A conversation with Davide Mancori: in Ceccano with
"Tre mani di cinema"
Davide Mancori (cinematographer and producer) was vice
president of the Italian Association of Cinematographic Photography (A.I.C.),
of which he is currently cultural director. He is a member of the jury of the
David di Donatello Award.
Ciociaria
11/28/2017
Q: He is the
last "witness" of a family of authors of photography that has made
the history of Italian cinema: together with Giovanni Lupi, in an imaginary
dialogue with his father Sandro, he gave birth (it is appropriate to say) the
volume "Tre mani di cinema", in which he traces the history of his
family and not only, through anecdotes and memories, all accompanied by 65
splendid exclusive images. How was this publishing project born?
DM: There was
a curious, explosive combination of factors that cleverly combined my profound
willingness to out a heavy internal burden, mixed together with the reordering
of an enormous wealth of images that belonged in part to my father and his
family, as well as me, cataloging that was taking place at that moment very cathartic.
The spark from which the writing was born was the suggestion by a friend, the
promoter and financier of the book Riccardo Marconi, who was aware of the
importance of all the photographic material in my hands. With Giovanni Lupi we collected
many ideas and "filtered" many of them purifying them from spurious
narrating a grotesque and surreal context to give the book an ironic lightness.
If I had written it myself I would have already received several complaints.
Q: In the
book, as mentioned, there are suggestive images, taken from the sets of films
that have made the History of our Cinema: which, among these, do you prefer and
why?
DM: Perhaps
the images that excite me the most are those that, in large format and often on
two sides, are included in the final part of the story.
They were taken from the epic colossal sets "GENGIS
KHAN", released in the States as "GENGIS KHAN, STORY OF A
LIFETIME", a film never released in Italian cinemas. They are images of
"cinema" not of a film. These are moments in the history of
cinematography, the last ones in which an Italian production company is
involved in a blockbuster in co-production with the USA. The cost of production
of the film exceeded, in 1992, the ceiling of 55 billion of the old coinage. At
the end of each day of the six months of filming, carried out in the various
republics of the C.S.I. just born of the dissolution of the USSR, we counted over
two hundred people in the hotel's dining room. They were Italian and American
technicians and workers who, every morning, joined those Kazakhs, Uzbeks,
Kighs, Turkmen or Chinese, depending on the area where production was involved.
In practice, there were over three hundred people on the set each day, and
twelve cameras were distributed across the various units. The images in the
book only partially describe this "cyclopean" way of making films.
Q: As a child
you breathed the air of the set, so much so that in the movie "7 Dollars
on Red" (directed by Alberto Cardone) you officially make your debut on
the big screen, as a very young actor: your memories?
DM: A memory,
alas, dramatic that has accompanied my thoughts for a short time. I was
impersonating a child who, on a farm in the far west, was kidnapped by my mother
while I was busy warming myself next to a fireplace. In action, one of the
protagonists, put me in the hands of a big gunman on a horse that immediately
ran away from the scene. The cries and my screams, preserved in original in the
English version of the film, were not fictional.
Q: What can
you tell us about your debut, this time, behind the camera?
DM: The first
distant experiences as "helping an assistant camera operator" (in
fact they made me do everything - even the coffee - without allowing me to
touch the camera) was in the film by Giorgio Stegani "DISPOSTA A TUTTO",
played by Eleonora Giorgi and Bekim Fehmiou in a terrible and eventful Venice
that came the poignant vibrations of Gemona that collapsed in the second phase
of the earthquake of September 1976. Thanks to my father Sandro, I worked on
"PICCOLE LABBRA" (director Mimmo Cattarinich), "YETI" (F.
Kramer), "AMORI STELLARI" (B.Albertini) and "SBIRULINO"
(F.Mogherini). They were films considered to be B movies. The first real
important film as an assistant operator was in 1982 with an Italian-American
production entitled "SHE" directed by Israeli director Avi Nesher. It
was a small blockbuster.
The first works as DOP came from television since 1989. I
have shot many documentaries in dozens of places in the worl, even extreme
ones, filming from Longyearbyen in the Svalbard archipelago, to Puerto Williams
in the most extreme Patagonia, various deserts, Andean peaks, steppes and many
particular places.
Q: The film that bears the signature of
the Mancori family to which it is more linked?
DM: The film
I'm most attached to is "HEY AMIGO, C'E' SABATA, HAI CHIUSO",
directed by Frank Kramer. My father Sandro Mancori was in charge of
photography, my uncle Mario Sbrenna at the camera. In that film is enclosed a
cache of shots, perhaps the most beautiful, showing in all its pride the ELIOS
establishments and the entire western village built by Alvaro Mancori. Never
did any theater in Europe possess the characteristics of the village that my
uncle lent to Sergio Leone for free for the first film of the dollar triad
"FOR A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS". Thanks to an incapable and ignorant
political class of that splendid village, which today could have been a great
cultural museum available to all, only dust and memories remain.
Q: In addition
to cinematographic photography, you also take care of production: what can you
tell us about it?
DM: I am the
owner of Jinko Communications LTD, a foreign company that operates mainly
abroad. For Italy I have produced several works on behalf of RAI and Mediaset,
however, referred to in a distant past. Among the film productions I mention
"THE MARK", which I also filmed, produced in coproduction with the
Filmax of Barcelona back in 2003 and several other small documentary
productions. Jinko Communications is currently preparing "BOARDERS"
for a co-production with Kino Film in Moscow, DOR FILM in Kishnew and Castel
Film in Bucharest. The direction will be by Carlo Nero. Among the performers
Franco Nero, Vanessa Redgrave and perhaps Juliette Binoche and Nastassja
Kinski. Fingers crossed! If the film starts, I will shoot it in 35mm film. The
idea was liked by all the project partners.
Q: What it
means (artistically) for you to be today the last representative of a family in
a certain sense "epic", masterful example of how the nobility of high
craftsmanship has marked the history of a Cinema (strictly in film) that today,
unfortunately , does not exist anymore?
DN: The cinema
from which I come, was made of punctuality, expertise, knowledge, humility,
rigor has been replaced by film productions that have, as a unique ambition,
the electoral bases and fraud financing with the highlighting of distortions
that have brought with them the extinction of real producers, and also that of
machine operators mortified by self-proclaimed self-appointed directors. My
speech on this is very long and I would certainly fall into a disgraceful
controversy. Better stop it here and hope for a future change that brings the
seventh art to the center of attention considering that, until the very politic
"Article 28" has been created, that more than 400 films were made
every year by the Italians "seen" in international markets. Today no
one wants them anymore for obvious and justifiable reasons.
No comments:
Post a Comment