FILM
Donato Sansone
Toronto International Film Festival 2018
‘BAVURE’
WORLD PREMIERE | France, 2018, 4 min
A humble paintbrush assumes unprecedented powers in this bravura display of eye-popping, mind-bending, and body-morphing ingenuity by the maverick Italian animator Donato Sansone.
Hey Donny, thanks for talking to TNC, how is everything going?
Thank you for writing to me. all right, I'm in Turin in my city and I'm busy with a bunch of different jobs.
This is going to be your World Premiere, are there any nerves ahead of the screening?
Yes, I'm calm but very curious to know if my short will like being that I no longer have the 'objectivity' to understand what I have done I expect others to tell me if it is or is not a good job. Very often when you are spending too much time on your short films you lose a bit of lucidity in understanding what is the result of your work, so hearing the comments and comments of other people helps me to understand what I have achieved
What does it mean to be screening Bavure at TIFF?
To present "bavure" at tiff means a lot from an artistic point of view, being a great festival of the most prestigious in the world can help to make my short film even in other events and can help to make it known
Tell me a little bit about Bavure, how did the film come about?
"bavure" is a short film born in my mind a bit 'of years ago', but I realized only now thanks to Nicolas Schmerkin and Autor de Minuit who produced it.
It's a short gestural that tries in some way to leverage more on the technique than on the content. With "bavure" I wanted to achieve something that resembled the pictorial gesture, the gestural creation of shapes through digitally simulated painting.
The theme that I have dealt with is rather universal: creation, the development of the human being until the encounter with unknown life forms, etc. I left the ending open to the mystery and the unknown making references to both 2001: A Space Odyssey, but also to "existenz" of Cronenberg with the gun "of meat" that shoots the alien, as well as a quote of Melies in the rocket that lands on the planet.
What was the most challenging part of making this film been?
The most difficult thing in the film was certainly the part about special effects, to compositing, is a very complicated technique that requires a lot of patience and a long work of assembling different video content.
Have you always had a passion for filmmaking?
I have always had a passion for cinema in a simple and natural as all the boys my age. I have never been obsessed with cinema in the sense that I did not see and I still do not see many films ... I had and I have a certain propensity for what is fantastic, surreal and supernatural both about cinema and other forms of expression, therefore, even in the cinema, my eyes have always been intrigued by the most 'fantastic' aspect of reality. As a kid I preferred to go and play football rather than watching movies from morning to night, so I've never been a keen user.
How much has your approach to filmmaking changed since your debut film?
My approach to things seems not to have changed at all since I started. I always have the same attitude the same spirit of playfulness in making short films and the same desire to have fun. Today like 15 years ago I still have the curiosity and the passion to create new things, to experiment with new possibilities of language and expressive techniques with the only difference that today I am more familiar with the technical use of the instruments. But the mental approach is the same as 15 years ago 'and this' when I made my first short film at the fine arts in Naples.
"I always have the same attitude the same spirit of playfulness in making short films and the same desire to have fun."
How would you describe Bavure in three words?
If I had to describe "bavure" in three words I would say that it is "a gestural short film" where the pictorial gesture of the creation and transformation of the elements is the main thing in the film
Do you have any advice or tips for any fellow filmmaker?
If I had to give advice to young people who want to do this job I would simply say to have fun and keep the attitude of never taking things too seriously, so as in life even in doing the short films. The game and the smile are the smartest things you can do to survive this reality with elegance.
And finally, what do you hope people will take away from this film?
I hope people find this film extremely beautiful and original and not trivial and boring.