Ninni Panzera got sick of cinema very early, one would say from an early age. He still glitters his eyes when he tells him. He should have been a lawyer, he had already begun, he says in front of a tea a morning too hot, “but I felt something here, in the stomach …”. Fortunately, it went differently and managed to live for over 35 years at the Taormina Seminate Festival among the bricks of the Antico Theater to see the effect it made on stage, meeting practically all the largest. Not only of the dear old film, but also of theater and music. And since he has never been standing still for some time he threw herself headlong in a new adventure to reopen the never closed doors of his “insane” passion, with the Messina Opera Film Festival.
Ninni, what are the main innovations of this year for the Messina Opera Film Festival, who has already consolidated a lot also in international circuits?
“The calendar, about three months after the event, is already practically closed. It is necessary to program well in advance to be ready with data, news and information for participation in the various calls. The scheme will follow that of the last two years. Yesterday and contemporary cinema, retrospectives, silent films music live, international short film competition, masterclass with various guests, book presentations. The relationship therefore between cinema and opera explored at 360 degrees. This is the only film festival in Italy and Europe to deal with this particular relationship. This uniqueness is leading to significant results. From January we have been admitted to the Music Festival Network, a European network of musical film festivals consisting of 14 events of capital and various European cities. Moff is the fifteenth festival. In Messina they will be present to organize a meeting on the promotional value of the network. This is the flagship of the season ».
Are you talking about a few gems that you particularly care about?
“The special event of this year is dedicated to a visionary genius that has created four lyrical productions on live television. Subverting and mixing the notions of cinema, work and television and, I would say in general, the rules of the show. A tribute to Andrea Andermann, to his extraordinary vision, to the transformation of a lyrical work into a live film, without the editing filter. In a world where the direct Facebook seem to have revolutionized the idea of communication, he thirty years ago made it impossible possible. We will present the detail of the program during the next Rome Film Festival in October ».
The great opera and the cinema, how did you come the idea of approaching them in a festival, where does everything come from?
«Inventing a festival is truly something I would say impossible. When I decided to resume the Messina Film Festival designed in 1995 and lasted until 2001 I understood that it was absolutely necessary to identify a proposal that was strongly original. By chance I had come across a research on cinema dedicated to Bellini and discovered a cinematographic universe linked to the opera. Finding immediately an absolute originality and a uniqueness that immediately placed the festival in a privileged position compared to the thousands of generalist festivals and without precise identity. And certainly I have to do it to the institutions that support the Festival. The Teatro di Messina, the Municipality of Messina through its Foundation, the Regional Department of Tourism, the Corelli Conservatory and the Ministry of Culture. A rare unanimity of appreciation and support of which I am particularly grateful. My dream, in a few years, is to deliver the event settled with its own visibility, to an entity or a specific organization, which can continue to give the city its own strongly identifying festival. Is it a dream? ».
We hope not … But what is cinema for you, since you have always lived inside it always, a great illusion or our augmented reality?
«If I think back to the sense of magic tried the first time that I went to the cinema with my father as a child! The absolute wonder. Open the tent in that obscured world moved people on the screen, western, wars, comedians … in short, a universe. Since then I have never stopped going to the cinema, attending it and living it as a protagonist even in various stages of his organization. Manufacturer, operator, festival organizer and prizes … in short, a great beauty that accompanied my life. But I have never considered it a place of evasion, but an instrument above all of introspection, a means of understanding even more the world in which we live. A pragmatic approach that does not exclude the romanticism of certain scenes that remain glued on you forever. New Cinema Paradiso, Paris-Texas, Fitzcarraldo, a true story and Zabriskie Point are the films of life. It is said so … »
You don’t know how to stay away from your film posters, you say the truth?
«I am a collector, it’s true. I like cinema and all its advertising tools. I have an important collection of posters and other materials. On Giuseppe Tornatore and his films I have everything, I edited two international exhibitions on New Cinema Paradiso in Los Angeles and Seoul, important materials on the cinema dedicated to Vincenzo Bellini and finally the posters with a wonderful Taormina in the foreground with the films shot in the Ionian town. I hope to be able to transform this personal passion into something stable and accessible by everyone within a short time ».
Since we are on the subject of confidences, I have to ask you if by chance you do not think you can give somehow to that wonderful experience of the Milani room, where you could almost breathe the film I would say, with the projections of masterpieces but also much more that did not find space in traditional cinemas …
«The experience of the Milani room is something absolutely extraordinary that I have experienced. A small place of only fifty places that in fifteen years has given me and the city a quantity of beauty difficult to contain and tell. A unique experience, made of ideas, passion, friendship and author cinema. I cannot aside that in that room sacred monsters of cinema, Werner Herzog, Peter Greenaway, Edgar Reitz, Giuseppe Tornatore built a legend on his new Cinema Paradiso, and then hundreds of films that left an indelible imprint in the life of many and in the little great story of Messina have passed. That experience is exhausted and it is not easy to propose it again, and today too I want to remember two “stronglights” of that place, Emi Mammoliti and Fano Coco, two friends who are no longer there but who remain carved in my memory and those who have appreciated their business. It is now up to the youngest to be able to transform a passion into an utopia. This was the Milani room ».
And the long season of Taormina Arte, with her great festival, the guests, whom you have lived for years in the first person, who knows how many memories you will have … you solicit only one: when on that terrace, one afternoon, there were Sordi, Gassman, Tognazzi, Manfredi and Monica Vitti together …
«Taormina Arte is one of the most glorious pages of my professional life, a structure to which I have dedicated all my energy, with extraordinary results even when it was necessary to manage a long crisis. The unforgettable moments are really many and it would take a long time and space to tell thirty -five years. Sinopoli, Bejart, Lavia, Albertazzi, Mehta, Bausch and I could continue indefinitely. For each one a memory, an anecdote. But for a cinephile he undoubtedly finding himself on the stage the five great of Italian comedy was a fascinating blow, a memory of immense greatness that I will bring forever into memory. And I also add the interminable standing ovation that an ancient theater crowded to the inverted to Michelangelo Antonioni awarded by Bernardo Bertolucci. But Taormina Arte opened to me other worlds. The music, the great directors, I crossed Wolfgang Sawallisch, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Leonard Bernstein and Claudio Abbado … when I met him in Ferrara to offer him the artistic direction of the Music section after Giuseppe Sinopoli … but above all the relationship with Sinopoli. Many concerts and two works that will remain indelibly sculpted in the history of music. A sincere friend whose professional and human greatness had no evidence. I tried with the Sinopoli Festival to continue to keep the light on on this great director … but after five editions I had to surrender! And in the Theater Section I great texts with Gabriele Lavia, a giant of the theater with which we signed great productions and written unforgettable moments. A final habit … I went out a few minutes earlier from the theater and I positioned myself in front of the Palazzo dei Congressi to see a human tide of spectators parade … and my heart filled with pride … ».