Country: UK
Year: 1953
Duration: 28'
Gregor Samsa is a zealous traveling salesman who cares a lot about his job. And yet one morning he is unable to get up. His mother and his sister implore him and desperately call his father, but Gregor doesn’t open his door. Not even the arrival of his boss makes him leave his room. Samsa can’t walk anymore and he is behaving strangely; he has dreamlike visions. Once, when guests are visiting, Gregor manages to creep his way out of the room, but when his father sees him he throws apples at him. Gregor thus shuts himself up in his room, where all he can do is die in solitude.
Biography
film director
Lorenza Mazzetti
Lorenza Mazzetti moved to London right after WWII and studied at the Slade School of Fine Arts. Between 1952 and 1953, she stole some school equipment and film and secretly made her first short, K, which introduced her to London’s movie world. In a certain sense, the movie anticipated the Free Cinema manifesto, which Mazzetti herself signed in 1956 with Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz. Thanks to the support of Denis Forman, the director of the British Film Institute, and with the help of people such as Anderson himself, she shot the medium-length Together (1956), with which she participated at the first Free Cinema screenings and at the Cannes Film Festival, where she received a Mention au film de recherche. After returning to Italy, she next dedicated herself to writing and published the autobiographical novel The Sky Falls, with which she won the 1962 Viareggio Prize, and which was followed by Rage (1963) and Uccidi il padre e la madre (1969). At the same time, she also dedicated herself to journalism, collaborating with the journal “Vie Nuove;” to theater, founding and directing the Puppet Theatre in Rome; and to painting. In 2014, she published Diario londinese.
FILMOGRAFIA
K (cm, 1954), Together (mm, 1956).
Declaration
film director
“For a while I had wanted to make a short about Kafka and in particular about Metamorphosis. I chose the exterior location. I asked a few friends from university if they would be willing to play a part and I secretly launched the project. […] I convinced myself that I was a director and that I didn’t need any lessons. I adore cinema. In Florence, I saw the movies by Vigo, Rossellini and De Sica at a small film club. They were my entire visual world.”
Cast
& Credits
regia, sceneggiatura, montaggio/director, screenplay, film editing
Lorenza Mazzetti
soggetto/story
dal racconto/from the short novel La metamorfosi di/Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
fotografia/cinematography
Hamed Hadari
musica/music
Daniele Paris
suono/sound
Jacopo Treves
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Michael Andrews (Gregor Samsa), Claude Rogers (il padre/father), Mary Rava (la madre/ mother), Hilary Morris (la sorella/sister), Jacob Lowensberg (il principale/boss), Walter Bloor (l’ospite/guest)
produzione/production
The Slade School of Fine Art University College of London
contatti/contacts
Vittorio Sclaverani
vittorio.sclaverani@gmail.com
Lorenza Mazzetti
soggetto/story
dal racconto/from the short novel La metamorfosi di/Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
fotografia/cinematography
Hamed Hadari
musica/music
Daniele Paris
suono/sound
Jacopo Treves
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Michael Andrews (Gregor Samsa), Claude Rogers (il padre/father), Mary Rava (la madre/ mother), Hilary Morris (la sorella/sister), Jacob Lowensberg (il principale/boss), Walter Bloor (l’ospite/guest)
produzione/production
The Slade School of Fine Art University College of London
contatti/contacts
Vittorio Sclaverani
vittorio.sclaverani@gmail.com
