In the rich Italian horror film scene Ivan Zuccon is definitely a prominent name. DarkVeins interviewed him to learn about his future projects and to ask him a few questions about his latest film Wrath of the Crows which will see the light of day in Italian cinemas in October.
L: Who is Ivan Zuccon? How would you describe yourself?
I: Of all of them, this is the most difficult question. It is always arduous to give an exhaustive description of oneself. Certainly I am stubborn, if I set my mind to something I don't give up until I get it, this is perhaps one of the reasons why I still haven't stopped making films, I still haven't achieved the goals I set for myself.
L: Why did you choose the path of filmmaking? How did it come about?
I: Some events in life are dictated by chance, while others are the result of precise and conscious choices. The entry of cinema into my life is the result of both chance and a considered choice. In the beginning, however, there was more to it than that. Initially music, I was a musician determined to probe new musical frontiers, and with my band, Hypnosis, I made quite interesting products. Then I became interested in drawing, comic books to be precise, I remember as a boy my greatest desire was to become an Alan Ford cartoonist. It was the discovery of horror cinema that sparked in me the desire to try my hand at the Seventh Art. I had never considered horror much, in fact, I was even scared of it. The fact is that once the fear was conquered, I realized how much power could be hidden behind this film genre and how much freedom of expression could be achieved once the limits of the usual clichés were overcome.
L: When was your first short film made? What memories do you have of your first work and what motivated you to pursue this path?
I: My first short film "Nobody's Friend" is from 1995. A very intense teenage story that won many awards at the time. Shot in black and white, the film is about a boy who wants to kill himself by throwing himself off a tower. However, an unexpected visitor will try to put him off. I have wonderful memories of that first small set. It was a cold winter, the location extraordinary, the actors good and willing. A first experience that gave so much gratification.
L: Why did you choose the horror branch of cinema? What is your relationship with this genre?
I: I consider horror to be a very important genre with which one can explore many interesting themes and address some taboos without too much fear. My relationship with this genre is one of love-hate, as indeed is my relationship with cinema itself. In my seventh horror feature film, I begin to feel a deep desire for change, a desire to change my way, to address the themes that are close to my heart through different genres, through the use of new stylistic figures, also using different languages. I like to say, even to myself, that horror represents my starting point but that it will probably not be my finishing point. This does not mean that I will no longer shoot horror, it just means that I will also try to make alternative projects to it. It is important to change, not to repeat yourself, to grow, to improve.
L: How does it feel to be considered one of the leading exponents of Italian independent cinema?
I: It simply means that something good since 2000 to date I have been able to accomplish. And that is gratifying. And it is even more interesting all the more because I have always tried to tell my own obsessions, to pursue my own personal discourse without ever thinking too much about trends, fashions or following the most successful strands at any given time. In some ways I have found myself anticipating many fashions, as happened with Bad Brains, which anticipated the "torture porn" that was later very successful with Saw and Hostel. I anticipated the religious mystical horror genre with NyMpha, a genre that became very fashionable in France a few years later. This happens because sometimes I am a bit of an inquirer, I like to scrutinize the human soul and tell its dark side. In doing so, I found myself in the uncomfortable role of forerunner, the one who opens doors, letting the benefits go to others. But that's okay, I cannot change what is my nature.
L: What are you generally inspired by for your films? Which genre directors have influenced you the most?
I: Often the idea on which the whole film pivots starts with me, although I rarely write. I usually just throw short subjects on paper that I then pass on to my screenwriters. Ideas often come to me in dreams; it is rare that I draw inspiration from some news story or real events. I find the dream world much more stimulating. Precisely for this reason, among my favorite directors I definitely include David Lynch, one who was never afraid to tell his obsessions and always refused to explain them, leaving it to the viewer to draw his own conclusions by giving them a subjective interpretation.
L: Some of your works are based on Howard Phillips Lovecraft's short stories. Why? An opinion of yours about this great writer of horror literature? What are some of his other works that you would like to transpose to film?
I: The love for Lovecraft came about by accident. I was looking for ideas for a film and my eye fell on some of his books. Reading his stories opened wide a new world to my eyes, a world made of terrible and at the same time fascinating elements. The creativity of this author seems limitless, the cosmic horror he tells is a source of great inspiration for me. I love everything he has written, from the very first imitation stories in Poe to his greatest cosmic creations, so ambitious and often breathtakingly successful. Even down to the collaborations and commissioned writings on behalf of other writers who ran out of ideas, and finally the letters, which are wonderful and full of reflections that could be the basis for an interesting biographical film that I hope to make someday.
L: Elsewhere (2000) is your first feature film. Can you tell us about it?
I: The Elsewhere is a 2000 film, but the idea was born a couple of years earlier. In 1998 I made a short film of the same title inspired by the writings of H.P.Lovecraft. The film was 32 minutes long and is a kind of Lovecraftian patchwork, summarizing many of the atmospheres of the Providence writer and full of quotations from his stories, although not officially based on any of them. I remember that it was at that time that I found myself reading Lovecraft and I was enraptured by his prose so dense, his manic study of atmospheres, and it was this alien "mood" that made me feel in tune with this writer. I decided that the subject matter was perfect for an atmospheric horror film, and I immediately set to work taking excerpts of ideas a bit from all his writings, especially those inherent in his most famous invention: the terrible Necronomicon. When I finished making the short I showed it to some American production companies, and actress Tiffany Shepis' Prescription Films commissioned me to lengthen the film to an 80-minute runtime. In 1999 we went back to the set to shoot the additional scenes, and in 2000 we were at the Cannes Market selling the film rights. It was an exhilarating moment in my career. The film, despite its nonlinearity and being a bit immature as all first works often are, did very well. There are also many references to Barker; this writer-director was a great influence on the horror imagery of the late 1990s, and his tales of flesh and blood along with the cosmic world of Lovecraft have profoundly marked my way of storytelling in images.
L: What inspired you for Maelstrom - The Child of Elsewhere (2001) and The Escaped House (2003)?
I: It is said that by making mistakes we learn, and that is so. Maelstrom - The Child of Elsewhere a very important film for me for this very reason. I had to make this film to make the mistakes that I would never make again in the future. Visually it is powerful, visionary at times, and with interesting insights, but it remains farragginous in plot and often stumbles by turning in circles on itself. I have only myself to blame, but I had to make all these mistakes to figure out where my cinema should be heading, and it did. The subsequent films are very consistent and they are films I'm proud of. In fact if you take all the scenes, individually, they are all very effective. But they don't seem to blend with the film as a whole. The crucifixion scene for example is very effective, it was tiring to make, as was shooting the whole film. Shot almost all outdoors with crazy temperature fluctuations, going from scorching heat during the day to cold at night, and with all the heavy technical equipment having to be moved all the time because in "Maelstrom," being a traveling journey, it was never shot in the same place. A remarkable physical ordeal of which I have memorable memories, however.
The Escaped House Instead, it is a film of which I am particularly proud. Having decided to devote my whole self to the formulation of a personal cinema, I threw myself into this idea of making an episodic film where, however, the temporal passages are inextricably linked, merging and compressing space-time, turning the individual stories into deconstructed pieces of a puzzle that is only put together at the end. A complex film that started as an episodic film that instead ends up as a horror mosaic where the real protagonist is the house itself. The film appealed so much to the international community that it was distributed in 30 countries around the world.
L: Why the cannibalism in Bad Brains (2006)?
I: I honestly don't remember there being cannibalism scenes in Bad Brains. Maybe you are referring to the eye scene, which is a sporadic episode anyway. The main characters in the film are not cannibals, they are researchers. They look for something special inside the bodies of their victims but do not feed on them at all. In the film, the relationship between the two protagonists leads to the solution of the mystery by taking us into a terrain with supernatural contours where everything blurs together leaving a feeling of enigmatic incompleteness and geometric uncertainty. It is a very tough film, perhaps it is not even correct to call it a horror film, at least in the traditional sense; it is more of a fierce drama, a sick love story steeped in blood and madness.
L: In NyMpha (2007), cloistered nuns, Convent and pain are the main elements. Why is the film about suffering pain? Does the film draw on a particular work of nunspolitation?
I: I was not inspired by anything pre-existing for this film. It is true that there may be references to other works or that the film falls into the subgenre of nunsploitation, but in truth the film is very original, especially in its concept. The screenplay is based on an old short story of mine entitled "The New Order." The film focuses on the concept of "spoliation." In fact, many religious orders require that in order to get closer to God it is necessary to deprive oneself of all material possessions, well in the film this concept is somewhat extreme, conceiving spoliation as depriving oneself not only of material possessions but also of one's senses.
L: In Colour from the Dark (2008) you availed yourself of Debbie Rochon, an actress known to Troma lovers and whom, by the way, you cast again for Wrath of the Crows. How did the collaboration with Rochon come about? Why did you choose her for this film?
I: Debbie Rochon is perhaps one of the smartest, deepest and most talented people I have ever worked with. It is easy to belittle her work by mentioning her beginnings with Troma, in truth she is an actress of the highest caliber, capable of playing any role with unparalleled intensity. It is easy to see why I wanted her in no less than two films, because she is good, because at every take she gives you something unique and unrepeatable. Over the years we have become very good friends and we are bound by a mutual esteem and affection. This woman had a very difficult life, her story is so full of events and torments that it deserves to be told in a film, a film that I hope one day to direct.
L: Wrath of the Crows (2013) is your new film that had its world premiere in Hollywood. Where did the idea of basing the film on the punishment of sins come from? Why the crows?
I: Again the germ of the film is a short subject of mine written during a sleepless night. These twelve little pages remained locked in a drawer many years. Then, partly by chance and partly for fun, I had my current screenwriter, the talented Gerardo Di Filippo, read them and he said it was a very good story and worth working on. I decided to trust his judgment and so we began the long work of writing the script. The concept of sin and atonement is inherent in our culture based on more or less explicit Catholicism and Puritanism. But there are sins for which a price should be paid, and that is what the film is about. Man is capable of staining himself with the worst of crimes and can commit unspeakable nefarious deeds, for all of which my screenwriter and I have created a place (or rather a non-place) where the degree of atonement is calculated according to the severity of the deeds committed, and where the lightest of punishments is so terrible as to make one's skin crawl. Crows are used as a symbol of evil; they are the black souls that lodge within man.
L: Your new work represents a radical change from previous works. What has changed? Why?
I: Stylistically I have changed a lot. Conceptually less so. I have taken all the themes that are dear to me and put them into this film. However, I tried to renew my directorial style because I was tired of repeating myself. I changed the way I shoot, trying to be more instinctive and less rigid to classic rules and dictates. I changed the way I lit the scene precisely as a function of this need for expressive freedom. I changed the way I directed the actors, trying to be between them as much as possible, placing the camera in their midst, without too much distance, without filters, to achieve an even more effective direct line and more instinctive and direct acting.
L: Again in this film, the idea of connecting the soul to the body through the umbilical cord is outstanding. What was your inspiration for this magnificent sequence?
I: In the first draft of the script this scene was not like that, there were insects and crows enclosed in glass cruets. However, the whole thing reminded me too much of the fantasy genre, which I honestly do not like very much. The scene of the black souls tied with umbilical cords was taken hand in hand from another script I was writing myself. The context was completely different but by making small adjustments we were able to make everything fit precisely. The sense is really that of purification, of getting rid of evil, being able to see one's negative self outside the body.
L: Let's talk a little bit about the distribution of Wrath of the Crows. Can we expect a theatrical screening? Is there any news on that?
I: Certainly. The film will be released in Italian theaters at the end of October for Halloween. The circuit will be multiplexes so it's a definite step up from Colour From the Dark which had a limited distribution to a few arthouse theaters.
L: How has your directing style changed over the years?
I: It has changed a lot and at the same time it has stayed the same. Technically I am much more prepared. Years of experience teaches you a lot and gives you that confidence in execution that is so important especially when you are shooting on a tight budget. The spirit is still the same, though. The idea of arriving on set with a clear mind, without superstructures, without storyboards without the help of any kind of previsualization, letting myself be inspired by the set design, the actors and my instincts, is always the central focus of the way I approach directing. I like to decide many of the shots directly on the set, preferring to study the actors' movements during rehearsals and then determine which camera movements to include. In short, I give birth to the film instinctively. I would find it all very tedious to have to adhere scrupulously to pre-established patterns at the table. Creative work is also made up of ideas that come in the moment and not just from planning. It's clear that the film is already all in my head, and that's precisely why I don't need diagrams and sketches. I just follow the flow of my ideas and get inspired.
L: With what new film work will Ivan Zuccon surprise his fans?
I: Who can say. I try to surprise the audience with each of my new works, trying not to repeat myself and to tell unusual stories and from a point of view that is as original as possible. Future projects are all directed toward change, including change in genre. I don't think I will continue making horror films indefinitely, there is a deep desire in me to go down new paths.
L: How are your works regarded in Italy? How have they been received abroad instead?
I: At first here in Italy it was hard, no one seemed to want to be the least bit interested in my cinema. Abroad, from the U.S. to Germany, from France to Japan and so on, my films got more than good feedback, excellent in some cases, such as The Shunned House and NyMpha which are two films that did very well and gave me great gratification. The Italian situation is slowly improving, some of my films can be found, others have been released or will be released in theaters, in short as usual we come last but somehow the situation is normalizing.
L: What can you reveal to us about Sick Sisters? What are your future plans?
I: Of Sick Sisters I cannot reveal much. It is a film that will be produced and shot in the U.S., similar in theme and setting to Bad Brains and chronicles the mad exploits of two female serial killers united by a symbiotic bond. Other projects there are, several, all very interesting, a thriller titled Night to Night which was proposed to me by an American production company, another American film about demonic possession, and so on. Many of the proposals are actually coming from overseas...we will see.
L: An opinion on this interview?
I: Fantastic!
L: Leave a message to the DarkVeins community!
I: Good reading!
L: Thank you Ivan!
