Directed by
Stefano Mazzotta
Country of Origin
Italy
Runtime
47:51
Category
Inspired by “Os Pobres” (The Poor), a bitter and raw novel by the Portuguese author Raul Brandão, peopled by outcasts grappling with unresolved existential problems, the project by Stefano Mazzotta explores the theme of exile, the moral condition of individuals who feel estranged from the world in which they live, suspended between hope and nostalgia. Marginal and awkward figures, united by the same melancholic and nostalgic feelings, build up a desire for redemption. As they wander across the fascinating landscape of southern Sardinia, known as Campidano, on its endless white beaches and dunes, among the characteristic old houses, the natural spaces echo their souls, while distance and suspension establish a strained succession of images. Emptiness, vertigo, horizon. Things lost or which never were.
Director Biography – Stefano Mazzotta
Stefano Mazzotta, choreographer and stage director. After a training in dance and theater at the Actor’s School of CTK (Lecce, It), he continued his studies at the School of Dramatic Art “Paolo Grassi” in Milan where he graduated in 2000. He studied with masters such as Jean Cebron, Marco Baliani, Beatrice Libonati, Raffaella Giordano, Michele Abbondanza, Davide Montagna, Bruce Michelson. He has worked with directors and choreographers including Ismael Ivo, Pier Luigi Pizzi, Luca Veggetti, Monica Casadei and Avi Kaiser. Since 2005 he is choreographer and artistic director of the italian dancetheatre company Zerogrammi. His creative activity is characterised by a choreographic research that advances through experimentation of languages, contexts, and views often transversal to dance and theater. The organic journey of discovery, leading to creation, comes to compositional work through social and educational projects, residences built around specific anthropological and geographical interests, actions related to the experience of languages such as photography, video, plastic arts, literature, to give to the creative work new signs, new meanings and an experience-based baggage representing the essential tool with which he comes back to the construction of its artistic work, renewing its sense and urgency. From 2006, over 30 co-productions, derived by national and international collaborations, have been created and represented in Italy and abroad (France, Switzerland, Spain, Finland, Holland, Portugal, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Singapore) and awarded several prizes including Hystrio Prize 2013, Golden Mask 2012, Prize Vignale Danza2012, Giocateatro Prize 2009, Festival Oriente Occidente Prize 2008. Since 2012, he is also artistic director of Casa LUFT, a production center dedicated to artistic creation and professional training, where the dialogue between different and complementary poetics, providing support to creative processes, produces wealth generated by sharing and multiplies useful tools for developing the artistic idea, expanding connections and collaborating opportunities in national and international contexts.