cinema
noon, December 11, 2021 – 4:52 pm
The American director is shooting in Monte Sant’Angelo with Shia LaBoeuf in the role of the saint
from Francesco Mazzotta
“This film is a miracle,” he says Abel Ferrara, turned seventy last July. After all, with the star Shia LaBeouf, the interpreter of Transformers which on the big screen was also the tennis player John McEnroe, is shooting a feature film on the history of Father Pio, a life accompanied by prodigies. Yesterday the director of New Rose Hotel, Go Go Tales and of the “Trilogy of Sin”, once the “bad man” of American cinema and always fascinated by the clash between good and evil, presented the film at a press conference in Monte Sant’Angelo, the location chosen as the set. A place where for many centuries the struggle between good and evil has ideally been carried out in the shadow of the sanctuary of San Michele, the archangel who defeats Satan with a sword.
Padre Pio, filming in Foggia
Filming has been underway for two weeks (and will continue for another seven days) in the nearby Pulsano abbey. “I discovered it five years ago and at that moment I decided that I would make the film in these places,” says Ferrara, who is also filming in the monastery of San Marco La Catola, on the border with Molise and Campania, where Padre Pio stayed for a period and where the Capuchins themselves participated in the filming. The support of the Apulia Film Commission is indispensable, through which the workers involved in the production are 80% of the Apulian brand, such as Francesco Lopez’s Oz Film, service of this Germany-Italy co-production that sees together the German Maze and Film spacing.
Many takes are also taking place in the alleys of Monte Sant’Angelo, in the Junno district, among the characteristic white terraced houses, in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore and among the alleys around the sanctuary of San Michele, which is a UNESCO heritage site, including the holy staircase along which pilgrims climbed up with their knees in sign of penance. Scenarios in which the art director Tommaso Ortino has reconstructed San Giovanni Rotondo as it was in 1920, the year of the first socialist victory, repressed in blood. A central event in the film coincided precisely with the arrival on the Gargano of the young friar from Pietrelcina, the small town in the Benevento area not far from the village from which Abel Ferrara’s grandfather had left to conquer America.
Ferrara: “The writing of Padre Pio like Baudelaire and Pasolini”
“It was my father who told me about Padre Pio,” says Ferrara, who as a boy attended a church in New York in which there was a statue of the friar with the stigmata. «I immediately understood – says Ferrara – that only in these places could I make a mystical, mythical, but also true and real film. I tried to enter the heart of Padre Pio, to understand who he was, his history, his spirituality. We came here to understand the miracle, and a miracle is taking place ». The screenplay, signed by Ferrara in collaboration with Maurizio Braucci, former author for Gomorrah e Martin Eden, is inspired by the correspondence of Padre Pio who traveled between San Marco La Catola and San Giovanni Rotondo. “Your letters have the beauty of the writing of Baudelaire and Pier Paolo Pasolini”, says the director, quoting the intellectual of the Corsair writings (to which in 2014 he dedicated a film starring Willem Dafoe) and revealing that he grew up with Catholic teachings, before becoming a Buddhist who practices meditation. “Padre Pio and Pasolini – he adds – are lions who have lived all their lives to give to others, and I make this film because I would like to express myself with a part of what they have been”.
An all-Apulian parterre, absent Shia LaBeouf
At the meeting with the press there was the mayor of Monte Sant’Angelo, Pierpaolo D’Arienzo, who said he was happy to host such a great level of production. Also present was Nancy dell’Olio, who as an ambassador of Puglia in the world (but there are rumors of her appointment as president of Pugliapromento) underlined the importance of cinema in terms of territorial marketing. There was none of the top management of the Apulia Film Commission, struggling with internal problems. And, because he was on the set, Shia LaBeouf was not there, who for several months has been carrying out a work of total identification with Padre Pio: by now he no longer takes off his habit even when he is away from the set. «Before filming, he spent four months in a convent in the mountains of California – explains Ferrara – and he is still making a spiritual journey, from darkness to light. This experience is transforming him. As a director I don’t believe in miracles, but Shia’s interpretation is ».
The rest of the cast is all Italian, with Ignazio Oliva, Brando Pacitto, Marco Leonardi, Luca Lionello, Martina Gatti, Carla De Girolamo, Alessandro Cremona, Michelangelo Dalisi and Roberta Mattei. There is also time for a memory of Lina Wertmüller, the director who disappeared the other day who had been able to tell the story of the South and who in 2013 had visited the sanctuary of San Michele. “I loved Pasqualino Settebellezze – Ferrara says – but all of Lina’s films were special, because she was the one who was special ».
11 December 2021 | 16:52
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