idea and make it pre-digested. The world we are confronted with is so cynical, the way of making films, and also of seeing them, is always channeled into categories, the anxiety of judgment is continuous, the relationship with the mystery that every form of art brings with it has been lost. I try to make sure that these kids aren’t afraid of the mystery, or to go into parts of themselves that they haven’t yet explored. Each film is an opportunity to get to know each other».

The opportunity to Federica Quaini, 37 years old, is entitled In the belly of the wolf: to tell a story of child abuse this graduate in Letters from the Cattolica in Milan, with an actress career behind herdecided to try to “cross over” and chose fairytale filter, Little Red Riding Hood. «In reality, more than a reworking of the fairy tale it is becoming a demolition of the fairy tale» tells us the filmmaker who with her latest short film won the Zavattini award and arrived in competition in Turin. For this project, her first “long” one, she made the entire philological journey that led her back over the centuries, up to «the first version of Little Red Riding Hood.

It’s about a complex fairy tale, which has changed over time, which has often been a mirror of society, whose protagonists have changed – the wolf, the little girl, the witch. And now I’ve gotten to the point where I’m wondering who the wolf is. With Michelangelo Frammartino we are working on the idea that the little girl is condemned to relive the trauma, and that the wolf is actually a loopsa mechanism that repeats itself ad infinitum, from which to emerge not thanks to the hunter, but to a female huntress».

The historical role of the women of Filicudi

An exploration of the feminine is also to Miriam Gili, 36, who for Caretta caretta has chosen a first aid center for turtles on the island of Filicudi as an observation point. «There a marine biologist, Monica Blasi, founded a real emergency room 10 years ago (filicudiconservation.com). A small story that tells a bigger one» explains Miriam, who studied law with a focus on criminology, then at the Naba, New Academy of Fine Arts, a year in Cuba for a Masters in alternative cinema.

“Autopsies revealed that turtle organs are filled with plastic. Everything for me started from this, plastic entered our world and our metabolism, microplastics were found in women’s placenta. This biologist challenges the sea and resists in a difficult place. She made me think about the historical role of women in the Aeolian Islands, studied by Macrina Marilena Maffei, anthropologist and scholar of marine culture who is following my project. Filicudi is “the island of white widowers” because during the winter the women move to the mainland to take their children to school and only the men remain on the island. For this reason, women who chose to go by sea were considered witches, because they ventured into a world that shouldn’t have been theirs: the sea belonged to men, the land to women”.

Mysticism rediscovered

Also Maria Gimenez Cavallo, 31, grew up between New York and New Jersey, aims to blur the borders. «I’m American, but I’m also European, my father is Spanish and I lived in Paris for a long time. I arrived in Italy for the love of cinema, the cinema of Michelangelo Frammartino and Pietro Marcello. I worked with Pietro for 3 years, about Michelangelo and his The four times I wrote my thesis. Now my tutor is Carlo. I feel that he understands the project to the core. In his cinema I find there is a mystical relationship between man and nature, the same one I’m looking for too ».

Mary’s project Piglet childtells of the very special relationship between a woman and a little pig. «In the cinema that I would like to make, the barriers between humans, animals and plants are confused, to the point of creating a flow between species. When I was 17, I saw Au hazard Balthazar of Robert Bresson, and of the donkey, the protagonist, on the screen it seemed to me that I could glimpse the soul. Since then I have been pursuing this dream, of a post-humanist, pantheistic cinema.

This is my second long project, the first is now in editing: I filmed The metamorphoses of Ovid in Sardinia, with the masks, the carnival, Jupiter who becomes a bull, Daphne who transforms herself into a tree. I grew up in the suburbs, an hour away from New York, in childhood I suffered, I missed nature, but I also felt I had need for traditions, rituals. When I discovered them in Italy it was true love. The pagan mysticism linked to the land that exists in Sardinia conquered me. I did a reverse migration, I’m aware of it. My great-grandparents were from Avellino, my mother teaches chivalrous epics of the Renaissance, I grew up with the verses of Boiardo and Ariosto, with the stories of a magical world. This laboratory is also a small miracle. There are masters here who try to understand instead of telling you howme to do things”.

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