She has a huge table, full of objects — things she collects, books stacked. But 'Fire at Sea' also offers careful, thematic juxtapositions as it moves between shots of naval ships and detention centres and follows a young local boy, Samuele. But the camera held up completely. Fire At Sea: Filmed on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa; aduring the European Migrant Crisis. I shot this basically 10 days before the festival in Berlin. Mine was Pennebaker. They are in the port. It's your point of view, and it's unique. With his last film, 2013’s Sacro GRA, Italian Gianfranco Rosi became the first documentarian to win the Golden Lion at Venice. Rosi: No, I never look at all of the footage when I edit. And so, the film reflects exactly the status of things these days. The Instituto Lucce trusted me living there and spending one and a half years on the island. on Oct 20, 2016. Before, in order to have this type of [night time] scene, I would have to have lights everywhere. It was very difficult. Rosi is the only documentary filmmaker to win two highest awards at the three major European film festivals (Venice, Berlin, and Cannes) and is the only director besides Michael Haneke, Ang Lee, Ken Loach, and Jafar Panahi to do so in the 21st century. There’s a hospital, there is an emergency every day there. Jacopo Quadri gave me $4,000 to go to Mexico and do the film. They have fantastic wine there. When we were editing with Jacopo, I felt that something strong was missing with Bartolo. That’s why for me, lighting is important. Feature films, when they're based on real stories, have the camera moving. I was so close to him, and it’s so difficult to film someone that is really, really close to you. Most of the people that go somewhere to shoot a film stay three weeks, three months, and then they make a film on that. So tell me a little bit more about your approach. "Once you have something in your mind, suddenly you look, and that's happening in front of you. Sometimes I wish I were [Werner] Herzog, that he puts his voice in the films, and then I will not need to do a Q&A because everyone can just hear the explanations. I said, “One and a half years ago, you are the one that made me come here by giving me this USB here. Fire at Sea | Gianfranco Rosi October 21, 2016. The Great Recession By Shonni Enelow. Most of my work is not having the camera. The world has to know this.” When people say, “How dare you show death,” I say, “I had the duty to show death. People arrive here.” It became this incredible structure, where I was sketching things. In the hope of leaving, in desperation, the migrants are arriving to touch freedom, but so many people die on this journey. In all your films — and this is the reason why I like your work — you start from the bottom and then the story evolves. Thanks NFS. I think that kills the thing completely. Rosi: Of course [Dr. Bartolo] was the main character, but I had only three scenes with him, so those scenes had to be incredible; they have to be worth everything. Once the film is done, it will speak for itself. We had a very flat sea, but sometimes there were waves of six or seven meters high. Fire at Sea (Italian: Fuocoammare) is a 2016 Italian documentary film directed by Gianfranco Rosi. It has to happen in reality. We already have something like that. There’s more than 50 dead bodies.” I said, “No, I didn’t go down there.” And he said, “Well, you have to go there and film that. I knew someone who knew her very well, and he invited me to visit her studio. I don’t think at all about that, you know? NFS: The way you frame every shot is beautiful, but in capturing real life, how do you make every shot look so cinematic when you’re running around chasing someone or there's a story unfolding? Sometimes it needs to be in the background to make it stronger. As it turns out, the two are intimate friends and spoke for a day and a half at the Toronto International Film Festival. And now, we want to give you a thank you.” Someone said, “I would like to know more about the people in the Navy boat. This captivating docu-reverie from Gianfranco Rosi reveals the aftereffects of war on people in the Middle East. Then I meet by chance the fisherman, who goes underwater to catch sea urchins. And we are not in here for prizes, but what would it mean? What Is 'The Snyder Cut' and How Is It Different from 'Justice League'? With the migrants, I never had that chance. FIRE AT SEA. If I can reach that, then it was worth making this film. All this material then has to take shape slowly. The film leaves a mark without using the usual leavening devices — talking heads, graphics giving numbers and statistics, underlining music for emotional emphasis — that would make it merely well-intentioned agitprop; it’s art made under the most grueling of conditions. Rosi: I never have anxiety [about] filming everything. And sometimes [this went on for] two, three, four, five years, except for Sicario, which was very short. The process behind the first and only documentary to ever win Berlinale’s top prize is as captivating as the film itself. You have 5,000 pages of information on that. I couldn’t feel guilty because I had to wait for the camera. Bartolo is a fantastic doctor.” “Yeah, I know about him, but I go to a pediatrician.” “Let’s call him.” And then he talks to the doctor and I have this on the phone. Therein lies Rosi’s genius. The frame is always important—and good light and good composition—and then within this frame things have to happen. NFS: I know that you don't want to be pedantic and you want audiences to have their own interpretations, like any great art, but at the same time, this film and some of your others actually deal with really difficult political issues. The death is an integral part. It was also selected as the Italian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the awards but it was not nominated in that category. Capturing life on the Italian island of Lampedusa, a frontline in the European migrant crisis. There are these two worlds that cannot get together and exchange things. So he took this piece of paper with him. And I think it’s brilliant that you don’t do that and knowing you, I’m sure that you don’t do that because I don’t think you would’ve felt good about it. Fire at Sea opens with a sequence that might come out of a great coming-of-age film like Stand by Me: Two boys play in island brush, fashioning slingshots to target little sandpiper birds. He has the unfathomable task of treating the migrants who arrive at Lamepdusa’s shores in deplorable conditions. The first thing I talked about with my editor was, “Jacopo [Quadri], I want to show this scene. Rosi: It's an experience I had after showing the film in so many places and in so many different parts of the world. He snapped, he got angry: “Why don’t you do it?” Chris Hegedus whispered for him to calm down. 20 global ratings. I don't want to get more information. What would it mean, if you won an Academy Award? I usually only use one lens. The Navy goes back and forth, there’s a boat. And then, we arrived in the port. Once you have something in your mind, suddenly you look, and that's happening in front of you, and that's the magic of documentary. Samuele was working with me, and that day, he sighs, and I say, “What happened?” “Ah, I can’t breathe.” “You cannot? Most of my work is about losing things. A boat from Libya is intercepted in the middle of the sea, by this patrolling boat that goes back and forth, and there are many boats from the Navy, maybe like, 10, 15, which they call the rescue team. Make your film. NFS: Once you make your scene selections, you never go back to the original material? Most of the time, I have a lavalier, and then I shoot and use the camera microphone. At the end, I didn’t have an accounting of how much I spent. I was at this party. I meet the grandmother because of the kid, and I meet the father because of the kid. An angry juxtaposition structures Gianfranco Rosi’s migrant crisis documentary Fire at Sea. Who the fuck is Zia [“Aunt”] Maria every time, calling when I’m fucking filming and destroying my take? Dr. Pietro Bartolo reviewing images of refugee arrival conditions in 'Fire at Sea' is constructed and shot like a narrative. I'm not taking out the camera. You want to know more about something if I don’t give you everything. NFS: How funny. And I sit down in this bar and I start saying, “Okay, this is Lampedusa. I wanted to have a lighter camera, but it is what it is. I was never able to stop and have [a breakdown] because as soon as I edited the film — did I tell you that I edited in the story of Bartolo 20 days before the [Berlin Film] Festival? I like that language in documentary. Most of it I shot with the 28 or the 35, depending on the light that I had, and then a very, very few times I used the 85, just for closeups. Don't go to a commissioning editor. "When I start a story, everything is isolated around me, and I’m only viewing it through the eyepiece. If you gave them the name and the personal story, then the audience would relate and empathize and clear their conscience. At the beginning of the project, it was like a 10-minute project. But their passionate reaction of anger made me understand. This military boat is like a submarine, basically. A one-man crew, Rosi embeds himself for months among potential subjects before beginning to act as his own DP and sound man. What’s fantastic about that camera is that you shoot at night in the pitch dark, and what you see is what you film. It would’ve been so easy for me to — every day, there’s at least 10 arrivals into the port. Rosi: If you use that camera with one prime lens, it's fine, it’s not so heavy. So you create an idea of this space — Ireland, Italy, Libya, people arriving, a border, the Navy goes back and forth. I can say, "This is an island where people go and some of them die, and then there's this little kid..." and the audience expects things like that. Gianfranco Rosi’s observations of everyday life bring us closer to this place that is as real as it is symbolic, and to the emotional world of some of its inhabitants who are exposed to a permanent state of emergency. How do they feel after?” That would be a different film. When you get an answer, it becomes ideological, so I want to leave this space open. He’s a crazy man. 13.2.2016 Giuseppe Fragapane, Pietro Bartolo, Samuele Pucillo, Gianfranco Rosi, Giuseppe Del Volgo Das Team beim Photo-Call. Directed by Gianfranco Rosi, the movie begins with a text that reels off some numbers: 400,000 migrants, 15,000 deaths. There’s 80 crew people, plus the commander. My work is about constantly losing moments, because if I lose something, something else good will come which is stronger. Okay, this is a good beginning. She grabs a piece of clay and she says, “I tell you everything started from here, from this piece of clay. I find all kind of excuses not to film, especially when you are alone. … It's so precious. Then Rai and Arte Cinema came in and it became a bigger project. Fire at Sea. You never see the light. On the structure, I would choose more the structure of a poem than of an essay. It's like when you carve a statue: How thin can the material be before it breaks? It’s so painful that I have to film. They barely touch each other, without ever having an exchange, even on the island itself. I was planning to go to Africa to film Libya — I had another six months, a year of production. Its breathtaking camera work, character relationships, and the way the plot unfolds all come from the conventions of fictional cinema, rather than documentary. Even if 100,000 people shot in the same location, your point of view is different than all of them and you know that it's different. Now, I have the privilege of, for the first time, being able to dedicate two years of my life making one film and not doing anything else. Blithely unaware of the immigration intake center physically close by but mentally far away, Samuele’s wheezy breathing leads him to an appointment with Dr. Bartolo, the character who links the film’s alternately idyllic and appalling passages. Rosi is best known for 2016’s “Fire At Sea,” the Oscar-nominated documentary which profiled in painful detail the European migrant crisis through the small Sicilian island of Lampedusa. And I didn’t do that. A big chunk of what I needed was all in that story. They recognized that I was in the boat with them and really opened themselves to me. We’ve met, we loved each other, we talk. I had to make advertising. Primarily Italian subtitled in English. They sleep one or two nights there. You keep saying, “No, this is not a good beginning. Nobody can say to you, "I'm not interested in the film. Not only that, but this film was built to arrive to that. There was salt everywhere inside the camera when they opened it up. We have the fishing boat, the boat searching for migrants and the migrants, so three stories. I never understood, ever since I was a student at NYU, that in order to make it more "real," the camera has to move, to feel like a documentary. He’s the conscience. 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