DarkVeins had the honor of interviewing Lorenzo Bianchini, one of the leading exponents of Italian indie horror cinema. Fresh off his new win at TOHorror 2013 for his terrifying Oltre il Guado, Lorenzo chats with us about his early films, telling us about his future projects and then answering our questions about Across the River. Let's find out who Lorenzo Bianchini is and why he deserves so much attention from audiences.
L: How would you describe Lorenzo Bianchini?
L.B.: Simply a self-taught person who wants to express emotions and tell stories through film.
L: What does filmmaking represent to you and when did you decide to make your first film?
L.B.: For me, cinema represents a communicative vehicle to convey emotions, illusions, dreams.
I first started filming when I could afford my first camera back in1996. From there the first short film Fear Inside With my cousin Annalisa.
L: Can you tell us about your short film Smoke Hallucination?
L.B.: In '98 I made this second twenty-minute short set inside a mansion starring three friends playing the role of three reedy punks.
L: Square Root of Three is your first feature film. Can you tell us more about this film?
L.B.: Self-produced film with almost no budget. The idea of Square root of three was born almost suggested by the eerie natural locations of the school basement where it was filmed. Endless corridors, labyrinthine dungeons, cramped and hidden corners, trapped almost in another dimension--a perfect setting for a mysterious story. The intention was to turn those environments into a kind of hellish path that dragged you, sucked you, almost, into the most distant, claustrophobic and unhinged meanders of a parallel reality, a kind of dream, a nightmare. A mental adventure up to the threshold of the loss of reason -- of madness.
L: Why were several of your works filmed in Friulian dialect?
L.B.: Because I believe that dialect and language give a more realistic aspect to stories, especially if the themes dealt with are rooted in the local area and are part of the local popular culture. After all, fears are always present in the legends and enigmatic nocturnal figures that are described.
L: CustodesBestiae was awarded at the 2004 Turin TOHorror Film Festival. How did you experience this?
L.B.: Great trip that TOHorror had. Great hospitality and a great opportunity to introduce your work to a wider audience. Winning that edition was a source of great satisfaction for us.
L: Dincj de Lune (Teeth of the Moon) is a short film of yours about lycanthropy. What fascinates you about the figure of the werewolf? And what do you think are the best films about werewolves?
L.B.: Of the werewolf I am fascinated by the sense of the double in its essence and the loneliness and pain it holds. I am fascinated by human frailty mixed with the instinctive strength of the animal.
I haven't seen many werewolf movies, and I couldn't tell you which ones are the best--they've made so many....
L: How important is the budget in filmmaking?
L.B.: I can't answer that as I have never worked with what could be called a "budget."
L: After the successes of CustodesBestiae you moved away from the genre and returned to it with Beyond the Ford (2013). This return was marked by a new win at the 2013 TOHorror Film Festival. What was it like for you to replicate the success of years before?
L.B.: Obviously enormous satisfaction both from replicating the winnings and from seeing TOHorror friends again after years. It was like taking a leap back in time.
L: The tension in watching your film is definitely given by the location, the barely hinted at moans and the mysterious presences that are glimpsed during the viewing. You played on a different, veiled terror, why this choice?
L.B.: In Beyond the ford the search for true fears is pushed to the extreme by describing that restlessness that lurks in the anticipation of what horrific thing could happen at any moment, or that you imagine could happen or hide in the half-light, behind doors, in corridors or on the abandoned streets of a place that becomes a metaphor for loneliness and abandonment, cold and rottenness and everything that of the death of the body and consciousness to me is most frightening... Film that is the start of a path of narrative minimalism that in the last "Beyond the ford" found even more space in the attempt to describe real, pure, primal fears. A path that would like to lead to what I ironically refer to as the "neorealism of fears."
L: Beyond the ford in fact manages to provide not only pleasant thrills but also projects into the viewer the emotions experienced by the protagonist, as if in a perfect symbiosis. Why the choice of the not-so-common figure of the naturalist ethologist?
L.B.: To introduce a craft that in itself already deals with a kind of loneliness and isolation.
L: When is an Italian distribution of Beyond the ford planned? What do you expect from the audience?
L.B.: Probably by June-July. I hope the audience will be restlessly satisfied....
L: Who are the masters of horror for you? Which of these are the best films?
L.B.: I could tell you that the films, let's call them genre films, that I prefer are The Exorcist and The Shining, without ever forgetting the great classics of the past and the fantastic French television series "Belfagor," which, when I was a child, particularly impressed me.
L: What about talking about the independent circuit instead? What can you tell us about that? How difficult is it to be an independent filmmaker in Italy today?
L.B.: There are many difficulties that you have to face when you work independently. You have to deal with so many aspects starting from the writing of the subject to the sounding of the final edit, with everything in between, and the expenditure of energy is really considerable. The good thing is that you form a broad experience on all phases of filmmaking. Fortunately, I always found participation and acceptance from everyone in the projects I was proposing. The people I was able to involve, driven by pure passion, always believed in the projects, devoting much of their spare time and professionalism to bring them to fruition without ever "abandoning" anything halfway through.
Other difficulties are those related to distribution. For various reasons it is very difficult to land on the official distribution circuit, and therefore it happens very often to see work that has cost you time, work and great effort relegated to the usual drawer.
L: Are you working on a new project currently?
L.B.: Well, this year I would like to lay the groundwork for three projects, one theatrical, one involving a TV series and another film.
L: What do you think about this interview?
L.B.: Extraordinary questions with substandard answers!
L: Leave a message for the DarkVeins community and all fans of the horror genre.
L.B.: If there weren't you-where would we end up?
Hugs to all.
L: Thank you for your availability and for giving us your time!
