«The lost memories of the trees» (The lost memories of trees), short film by the director, from Castrovillari in Calabria, Antonio La Camera, won the award for best short film at the 38th International Critics’ Week 80th Venice International Film Festival. This is the passionate motivation of the jury: «For having imagined a sensorial experience, a hallucinogenic journey, a psychedelic vertigo. But above all for having led us through an intense emotional exploration, which moves and amazes, transcending the fact of nature to the very human heart of suffering and loss”, words that accompany the award from the jury of the International Critics’ Week (SIC), section autonomous and parallel organized by the National Union of Italian Film Critics (SNCCI).
In the heart of the Peruvian Amazon forest, two trees awaken in the night and embark on a spiritual journey to discover a past in which they were two child brothers. An Italy/Spain co-production, produced by Playlab Films in co-production with Waterclock Production, Naffintusi, Il Varco cinema, Oudeis Pictures and with the participation of the sponsors Etirya and Galileo Figarò ltd, made in the Peruvian Amazon forest as part of the exclusive CreatorsLab led by the master of contemporary cinema Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Here the most uncontaminated nature brings into contact the most human and dark side of man, that of loneliness and depression, to then activate a cathartic sensorial journey suspended between dreamlike and surreal.
«During the first day of scouting in the forest, I came across two trees, a shihuahuaco and a lupuna, growing next to each other in a small clearing, partially isolated from the rest of the forest – says director La Camera -. Inspired by the theme to be developed in the workshop, i.e. “a conversation”, I imagined long nocturnal chats between the two trees that took place over the decades in which the two grew up as close as brothers. I immediately understood that I also wanted to shoot with two children in order to explore the main theme from both the point of view of nature and that of human beings.”
Not two separate stories, therefore, but the same protagonists in separate moments of their spiritual existence. Two brothers who exist in different times and forms, although both earthly. A return to nature and the human thirst for lost memories, for lucid awarenesses that make room in the delirium of memories.
Who is Antonio La Camera
Antonio La Camera (1990), after graduating with honors in Cinema and Vision Arts at the DAMS of Roma Tre University, attended directing and screenwriting courses at the “Sentieri Selvaggi” film school. He continued his training at the High Specialization Course in Film Direction “Fare Cinema” directed by Maestro Marco Bellocchio and held by the Manetti Bros. His short films «Carne e Polvere», «Il Sogno del Vecchio» and «Nel Ritrovo del Silenzio» they have been screened at over 100 national and international festivals, including the Future Film Festival organized by the British Film Institute. He has won over 30 awards around the world, including the best director award awarded to him by the Italian Cultural Institute in Budapest.