After the official opening of Küstendorf 2016 and the screening of Matteo Garrone’s film Tale of Tales, the director held a Q&A session for students and other guests of the Festival.
Garrone based his latest movie on a collection of novels written by the Neapolitan poet Basile in the 17th century. The book consists of 50 tales, he found 20 to be ideal for the film, but had to limit the plot to only three. The director highlights the magical basis of the film, which then evolves into realism and underlines that the characters represent all of us. They are flawed, slaves to their defects and driven by desire which is pushed to extreme.
Garrone’s work is marked by visual. This film is particularly inspired by Goya’s drawings – the director found exactly the atmosphere he was looking for – humanity, a combination of realism and fantasy elements, the funny and the sad. He talked in great length about the very process of screenwriting and the shooting of a film. What he does is he shoots a part and then watches and edits the film, to change the direction of the film once he goes back to the filming. This film is more structured than his other work due to technical reasons. It was also the first time that he was not behind camera because he wanted to have a more clear perspective of the whole process. In his words, the most difficult part of the filming was the digital aspect of special effects, since the outcome was only visible after longer periods of time. He compared making a film with painting – you are blind, you cannot have any idea what it would be like in the end.
Garrone also talked about the process of emotions directing the way of the film. He likes to shoot in sequence, which he describes as luxury, since he can listen to the actors and watch them form a kind of “marriage” with the characters.
The director closed the session by saying that to watch what happens behind camera, take something and make it a part of a film – it is life itself.