LOVERS GOES INDUSTRY 2022
CARMINE - CANTO DI STRADA
ORIGINAL TITLE: Carmine - canto di strada
ENGLISH TITLE: Carmine - Street chant DIRECTOR: Andrea Grasselli PRODUCTION COMPANY: Malfé Film and Onira with the collaboration of Collective OmVideo PRODUCERS: Enrico Giovannone, Matteo Tortone CO-PRODUCERS/CO PRODUCTIONS: Filippo Schiaffino, Rodolfo Lissia and Andrea Grasselli COUNTRY: Italy, Netherlands RUNNING TIME: 80' GENRE: Creative Documentary STATUS OF THE PROJECET: Development Goals at Lovers Goes Industry: Funds, Sales Agents/Distribution, Festival Screening DIRECTOR’S FILMOGRAPHY Zenerù (doc, 30’, 2021) Nostalgia for an unfamiliar state of being (doc, 73', 2019) Babel - Judgment day (web-doc, 150', 2019) Solemn triduum of the dead (doc, 14’, 2017) Incant - the statues auction (doc, 25’, 2017) Someone said: let them sleep (doc, 26’, 2015) Vortex outside (doc, 60’, 2014) The game (web-doc, 2013) ONE-SENTENCE SYNOPSIS The personalities of Armandə, a cross-dressed, photographer and sex worker, converse with his past and the changing of Carmine district in Brescia, immersing the audience in the fluidity of gender and community. SYNOPSIS The room is no longer like the damp and dirty one in the “Casa delle Bambole” (Doll’s House), a dilapidated apartment block inhabited entirely by the trans* world in Brescia in the 1970s. Today the renovated flat is clean and tidy. The welcome is always the same: to satisfy the pleasures of clients and lovers. Armanda and Armando lead their lives, harmoniously exchanging roles. Like a Virgilo in two voices, they accompany us through the district and introduce us to the people who live there; they go back in time to a distant past and reflect themselves in the transformations of our contemporary world. Armandəʼs duality has given her a privileged position to get to know the neighborhood and all its realities in greater depth, by day and by night. Since the end of the 1960s, when he moved to Carmine, Armandə began to work as a sex worker and to photograph the trans* world of Brescia, made up of clients, friends and colleagues. Her/his photographic heritage shows the artist able to express direct, raw and intimate emotions with ease; a personality that mirrors Nan Goldin in New York. Two identities united by a passion for photography and an adoration of sex. She and he entwined in an erotic, affective and loving embrace. "I put on make-up and disguise myself, and then become a man again in five minutes; without letting the actress leave completely to give away to the other me". (Armandə) Today we follow Armandə in his daily life, between the sacred and the profane, between prayers and prostitution, between perversions and bourgeoisie, between love and friendship. Through an emotional journey we discover that Armandə over time has acquired a central social role in the neighborhood community and in the trans* microcosm. The background context is that of the Carmine district, near by the well know Piazza della Loggia in Brescia; a fragmented and heterogeneous reality: a scene of immigration, crime, artists, solidarity, prostitution, vitality and drug dealing. People and friends huddle around her/him: they know that Armandə is the last outpost of that romantic and painful world of which they still have vivid memories. Armandəʼs fragile stability in the face of death, painfully formed in the past with the disappearance of numerous colleagues and in the present with a colleague suffering from ALS and his drug-addicted ex-wife, is now further undermined by her illness. Armanda and Armando must come together again to face it. How long can Armanda continue to profess her vocation? What will become of Armandoʼs photographic heritage? DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT Armandəʼs performative life shows that there is no single identity, that sex is not stable and that gender can be a constantly changing performance. Disguises, listening to oneʼs own body, emotions and carnal acts are portrayed in the film in a direct way: performative actions, expressions of the deepest desires, manifestations of the perversions of the human soul in an attempt to free itself from cultural factors. With references among Pirandello and Goffman, the intention is to present reality as a show, challenging the documentary practices and investigating the presentation of Self in everyday life. The themes of gender, sex working, urban gentrification, identities and self-representation are the structural background of the narrative of the protagonistʼs existence, in an emotional storytelling that investigates the dynamics of life through the passions, pulses and needs of Armandəʼs multiple lives. My intention is to research, learn about and restore, through a poetic use of audiovisual language, the experiences, gestures and acts of individuals and their communities. My practice is based on building bonds of mutual respect and esteem with the protagonists of the narratives. I pay particular attention to the interactions between people and the environment (as habitat), investigating the anthropological, sociological and psychological aspects that tell the story of human beings through their relationships, activities and rituals. The aim of my work is to immerse the audience in unusual and original life stories, capable of building bridges to reach other worlds. The need that drove me to plan this documentary stems from my interest in performance, which I consider a tool for poetic investigation of the human being. The events are told in the first person and the point of view accompanies the protagonist throughout the film. The visual approach aims to restore a close, deeper and non-invasive proximity to the protagonist. The 4:3 aspect ratio of the images shot today, in order to gather the protagonist more closely in his intimate world, will establish a strong dialogue with the Super8 images shooted by Armanda in the 1970s at “Casa delle Bambole” (Dollʼs House) and the VHS videos from the 1990s made during Armandoʼs many travels, among fragrances, foods and exotic loves. Building a timeless and non-chronological story, the sound design of the film will have the crucial role of overlapping the temporal layers, creating sound environments linked to the past on the images of the present-day and contemporary sounds on the archive images. I got to know Armandə, one of the most famous sex workers in Brescia, thanks to the artist Dorothy Bhawl who edited the book "Lei, Armando" (“Her, Armando”). The book contains images taken by Armandə that represent, with a poetic style reminiscent of Nan Goldin, moments of his working life between the 1970s and 1980s. With this documentary, I want to go deep into the personal story in order to deal with collective themes: the innermost drives and desires, listening to and researching oneʼs own body, reflecting on gender, performance and social role. I would like with this film to be able to show, as Judith Butler says, the complexity of gender, the limits of identification and that the gender is a constantly changing performance (the acts are continuously constituting the identity). In the contemporary world it is difficult, if not impossible, to organize the pieces of our lives into a perfectly and logically narrative universe. Armandə seems to have found his own possible solution in the fragmentation of the characters she/he plays. The necessity to tell and tell itself shows that the definition of the Self can never be definitive. Armando and Armanda, in this whirlwind of emotions, show us the daily challenge that concerns us all: the search for our own identities. DIRECTOR’S BIO Andrea Grasselli. Author, director and producer. He is one of the founders of the OmVideo collective. His research is aimed at experimenting different ways of storytelling the relationship between the individuals and their communities, exploring its most intimate dimensions and the sphere of collective rituality for immersing the audience inside of identities of the documentary's characters. He also cooperates with artists, performers and sound artists to create installations and exhibitions. PRODUCER’S BIO Enrico Giovannone. Editor and producer. He founded BabyDoc Film in 2007. He has produced and edited, among others, documentaries by Daniele Gaglianone, Andrea Deaglio, Enrico Verra. In 2016 he founded Malfé Film. Matteo Tortone. Filmmaker and producer. His last film Mother Lode (prod. France, Swiss, Italy), winner of the Eurimages Lab Award2019 and has premiered at 36° Settimana Internazionale della Critica at the 78° Mostra del Cinema di Venezia. Rodolfo Lissia. Filmmaker and producer. Director and producer, he began making video clips and short films from a young age, founding the film studio Rombo Productions in 2012. His works have been screened and won prizes at numerous international festivals, including the 49th WorldFest-Houston Film Festival, the Heartland Film Festival and the 32th Girona Film Festival. Filippo Schiaffino. Producer. Filippo worked at Groenlandia, a leading Italian production company, creator of award-winning films and TV shows produced in partnership with international players such as Netflix, Amazon and Sky, where he specialised in production, financing and budgeting. Together with Rodolfo Lissia, he co-founded the production company Onira, focusing on original and inspiring artistic voices with an international appeal. PRODUCTION COMPANY Malfé Film. In the first years of activity, the company focused in the area of creation documentaries: we developed and produced Tutti pazzi per Paolo by Donato Canosa (2018) (with the support of Piemonte Doc Film Fund) and Un uomo deve essere forte by Elsi Perino and Ilaria Ciavattini, presented at Festival dei Popoli 2019 and other international festivals, winner of the Female of change Award at Female Filmmakers Film Festival Berlin. In 2018 we collaborated with Vrai Vrai Film (France) for the production of Joel Akafou's Traverser (After the Crossing), presented at Berlinale 2020 and Vision du Réel. Our internationalization work has led us to present our projects at the most important international festivals and industry markets. Our interest in a cinema that explores the line between reality and fiction does not stop at creative documentaries: in 2017 we produced Bar Malfé, with the support of FCTP a self-produced fiction film and in 2019 we co-produced with Atacama Film and Ouverts the short film Zheng by Giacomo Sebastiani. The growth process of our company is based on the constant investment in the internationalisation of projects, both in the development of international collaborations and in the constant presence in international industry events. Over the years we have presented projects or participated in various capacities in: Industry Days in Turin, Milano FIlm Network, Mia, CPH Doc Market, When East Meet West, Thessaloniki Agora, Nebulae Doc Lisboa, Ventana Sur, European Film Market, Cinéma du Réel. Mother Lode by Matteo Tortone is a co-production with France and Switzerland, with the participation of RTS. It won the Eurimages Lab Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and had its world premiere at the 36th Venice International Film Critics' Week, before being presented at numerous international festivals. International sales of the film are handled by INTRAMOVIES. The soul of our work is the creative documentary, both because it is the field in which we have developed more skills and experience, and because we consider it a field of constant experimentation. We are therefore developing two projects by structured and acknowledged authors from Turin: I'm in Heaven, by Daniele Gaglianone (creative documentary for cinema) and Healing Trauma by Andrea Deaglio (documentary for TV). In addition to these two projects, we also developed a documentary by a young and promising author: "Carmine - canto di strada" by Andrea Grasselli. Onira. An independent film production studio focused on cinematographic works capable of bringing significant topics to the general public. Founded by Filippo Schiaffino and Rodolfo Lissia and based in Amsterdam (Netherlands), ONIRA's mission is to support original and inspiring artistic voices with an international appeal. Both Filippo and Rodolfo bring experience in production and directing, having worked on the development of several feature films - one through the production company Groenlandia, a leading Italian production company, the other through personal projects shown in numerous international festivals. OmVideo. A collective founded in 2011 by Giorgio Affanni and Andrea Grasselli, with the aim of researching through a poetic use of the audiovisual tools the experiences, the needs and the cultural practices of people and their communities, with a particular interest in the complex exchange between human beings and their environment. OṃVideo creates evocative and immersive documentaries, museum installations and multimedia products. The anthropological, sociological and psychological approach adopted narrates the human experience by focusing on people's relationships, practices, rituals and legends. |