Foreword:
to make the interview more user-friendly, we opted to use a different type of color to distinguish questions (in gray) from answers (in white)...
To conclude the biography and filmography of the young author...
D: Let's start from the end, that is, from the period that, currently, sees your film effort (The Woods Outside) in the postproduction phase: how did this project come about and how does it develop?
Gabriel: Il Bosco Fuori was born from an old screenplay I wrote in November 2000, later undergoing continuous revisions and rewrites until it arrived at the form it is now. It is the film I have always dreamed of seeing as a viewer but that no one has ever had the courage to make, at least in Italy. It is an excessive, cruel, ferocious, colorful, blood-filled, cinema-cinema horror film. It is a film that breaks the bridges with our whole ’quality cinema’ tradition, to reconnect directly with those masters who have been disowned for more than two decades: Sergio Leone and Dario Argento.
D: The limitation of available means, sometimes, more than a limitation becomes a “means” to stimulate the imagination of filmmakers: who must, necessarily, make up for the lack of special effects by focusing much more on technique and screenplay...
How did this influence the making of The Woods Outside?
Gabriel: The film was shot in a hurry, in only three weeks, on a shoestring budget and technical means. I brooded over this film inside my head for five long years, and then finally, at the time of its making, I made it come out with immediacy, almost with anger, as if the film now made itself. And these budget and time constraints obviously matched the aesthetics and ideology of the film, which belongs to a guerrilla, dirty cinema, far from cuteness and photographic embellishments, and everything that is the cinematic bon ton of the good Italian director. The film is a punch in the stomach, and it is incorrect in style as well.
D: The inclusion of highly splatter scenes sometimes appears as a “double-edged sword”: violent films are often (unfairly) accused of narrative superfiction. In this sense, very difficult it becomes to manage a good story with the presence of gore.
How did you approach this issue?
Gabriel: By now it is a well-worn parlor cliché that horror exhibited is less effective than that which is not shown but only suggested. Clearly, these are completely different emotions and purposes. The cinema of Cronenberg or Romero, for example, has emotional and sense-making goals that are quite different from those of an Amenabar or a Shyamalan. And while for the latter the display of blood would be misplaced and counterproductive, for the former it is a fundamental thematic, philosophical and emotional choice. In short, these are different goals. Argento does not want to emote in the same way as Hitchcock: Argento seeks delirium, paroxysm, the almost mystical representation of death, and the choreographed display of blood is therefore absolutely functional and consistent with this. It is also rather unfounded to think that the excessive presence of gore cannot be combined with a good and valid screenplay. Just think of Tarantino's films, which fully espouse the poetics of gore. Or to Sergio Leone before him. Or to Brian De Palma.
D: Can you reveal some details about The Forest Outside, and give us some indication of the possible distribution of it?
Gabriel: Right now we are still in the final stages of post-production, and we expect to find a distributor interested only when the film is finished. So for the time being we don't know anything yet, although a distribution of it at least on home-video is quite certain.
D: Can you tell us what were your negative and positive impressions of the experience on the set?
Gabriel: It was a moment that I had been chasing for many years, and when it finally came everything unfolded very quickly. I don't remember any negative impressions, except that in the first week of filming I couldn't sleep a wink at night. Then evidently I calmed down, and slept without any problems for the remaining two weeks.
D: The success of a film, in addition to the story, the performers and the packaging, often comes from the soundtrack: what will be the musical motif of the fim?
Gabriel: The soundtrack is entrusted to Silvio Villa, my trusted composer, who has already done the music for almost all my previous works. With Silvio we have known each other since high school and he has always been a regular presence in my early amateur films, where he was often also active as an actor. There is now a great harmony between us and he immediately knows what I can like and what I cannot.
D: Don´t you think that the current Italian film scene (ed.
the discussion can be extended to all genres) can start again precisely from low-budget productions? Capable, that is, of guaranteeing an economic return to productions, in such a way as to gain the confidence of financiers, perhaps succeeding (over time) in obtaining greater capital...
Gabriel: Absolutely yes, especially as far as genre cinema is concerned. As this is a territory that has yet to be explored, where Italian producers still fear to venture, it is necessary to start again from the low-budget side. Also to cut ties with institutional and reactionary cinema, and remain independent. HDV in this sense is a real weapon to convey a freer cinema, one that returns to storytelling. Paradoxically, so-called auteur and art cinema, which has always been relegated to niche circuits, now benefits from large investments and capital (think of the mechanism of public financing), while genre cinema, which by definition is popular and therefore commercial, turns out to be the priority today of a handful of independents operating in alternative circuits. A real reversal of values that is indicative of a sick system. And if Moretti in the 1970s was opposed to the vulgarities of a genre cinema that was becoming more and more smutty and serialized, today it is necessary to oppose Morettiism and all the authorial monstrosities it has given birth to.
D: What are the role models of your cinema?
Gabriel: My main model of reference is postmodern cinema represented by the Leone-Argento-Tarantino line. That is, the mannerist cinema of those who fed off the history of cinema to rewrite the coordinates of genres. But then among my favorite directors I could also mention Kubrick, Polanski, Mario Bava, Hitchcock, Friedkin, De Palma, Schrader, Coppola, Michael Mann, Avary, and on and on.
D: After Il Bosco Fuori, will Gabriele Albanesi, retry the path of Italian cinema?
Gabriel: Definitely. I think it's very important to stay in Italy, to build a new Italian genre cinema. I despise those who try to escape, those who emigrate in search of better shores. Our fathers are demanding justice, and they are clamoring for someone to reconnect that umbilical cord that was broken. We cannot disappoint them. Our generation can and must make it.
Gabriele Albanesi (born 1978 in Rome) majored in communication sciences before devoting himself, alongside the Manetti Bros, to making interesting music videos.
He later collaborates on the interesting TV show Stracult -as a film critic- one of the reference points for every “lover” of genre cinema (especially Italian cinema).
His are, in addition, a number of papers that have appeared in Zabiskie Point magazine.
But Gabriele's true passion manifested itself at the beginning of the new millennium, when -following his participation in the Bellaria Festival- he received a manition to “Dream Shorts,” presenting the short film Braccati (23 minutes) in Ravenna shortly thereafter.
The following year he made L'Armadio (7 minutes) and in 2003 Mummie (7 minutes); until he embarked on the challenging gamble of making an independent feature film thanks to the support of the Manetti Bros and Sergio Stivaletti (who is in charge of the spfx - Gore and Splatter department): arriving at Bosco Fuori (edited by NeroFilm), currently in postproduction, of which the author himself, gave interesting previews in this same interview....
- Mummies (2003) 7 minutes
- The Wardrobe (2002) 7 minutes
- Hounded (2001) 23 minutes
- The Woods Outside (2005) feature film
- Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show (2011) feature film
Interview by Fabio Pazzaglia
