Tommaso Valente
I've been partecipating because I thought that the opportunity to develop a project in this enviroment and with this opportunity of diffusion is great.
At the beginning I was expecting to find a classic writing and producing workshop, oriented on classical methods and mostly based on our proposal. It has been a little puzzling to find a totally different approach. I was even angry on the first two days cause I was in the mood of wasting my time. I remember that I felt so frustrate and umproductive because I wasn't able to appreciate the method. But it was definitely my fault: I was too focused on my subject and I didn't know that it was not important at all. I'm a 18 years experienced professional and it's very hard to change perspective and to question my craft. At the third day I finally realized that was not the workshop but the attitude I was bringing in it. So I changed my mind and I really started to feel more confortable, to apprecciate the Bruno and Renaud's teaching and to consider the workshop as an opportunity, a great opportunity to have an experience out of my usual way to work, to learn a purer way of filmaking and a different point of view on the notion of fiction and documentary.
6 people are sharing an apartment in Ravenna. They are looking for a place to call home but at the moment are still "Passengers". Among the daily difficulties and their inner ghosts, I want to tell a delicate phase of their cohabitation due to the deterioration of their relationships. They are all partecipating to the social project Housing First, whose mission is to secure resources and assets, which lead to community planning to end homelessness through advocacy and community collaboration.
Antonio (56) had a restaurant, a family, a life, then in a single stroke he lost everything and ended up in the street. He is a serious diabetic and an important obesity makes him actually disabled.
Lucio (20) is very young and has lived for years a problem of addictions to narcotics that led him to not have a place to stay. Recently, his father's loss has exacerbated his malaise. He found in Boxing a positive stimulus to attach to.
Tonino (36) lived in a structure for psychiatric patients, accompanied by all the problems that this involves, first of all the difficulty in having a serene living situation and the insurmountable difficulty in having a life.
Yousuf (50) is Pakistani and when he arrived in Italy he had no place to go. At the time he did not even know he could speak: being deaf, in his country he had never had the opportunity to be followed and everyone was convinced he had a mental retardation.
Sandro is over 50 years after a long addiction to alcohol and choices that led him to lose his home, then in a rehabilitation facility, he was looking for a place to call "family".He has a conflicting relationship with all the roommates except Yousuf: he helps him in his rehabilitation path (he has been involved by the doctors and speech therapists who follow Y., so he can do it effectively), supports him in city commissions, etc.
I would like to tell this story primarily by working on the collective core of their meetings: meetings. They represent an important moment of confrontation and often become an opportunity to vent with the operator all the frustrations of their life, even the previous ones and not only related to cohabitation.
But I do not want to forget the opportunity to work individually with each of them and try to represent their personality with a few strokes. I think it can be an important attempt to do that of tracing the very short portraits of each of the protagonists to be alternated with pieces of the meeting. Each tenant of the apartment has a characteristic, a memory, a main sentiment to which I would like to refer also to complete and clarify why he behaves then in a certain way during the meeting.
It is not yet clear to me how, but I am investigating with the witnesses what could be the visual form of this portrait
My work won't be developed during the workshop mostly because is not compatible with the workshop's sake. It's actually in a stage of production and develop that won't warrantee the necesseraly grade of freedom in the directing process.
Anyway "The Passengers" is starting to be a web documentary series project. We are approacching the shooting of the Pilot Episode and applying for develop funds. I hope to put in my works the learning I'll have and the skills I'll gain during the workshop, because I think that can make me grow as professional.
At the moment I've joined the project of Cristiano Regina, "Punto d'accordo" because I think thai it will definitely be the project where I can give my best support. I like the plot and I'm really engaged in everyday conflicts becaming little mirrors of the society of today.
My documentary talks about people that are looking for a place to call home but at the moment are still "Passengers". That's why!