It happens rarely. That a sound is more than one voice. A look more than a face. A story, a place of the soul. Lina Sastri has long been a rare presence in the Italian artistic panorama: actress with a rigorous talent, interpreter capable of combining dramatic intensity and irony, singer, author of literary texts and now director. With “La Casa di Ninetta”, feature film presented at the latest Venice Film Festival, it makes a natural and both courageous passage: bringing an intimate story on the big screen, taken from its own book, which tells with delicacy and truth the relationship with the mother and the paths of memory.
Tonight, Lina Sastri will be the protagonist at the prestigious I-Fest (International Film Festival) in Castrovillari, in the suggestive location of the Aragonese Castle. He will present his film, will receive the I-Fest Special Award, made by the goldsmith Master Michele entrusted.
For the occasion, we had the opportunity to converse with Lina Sastri on her debut to the direction, the power of personal stories and her gaze on today’s cinema.
His direction has an intimate, deep breath. How did you choose visual grammar to tell an absence that is, paradoxically, so full of presence?
«In reality I did not choose anything on the table: I discovered my direction by doing” Ninetta’s house “. It was my first time behind the camera and I realized I had a very precise vision. I wrote both the original booklet and the script, and much of what I tell from my real life: perhaps for this reason it was natural for me to translate it into images. On the set we had no great means, so I only turned what I really wanted to see, as if it were already mounted. Not the classic fields and counterfields, but exactly what I had clear in mind ».
After directing, what does he keep of his actress? And what, however, did you discover completely new?
«I rediscovered what I already intuitive: the cinema belongs to the director. The actor can give everything, even a monologue worthy of the Duse, but if it is not needed for vision it will be cut. I also discovered that I like to be behind the camera: over time maybe I no longer love seeing myself in the face as in the past, and there I found a new freedom ».
Venice welcomed his debut to the direction. How was it to cross that red carpet bringing not only the face of the actress, but the director of the director?
«The red carpet changes nothing. It’s just a test of life, and I always stay the same: I’m afraid, I feel fragile. On stage or on the set I am free, but when I have to introduce myself like Lina Sastri, go to collect an award or to give an interview, the defenses fall and only my shyness remains. Also in Venice it was like this: fear, emotion, but also the beauty of living that experience “.
Is there a thread that binds Ninetta’s Naples to the places of the I-Fest? The strength of territories that try to emerge between perennial difficulties …
«The cinema is rooted too much in these territories: Naples and the South seem to have become a sort of Bollywood, everything turns here. For this you have to be careful not to fall into rhetoric, today more than ever ».
How much is it necessary today, a cinema that knows how to show strength in fragility?
«I think the questions already contain the answers. Today we see everything, but often the cinema seems lost. If you choose to chase the success of the public and large retailers, you must undergo power logics away from creativity. If, on the other hand, you decide to remain faithful only to art, the consequences must be accepted: few means, poor distribution. “The house of Ninetta” was born like this, with very few money and without net. They are two different paths, and each artist must choose where he wants to bring his “carriage”. I would just like to add one thing: Ninetta was my mother, a special, almost magical woman, a kind of “wizard”. A figure who does not surrender, who continues to travel even after a year. And so we hope it will continue again ».