by Kabir Yusuf Abukar and Carlo Maria Rabai

On Saturday, August 31 at the Villa degli Autori, Flavio Natalia, editor-in-chief of Ciak, and film critics Fabio Ferzetti and Oscar Cosulich took the stage to interview Mario Martone. The Neapolitan filmmaker treated the audience to anecdotes galore and a behind-the-scenes look at a career alternating effortlessly between the stage and the screen.

"For my first film, Death of a Neapolitan Mathematician, I didn't want to hide behind a solid screenwriter who could help me out on my debut film. What I wanted was for us to "be free to make our own mistakes", as I said at the time, so I decided to work with Fabrizia Ramondino, a writer who had no experience scripting films, while for the cinematography I hired Luca Bigazzi, who had recently made a marvelous film with Silvio Soldini, The Peaceful Air of the West. My editor was a newcomer, Jacopo Quadri. This was when all the living legends in the film business were still kicking, so for first films, producers covered themselves by signing up seasoned cinematographers, editors and writers to bolster the director. It wasn't an easy time, considering that, until recently, all you heard about was Rossellini, Fellini and the other post-war greats, whom you'd inevitably be judged against. Meanwhile I was thinking: all very well, but now it's our turn."

Naples has always been Martone's point of reference. "For the film Nasty Love," the director continued, "the idea for which had been suggested to me by Fabrizia Ramondino, I started a correspondence with Elena Ferrante, sending her the script, which she would correct in certain places, and I used her novel as a map as I found my way around this dark version of Naples, as if I were making a Neapolitan road movie. I was really drawn to the novel: I could almost hear the sounds of the city, her language was so concrete, and I also liked the fact that I actually didn't know who the author was."

When the talk turned to The Mayor of Rione Sanità, in the running for the Golden Lion this year, Martone had this to say: "The setting in San Giovanni a Teduccio is crucial. Naples is not just a backdrop, a chapter of history, or an abstract, clichéd city, the way it's usually shown. It's a real territory, and a difficult place. I know Francesco Di Leva well enough to say he is an exceptional actor and human being. In fact, right in San Giovanni he founded the NEST, in a school gym no longer in use, and turned it into an all-important outpost for theater in a very troubled area of the city. But it's an area that fights back at the same time, and Francesco is living proof of that. And when you find yourself in these situations, like San Giovanni a Teduccio, and with these people, suddenly everything you ever read or saw on TV or on the stage that was written or directed by Eduardo De Filippo - it all comes to life and becomes true."

"I grew up in downtown Naples," Martone explained, "a product of the middle class. Yet I've always found my relationship with the more troubled parts of my city to be highly seductive. I like to experience and blend together other artistic environments. Especially where music is concerned, which is very important to me and has been since I started out in theater, when they were using Revox. My idea of theater is first and foremost a blend of influences. Now for my film Capri-Revolution, that was the first time I had a score composed from scratch; for all the others, I always combined musical passages as part of the editing. In We Believed, for example: the soundtrack was entirely based on music from 19th-century Italy, including arias that weren't sung but just orchestrated. I got the idea when I decided to go to Rome for a concert conducted by Riccardo Muti. My work revolves around this one idea: an artistic experience is a journey that doesn't shun but welcomes different influences."