27° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL

LA CASA DEL PADRE

THE HOUSE OF THE FATHER
by Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva
Country: Italy
Year: 2009
Duration: 90'


THE HOUSE OF THE FATHER
The eighty-one-year-old architect Franco d’Ayala Valva, a disciple of the
American genius Frank Lloyd Wright, has spent more than fifty years
building houses around the world and has no intention of stopping.
From the rolling hills of Chianti, where he has been building his own
home for twenty years, to the desert of Arizona, where he lived in
Wright’s bizarre Taliesin community, we discover the life and the work
of the father through his son’s eyes. The two go all the way to Mexico
to discover whether the architect’s first buildings, which he constructed
half a century earlier, are still standing or not.

“A controversial figure, like his maestro, my father has devoted his life
to his work, possibly at the expense of his closest relationships. He is
now eighty years old and I have decided to look into his soul in order to
understand what he really has meant for me and what his life has been
about. I found myself silently filming this old man, who is young in
spirit, ceaselessly working on his projects. My aim was to understand
him by looking at both the father and the architect, exploring the hazy
border that exists between the two identities.”

Biography

film director

Sebastiano d'Ayala Valva

Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva (London, United Kingdom, 1978) was born to an Italian father and an English mother. He lives in Paris where in 2003, he graduated from the Institut d’études politiques. Since 2005, he wrote and directed several documentaries for French television: Transvestites Also Cry (2007), Angel (2009)Adapté(s) (2012), Performants Autrement (2016). His documentary La casa del padre (2009) was screened at Torino Film Festival. His last work Il primo moto dell'immobile (2018) has been acquired by ARTE and it will be shown on La Lucarne after its screenings at Torino Film Festival and IDFA.

FILMOGRAFIA

filmografia/filmography
Les travestis pleurent aussi (mm, doc., 2007), Angel (doc., 2008), La casa del padre (doc., 2009).

Cast

& Credits

regia, fotografia/
director, cinematography
Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva
soggetto/story
Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva,
Michael Smadja,
Stefania Bonatelli
montaggio/film editing
Ilaria Fraioli
musica/music
Riccardo Amorese,
Inti d’Ayala Valva
suono/sound
Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva,
Inti d’Ayala Valva
interprete/cast
Franco d’Ayala Valva
produttori/producers
Michele Milossi,
Federico Saraceni,
Sebastiano d’Ayala Valva
produzione/production
Settimarte, Fantastificio
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