Antonio Ferrera, Albert Maysles
THE GATES
USA, 2007, DigiBeta, 87'
Merc 17 - h. 21.00, Parco - Piazza del Cannone
Produzione - Production: Maysles Films
Produttore - Producer: Antonio Ferrera, Maureen A. Ryan, Vladimir Yavachev
Sceneggiatura - Screenplay: Antonio Ferrera
Montaggio - Editing: Antonio Ferrera,Matthew Prinzingbr>
Fotografia - Cinematography: Antonio Ferrera,Matthew Prinzing
Sound editor: Paul Furedi
Cast: Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Distribuzione - Distribution: Maysles Films
Tel: +001 (212) 582-6050, michaelchaiken@gmail.com
Nel 1979 gli artisti Christo e Jeanne-Claude hanno pensato una delle più grandi installazioni in uno spazio pubblico della storia: un 'fiume dorato' di 7.503 cancelli a Central Park. Antonio Ferrera e Albert Maysles raccontano i 26 anni della battaglia per realizzarla, vinta nel 2005.
In 1979, artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude proposed one of the largest public art installations in history: a 'golden river' of 7,503 fabric-paneled gates in Central Park. Transcending controversy, it was finally completed in 2005. Antonio Ferrera and Albert Maysles' film chronicles the artists' 26-year commitment to transform the Park.
Note di regia - Director's statement:In 2003, I began making The Gates movie. Filming started in 1979 and ended in 1981 when NYC declined the project. The 25 hours of recordings of the dialogue that Christo and Jeanne-Claude ignited were put away along with the hopes of the The Gates project into a vault. 23 years later Mayor Bloomberg resuscitated the project. I was asked to realize, oversee and lead the film by Albert Maysles with whom Christo and Jeanne-Claude had started the filming with many years before. Everything told me not to do it. You see with any film the odds are 100 percent against you making it. So there has to be a massive irrational force of love to move your will and make you cross reason with the impossible . Looking back at that time I remember feeling inspired by the impossibility of making a film across 23 miles at the heart of New York's arcadia. Finally,after many a sleepless night,I was introduced to Christo and Jeanne-Claude by Albert Maysles. I fell in love with them and that was it. Throughout the filmmaking process it was a labor of blood ,passion, moments of hillarity and daily invention all fueled by Christo and Jeanne-Claude's love of joy and beauty. I feel very thankful to have been able to see a glimpse of the 360 degrees of longitudinal and latitudinal points of the truth that the grand Symphony of The Gates work of art has given my life. People don't make 'em like this any more. I have seen the spectrum of human feeling and actions from the basest to their most exhaulted. I hope that we can laugh at the former and that we live in the latter.. The film brought a new meaning to the old saying 'You can't write it better than that kid.'
Paese - Country: USA - Italia / Italy
Biografia - Biography:
Antonio Ferrera
A native of Schenectady, NY Antonio Ferrera is an independent filmmaker . The Gates is Mr. Ferrera's first feature length film as director. He conceived, produced and co-directed With The Filmmaker: Portraits by Albert Maysles, featuring half-hour portraits of Robert Duvall, Jane Campion, Martin Scorsese, and Wes Anderson for the IFC channel. Before working with Maysles, Ferrera co-directed and shot Voices of Cabrini, which follows the re-development of Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project and the ensuing effects of displacement on the African-American community as people are uprooted from their homes and community.
Ferrera produced the short film for Bill Moyers Now, entitled Before I Leave, a ten-minute human monologue and meditation on remembrance, memory, and death. Other films of note include,It's an Adventure, a documentary about director Wes Anderson with Bill Murray, working in Rome on Wes Anderson's film A Life Aquatic and Masada: Live at Tonic 1999 capturing acclaimed multi-instrumentalist John Zorn in concert.
Antonio is currently working on: a series called As Seen By..., a film called :New York City Symphony Film and a film about energy.
Abert Maysles
Albert Maysles is a pioneer of Direct Cinema who, with his brother David were the first to make nonfiction feature films (Gimme Shelter, SAlesman, Grey Gardens) where the drama of life unfolds as is without scripts, sets, interviews or narration. His first film, Psychiatry in Russia (1955) he made in transition from psychologist to documentary filmmaker. In 1960 he served as co-filmmaker of Primary. His 36 films include What's Happening? The Beatles in the USA (1964), five films of the projects of Christo and Jeanne-Claude (1972 to 1995), and a sixth, The Gates (2007), Meet Marlon Brando (1965) and three documentaries for HBO. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1965), a Peabody, an Emmy, five Lifetime Achievement Awards, the award for best cinematography at Sundance (2002) for Lalee's Kin which was also nominated in 2001 for an Academy Award and the Columbia Dupont Award (2004). In 1999 Eastman Kodak saluted him as one of the 100 world's finest cinematographers.
