Country: USA
Year: 1981
Duration: 87'
Ten years after they first met in the dreamy atmosphere of the Mediterranean Sea, Paul and Joan feel the stagnation of their relationship and decide to change their life in order to find again the warmth and happiness of the past. So they leave to be the keepers of a solitary ranch and they take with them their four-years-old daughter Sophie. On the one hand, Joan would like to be more independent, to have more freedom; on the other, the present let her down, so she finds a shelter in a world of fantasies and nostalgia.
Paul is also scared: he feels that he can’t relive the past but he’s frightened by the future. Anyway, he wants to preserve his relationship with Joan and Sophie. As a real obsession, the more he feels the distance between him and them, the more he wants to lock them up in his claustrophobic space. So he starts a frenzied recording of their reality: he keeps taking pictures of the woman and the kid, he records their conversations, almost as if he could stop every moment they spend together. When Joan decides to flee with Sophie, Paul will take another picture: of himself, alone.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala
Biography
film director
Yan Nascimbene
Yan Nascimbene was born in Neuilly, France, on the 3rd of April 1949, by Italian father and French mother. He grew up in Paris and ended his studies in Rome. He arrived in the United States in 1969 to study photography and painting, first at the School of Visual Art in New York and then at the California University, in David. After pursuing painting for many years, Yan Nascimbene wrote his first screenplay in 1978. Two years later, he wrote The Mediterranean. Cinema-wise he considers himself an autodidactic and he thinks he acquired a real competence about the medium only by working on The Mediterranean. At the moment he’s making another film.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala
Declaration
film director
In the winter of 1980, I was in the south of France and I was ending another of my short stories without a publisher. After I came back from the Unites States, a friend told me he found the story more “visual” than literary. So I started to consider in a more realistic way and without preconceptions, what until then was only a therapeutic self-confession. Driven by the support and the constant help of Tom Luddy, I decided to face that adventure in any way. I translated the story into English and I made it a screenplay. Working on the film was a new experience for me and I understood that it was the perfect chance. I used to dream about what was actually happening at the moment. John, my operator, put together the troupe and we got ready to shoot during summer. (…)
As for most of the debut works, this film is autobiographic in many ways, not only in the content but also in the structure. Minimal and the so-called “post-minimal” painting was my main interest in the last ten years and, even if a pictorial aesthetic can’t be directly applied to cinema, I tried to hand it over and adjust it to the needs of the cinema. I had never had a huge experience in cinema schools and I had shot no film before then, but I had to base my work on intuition. It was important for me to show something personal, instead of following specified procedures.
I don’t think that a certain kind of style could ne, in its essence, better than another one, but a film should reflect the economic support it has: a small production shouldn’t imitate a super-production. On the contrary, it could cover those areas that are ignored by big and mainstream productions. If the lack of funds is always a nightmare for independent directors, this sort of independence can be the main value: in can force them to make cinema grow, to take it from its traditional status, pushing it in braver and less rationally understandable stylistic fields. (…)
Once again, I want to say thank you to Tom Luddy, for his help in translating my speeches into action. At first, I was scared to see the magic of cinema disappear, destroyed by technology. Actually my fascination has become a close relationship with the details of cinema alchemy. At the moment I’m attracted to the ductility and the adaptability of the original idea, as it occurs in the different combination of image and sound. In the end, when the idea is still there and the audience responds, what happens is pure magic.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala – English translation Francesca Sala
Cast
& Credits
Director and screenplay: Yan Nascimbene.
Director of photography: John V. Fante (35mm, colore).
Music: Martin Bresnick.
Editor: Susan M. Slanhoff.
Sound: Dan Gleich.
Cast and characters: Conrad Selvig (Paul), Joan Parazette (Joan), Nodmie Nascimbene (Sophie), Stuart Schwarz (Greg), Julia Freffierg (postino), Ernie Fosselius (l'uomo del telefono).
Production company: John V. Fante e Yan Nascimbene.
Director of photography: John V. Fante (35mm, colore).
Music: Martin Bresnick.
Editor: Susan M. Slanhoff.
Sound: Dan Gleich.
Cast and characters: Conrad Selvig (Paul), Joan Parazette (Joan), Nodmie Nascimbene (Sophie), Stuart Schwarz (Greg), Julia Freffierg (postino), Ernie Fosselius (l'uomo del telefono).
Production company: John V. Fante e Yan Nascimbene.
