Sotto casa, animation movie with Reno

Reno is one of the main characters in Sotto Casa, Animation movie created by Daniele Baiardini and others students of Scuola di Animazione di Chieri

sottocasa_trailer from daniele baiardini on Vimeo.

http://sottocasa-animadok.blogspot.com/

Is the river drying up?

Photo by Filippetti

In this hot summer,while the documentary project has been pitched in Cyprus, and while the water seems to disappear from our waste land, an editorial project is born and will support the documentary production. Photographers and writers will gather together on the pages of a picture book and will face the river and its people.
Rosalia Filippetti and Fabrizio Esposito are the first to walk along on the banks.

In the Waste Land with Babydoc

Not alone in the Waste Land: Babydocfilm will follow Colombre in this documentary adventure.

Two new scene realized with Andrea Parena and Francesca Frigo in the shantytown.

- Darius building a seesaw with a rope fished out from the river
- Darius fooling around in the wasteland near the dilapidated tower




Babydoc won Donatello's David with Daniele Gaglianone Rata Nece Biti...a good chance to celebrate: Happy Easter!

Panoramic views and sounds: the special spring session

Special recording session with Mirko Guerra(sound designer) and Toni Del Popolo (360 photographer)

Presenting the characters: Reno

Reno lives on the bank like a hermit, where the road ends and there’s nothing but stones and water. He was evicted from his apartment in town and has been sheltering for three years in a shack hidden underneath the city landfill site. Today Reno is the river’s guardian, because if I weren’t here everyone would come here to tip rubbish illegally. He reads the Bible and talks with God, he can read the ways of the water, the behaviour of birds and has a map of all the factories polluting the river. Reno lives here as if he were the last man on Earth, a living example of an independent modest life after the apocalypse. His silent mystical presence, so far removed from the latest news, puts the efforts of the men who further down the river toil to transform the landscape into a different perspective. Reno looks at the diggers unperturbed. The great changes planned don’t scare him at all.

A river of life

Elena Perlino free-lance photographer reading life above the water living with shanty town dwellers.

Presenting the characters: Frida

Frida is 29 years old; she is driving her car on the bridge in the rush-hour traffic. She checks her rear-view mirror, nervously smoking a cigarette and moving her head in quick jerks. She is suffering from withdrawal. If I don't smoke heroin every day I feel sick, not just a bit sick: very, very sick she writes on a blog about her life as an addict. Every night after working as a clerk Frida walks down a path running behind the tower. Journalists have christened this area Tossic Park (“tossico” is the Italian for “junkie” – translator’s note), an open-air cut-price market for drugs. Currently it is policed by the Army, troops patrol the area, stopping anyone caught there for identification purposes. This is not a problem for Frida, the drug-scene has moved a little further down the river. A Senegalese guy is waiting for her under another bridge, wearing a hoodie and holding a bag of white in his hand. Ten euros are enough to secure her daily dose.
With each new invasion Frida moves further along the river seeking out her trusted contacts. She is at ease in the scrub along the riverbanks, far from family worries, a boring job and the prospect of a “normal” life. On the river Frida is alone with herself and her demon. Here she doesn’t have to care about the future and she can let go: I want to shoot up until I die, here is her motto.
But the arrival of the military will soon mark the end of the drug market on the river banks bringing Frida the chance to free herself of her habit, to start again far away from here, leaving the mud, the scrub and this damned river behind.

A long winter

This winter seems incredibly long.
The land is still frozen and the people on the river are suffering



But the cold has stimulated our minds and produced fresh energy. We are planning to organise an event to accompany the documentary that will deepen and enhance our work.

We will invite photographers to come with us when we shoot. We then plan to organise a public exhibition of their work and perhaps the publication of a book.

Musicians will be invited to write music inspired by the main theme of the documentary: the river and the heart of darkness...of the city. The intent is to create an orginal soundtrack, maybe a real album, and a live screening.

Intensive and profitable collaboration is growing with Babydoc film production. They are taking an important and active part in the movie.

Animator Daniele Baiardini interviewed Reno asking him to participate in an exercise for Scuola di Animazione di Chieri. We hope this will open new doors to the use of animation in the movie.


Applied for ITVS international funding open call
Applied for Thessaloniki Documentary Festival Pitching Forum (2009)

Boa sorte, Colombre!

A docu-western

If you don't understand then you'll experience blades and fire. This is our law.
Gerardo explains to us that here on the river you don't have any other choice to defend your land. Now with the Army patroling the opposite side things may be changing.



A waste land, the borders, the project of the railway and the golf course, the farmers mad about nomads, the river, the old hermit. With these ingredients it's beecoming a sort of western movie. A docu-western?

Pictures made by photographer Marco Santantonio portrait this world:
- The nomads
- Reno's world

Snowstorm on the city

Snowstorm on the city. 50 cm of snow fell on the ground: it seems impossible to reach the place where Reno lives on the river. He is completely isolated. We are worried for him.


SNOWSTORM IN TOWN from cap on Vimeo.