SKRIEN
Article published on SKRIEN a Dutch magazine about cinema
UNA BALLATA BIANCA is despite the minimal budget a musical, visual and textual beautifully composed, elusive(intangible) film about life and death. Many questions and little answers, exactly what director Stefano Odoardi had in mind. ‘The public should attain into a meditative mood and yet during the film start to think about this theme.’
Wendy Koops
Stefano Odoardi about UNA BALLATA BIANCA
‘This is a film without compromises’
Little glass pots filled with old black and white pictures: the past of an elder couple that reticently moves around each other in an old-fashioned apartment with a wonderful patterned tiled floor. Engraved habits are dictating a loose choreography. Their thoughts which are carried by voice-overs reveal turmoil/unrest and sadness behind the seeming harmony. The women will die soon and they try to resign in this each in their own way. Inert they are doing their daily things knowing it will be for the last time. The pictures in the pots, which later appear to be filled with a red eatable substance which is thrown on a plate by the slightly short of breath man, seems to be an attempt of the woman not to be forgotten. ‘That’s the biggest fear’, says a classical sculptured, continuously recurring young woman in the next shot.
On all sorts of mysterious places – a grand mountain, ruins, a bridge interrupted by a big gap, a withered sunflower field and streets and stairs in a small village – she appears. Sometimes she speaks directly towards the camera, sometimes she performs actions. There is not always a clear connection with the surrounded scenes, but now and then there is. For example when the old women drops a glass and just before it touches the ground, there is a cut where you see pottery smashed to pieces by the younger women’s hand. Or she is standing in front of a magnificent fresco of a Madonna with child and she gazes at the child, just after a shot in which the man is musing on his wife, does she still blames him he couldn’t give her children? Like this, although not all phrases and situations are so tangible, there are enough points of identification in order to be taken by the film. It also is not the intension that everything is understandable. The young women is an expression of all indescribable dimensions of life and death, according director Stefano Odoardi.
‘The film exists trough the inner and personal experience of the public’
STILL LIFE
The consistent choice for static camera-positions is infused by the form-choice for a pictorial still life as a metaphor for live and death. ‘I wanted to approach this theme, and especially the death, with an objective distance. I was looking for a point of view in which I could observe the actions of the elder couple in real-time without manipulation or filtering. This is a film without compromises. Sober , it is what it is: fragile and authentic.’ The other metaphors he is using (sunflowers, a stork, places where the young woman is) he doesn’t want to explain, this goes against nature, according to him. ‘Metaphoric language is a form of expression that actually is based on doubts about life and reality. The film evokes many questions, without answering them. Because of this the public is free to look for their own answers or perhaps it starts to doubt even more. In this way the film is completely open for a direct communication with the viewers. The film even exists trough the inner and personal experience of the public.
From reactions on filmfestivals in Asia, America and Rotterdam becomes clear the audience experiences it also this way. ‘Someone said that on a certain point he wasn’t really listening or looking anymore, it became a personal experience. During the film people start to ask themselves questions about life. This is beautiful, because that is what the film is about. You get into a kind of meditative mood, another dimension.’
Since then he has been persuaded his film is not only intended for a small public. People tell that they want to see more of this type of films. Distributors should be more courageous. There wasn’t a big audience for Pasolini’s films before, still they were distributed by people that really believed in cinema. Nowadays distributors think people wants to be entertained, but they are wrong: people wants to experience life. Film is a wonderful medium to arouse emotions, it makes reality more beautiful and it adds dimensions.’ Unfortunately the film in the Netherlands gets a restricted release.
SPACE
After he graduated at the Roman Art Academy, the Italian came to Holland to start to study at the Amsterdam postacademy DasArts. There he was involved with performance-art and installations. ‘My paintings already were a sort of installations, they always were very big so that they created a space. At DasArts I could develop this element, but I also started to make short films.’ His inclination to experiment, especially on a visual level, has to do with his background as well as his aversion of narrative films. ‘I think it is too limiting to tell a story, certainly when it is linear. For me a story is much stronger when it goes from one situation to another.’
With subsidy suppliers in Italie nor in the Netherlands he wasn’t very fortunate.
The Dutch Film fond didn’t see anything in the script he wrote together with theatre writer Kees Roorda on who’s play the film is inspired. This is understandable he say’s, because a script is always a limitation of the power of a film which uses the visual language to express itself.’ As an example he calls the scene in which the couple takes farewell: They are both standing in the shadow of a three, then she laboriously walks away on a path into the depth, while he is waiting. That scene takes four minutes and is very meaningful. But that scene is hard to capture on paper.’
From the beginning he got support from the productioncompagny ‘De Produktie’. Via director of photography Tarek, with whom he works together since his first film, Moskito Film joined: they helped with light and production and they provided the equipment. Cast and crew worked for free, at least to have a share in the film. The old couple is played by Nicola and Carmela Lanci, Odoardi’s shoemaker and his wife. A particular couple, both in their eighties and married since sixty years. They were filmed in their own house. Furthermore he could snare some big names from the Italian cinema. The splendid Italian voice-overs of this pair has been talked into by Sergio Fiorentini (also the voice –over in Nostalgia van Andrej Tarkovski, 1983)and Gordana Miletic. The actress Simona Senzacqua plays the young woman. Special is the soundtrack from the famous composer Carlo Crivelli, known for his work with the Taviani-brothers and Zhang Yuang. ‘I showed him a rough version and he gave his assent. At the presentation of the Academy Award, they asked Morricone who will be his continuator/successor and he anwered; Crivelli.
‘Distributors think people wants to be entertained, but they are wrong: people wants to experience life’
UNUSUAL
Later Odoardi got another twenty thousend euro in Italy, with this money he bought Fuji film which was far beyond its durability date. With this he took a risk, but fortunately it went well. ‘I wanted to create an unusual image, something to which our eyes are not used.’ For this he chose the greenish atmosphere of the first colour photographs. We have experimented for a long time with a laboratory in order to make those barely saturated colours. It succeeded eventually by printing colour-film on black and white-film. It was complicated and risky, but we managed to do it in the old-fashioned chemical way, while with the computer we couldn’t achieve what I was looking for. The effect is real and unreal at the same time. It brings you immediately to another level.
Also the eventual editing has been done with original film material, on the basis of a list with cuts from a digital montage.
The film ends in an atmosphere of acceptance and serenity. For Odoardi this expresses the infinity of life, although this wasn’t planned in advance. ‘While shooting, the film guided itself this way, maybe because the elder couple is daily confronted with the approaching death and they took me into this eternal dimension.’
