Interview FLAVIA MASTRELLA and ANTONIOREZZA
Venice 2020: Samp and Interview with Directors Flavia Mastrella and Antonio Rezza
The Venice Film Festival was comparatively lucky this year. Falling between two major outbreaks of Covid-19, it was able to put on a physical event, albeit in a little restrained form. Aside from the Main Competition and other awarded sections like Horizons (Orizzonti), Venice VR Expanded, Short Films and Critics Week, there were the sidebar sections, in particular the Venice Days section, which also gave a prize (this year to The Whaler Boy (Kitoboy) by Philipp Yuryev from Russia) and a non-competing selection called Venice Days Special Events. This contained a selection of films that were mainly from Italy but other countries too. Among these was the Italian film Samp, directed by Flavia Mastrella and Antonio Rezza.
Samp is a professional killer who is also suffering from psychological disorders that he tries to cure with music. After randomly disposing of his mother, before ranting about her superficiality and how she somehow had failed him, he visits a powerful crime boss who commissions him to start doing the same to ordinary people. In his journey through Puglia he encounters people who lead a natural life, others in search of their origins, is paid by a pedestrian guarantor, meets poetic figures, and a peculiar musician with whom he seems to form a genuine friendship. He even falls for various problematic women who make him further lose his mind and sense of reality. Discovering a little humanity is something that will also have consequences for his mission.
The filming of Samp began nineteen years ago and ended in 2020 with the characters seen to age along the way, like the directors. Filming took place in Puglia, an appropriate backdrop for a land with archaic traditions, countered by a modernity filled with violence as a result of economic power. The directors consider Samp as a film with the pace of a journey and the dynamics of a performance. The stark colour images enliven the action and there seems to be more bullets fired here than even John Woo's Hard Boiled (1992). The frantic pace barely slows down, only when Samp briefly pauses to monologue, justify his actions or falls in love again. The insanity of what is projected in such a bizarre and anarchic way can be compared to Luis Bunuel at his most extreme. It is a road movie that shatters the script and captures the locations and actors in the moment, a metaphor for contemporary schizophrenia, a cultural disintegration without perspective
In their thirty-three years of working together, Flavia Mastrella and Antonio Rezza have made six feature films, various television programmes and many short and medium-length films, as well as thirteen plays for the theatre. The co-current theme of their films is preoccupied with involuntary communication. All their works have been predominantly conceived, produced and realized in every detail by the directors themselves and they have had retrospectives of their work broadcast on the TV channel TELE+ in 1997, and also by RAI 3 in October 2000 and October 2002. In 2018 Antonio was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the Venice Biennale and in 2019 they were both awarded with the Golden Rose from La Milanesiana. When they are not working together, Flavia does sculpture and photography (exhibited in many museums) and Antonio Rezza writes published romantic literature.
During this year’s 77th Venice Film Festival edition in early September, both directors kindly agreed to an interview by e-mail.
Interview with Samp directors Flavia Mastrella and Antonio Rezza
Camera Lucida: This is your sixth feature film in a 30-year career that has encompassed Television, shorts and medium-length films. Just how difficult is it to get a film financed and is it getting harder?
Flavia Mastrella: Escoriandoli (our first movie) was the only film we shot with a producer. It was an interesting experience but we soon realized that it was impossible to replicate it. The production pressures had too much impact on our artistic choices. Almost all producers impose harmless visual languages and they believe they know what the audience wants to see, that’s the reason why films produced and distributed in Italy are all the same. In 1996 the Italian cultural landscape was still lively, but soon after producers and independent distributors started disappearing and Italian directors - those who had something to say - began to struggle. Now Italian cinema is downsized to a handful of directors, who manage to get funding for film but most of them are almost invariably unable to distribute it, for political reasons. A recent example is “La Mafia non è più quella di una volta” (The Mafia is no longer what it used to be) by Franco Maresco, a realistic overview of the cultural situation in Italy. We produce our films and use independent distribution channels, we are hungry for freedom. We are labelled naïve instead of being recognised as language investigators.
Antonio Rezza: For us, getting a budget is never the main issue. We can always sort something out. A budget is useful because it offers warranties to the film. Without that guarantee, we can’t start shooting. So we look for funders.
Camera Lucida: Do you in any way use your short films as a study for the potentials of production in your feature films?
Flavia Mastrella: Short films belong to our past. They were crucial in allowing us to develop a style. For us shooting is a necessity, an unstoppable motion.
Antonio Rezza: Absolutely not, they have a different poetics. Short movies are the result of an electrocution; they are electric shocks of short duration that make you regret the atmosphere.
Camera Lucida: How would you describe your films in terms of form and content?
Flavia Mastrella: I would call them antimovies: visual narratives that trap the body in the frame. The unusual movements and the voice of Antonio convey on an emotional level what we perceive on our skin. The protagonists in our films live metaphorical existences; others improvise for a few moments. We often describe the various aspects of power through reversed communication rules and the exasperation of everyday life.
Antonio Rezza: These films are invaded by a freedom that we could never do without. There is everything we want and too much of what we don't know. There is us, with our failure to compromise.
