Where does your passion for cinema come from? How did you know it was the right path for you?

My father has always been a movie fan, as a boy he was a projectionist and we had a 16mm projector in the house. As a child with my sister and my friends we used to watch movies in my parents’ kitchen, by projecting on a sheet or on the wall of the courtyard during the hot evenings of Puglia: it was a true wonder. More than a vocation, storytelling with images was a natural way of expressing myself.

What roadblocks did you face along your path?

Succeeding in filmmaking is difficult because it requires constant commitment and perseverance that ultimately discourages many. Over the years I have been fortunate enough to work in the broader world of audiovisuals, and filmmaking remains a form of storytelling that I try to give voice to when I can count on economic opportunity and the help of the crew that has been working with me for a few years.

What impact do you think the pandemic had on the future of the film industry?

Pandemic has accelerated a process that has been underway for some time, the abandonment of movie theaters for streaming platforms. Cinema used to be a shared collective ritual, now it is becoming, more and more, a practice where the story is enjoyed individually. I don’t know if this is good or bad, certainly changes are taking place throughout society that seem to be going in one direction: men and women, “individuals” of the last century are being transformed into “singularities” sometimes unable to relate to otherness except through the mediation of the virtual. The difference between the virtuality staged in the movie theater and the new virtuality of the physical memory of our devices (TV, computers and smartphones) lies precisely in the loss of the “body of the other.”

What or who has inspired the most your development as a filmmaker?

If I had to choose one name among many I would choose Sergio Leone. Of his films, I have always been fascinated by the ambiguity of the characters; in spite of titles that referred to the simplification of the world, typical of fairy tale narratives (Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America, The Good the Bad and the Ugly), in Leone’s films there are masks that move on a fine line, never quite good and never quite bad.

What is your personal project that you are most linked to? What do you hope for your future?

When I make movies I do it self-producing, so all the stories I have told are an important part of my experience. Perhaps the work I cherish most is a documentary made a few years ago dedicated to the musician Guy Portoghese. For the future, I hope to find a new story worth telling.

How do you feel about our Red Couch platform, designed for young filmmakers and their experimentation?

Cinema is still very young and its language from early on began to articulate itself through the experimentation of early filmmakers, which is why I think Red Couch’s work is remarkably in line with the original spirit of “cinema” and that the desire to cross new paths and not rest on the established and posturing structures of generalist cinema is desirable.

Click here to discover the complete biography of Enzo Piglionica and his works.