INTERVIEW
Caterina Crescini
Caterina directed Narciso and Eco, Storia di una metamorfosi, winning, with her beautiful work, the following awards at Experimental Brasil 2023:
Winner in the Best Art Direction in Experimental Short category.
Winner in the Best Editing in Experimental Short category.
Semifinalist in the Best Cinematography in Experimental Short category.
1. Olá Caterina! Please tell our readers a little bit about yourself and your film team.
Hi everyone, I'm Caterina. my cinematographic research has always looked at the
artistic mix. Cinema is my parallel world and I try to recreate it by constructing an
audio-visual reality that mirrors the truth, authenticity and beauty hidden in human beings and their reality
2. Narciso e Eco, Storia di una metamorfosi won several awards at our festival. Did you expect such a result?
I didn't expect Narciso and Eco to win two awards at your Experimental Brasil
festival, but I'm very happy about it. The artistic direction and the editing were the longest and most complex phases, because are the heart of the creative evolution of this project, in constant search of its own form of expression.
3. What is Narciso e Eco, Storia di una metamorfosi about, and what made its creation inevitable for you?
narcissus and eco is a video art tragedy that tells the story of idealization and the
border, sometimes deadly, between reality and illusion. it is a project that discusses meta-artistic themes, referring to two mythological archetypes that tell emotions, weaknesses and human facets. For me it was both inevitable and spontaneous to tell this myth in my own way, indulging myself and commissioning different artistic languages, because the breaking point between reality and illusion is the furrow in which my artistic poetics has always been nourished.
4. At what point did it become clear to you that it would be an experimental film rather than a more conventional work?
maybe from the start. this project started during the lockdown by re-reading
personal texts written during the years of my analysis. It was originally supposed to be a music audiobook, then it became all of this.
5. Of the whole that makes up a movie, which part do you consider the most important?
the sincerity of the author
6. What do you consider success for a filmmaker?
being able to make what it means universal, so as to be able to communicate it to
everyone, regardless of what they say and how they say it.
7. What is the worst sin an artist can commit?
do not cultivate curiosity and the opinions of others on one's artistic work
8. Luck or talent? What counts more? Why?
talent. in art luck helps a lot, but talent is indispensable.
9. As an artist, what is the best advice you have never received?
not to be afraid to show myself naked in what I want to tell and in the way I want to do it. The best advice I've been given is to try to never censor myself
10. What would an ideal experimental film festival look like?
a normal film festival. cinema is art, and art is always experimental. I don't agree
with the difference between canonical film and experimental film, I don't understand it. especially nowadays.
11. Is there a movie (or movies) that marked you not only as a filmmaker, but as a human being?
Of course all the movies that I realize stay inside me for days after I've seen them
make me a better human being. right now I don't know how to make a list, but there are many. like the people you meet, the movies you watch always leave you with something that enriches you and therefore inevitably improves you
12. If you met your favorite filmmaker, what would you ask him/her?
I don't know, maybe I wouldn't be able to speak. or maybe I'd just say thank you