Flesh and Dust

“Flesh and Dust" was born from the need to recover a part of my past that still affects my imagination. When I was a child, following my father in his farm work, I developed a special relationship with nature and rural life, a bond I partly lost when I left Calabria, my homeland, and moved to the city of Rome. To retrieve this past, I decided to make a short film that have my father engaged in person to tell his life and the relationship with his environment. A primitive and profound relationship with a job that my father carries with fatigue and dedication even today. But to do this, I did not want a "story" made of words, but a story made only of images and sounds, which restored the atmosphere, the times and even the “smells” of my land.

Starting from this basic idea I started to shoot the short film without a real screenplay, improvising during the shooting and letting reality get inside the camera lens. The editing took place parallel to the shooting, creating a free process in which pre-production, production and post-production traveled in parallel, affecting each other. My father reacted very positively to the inputs I gave him on the set, and indeed proved to be a carrier of ideas and key tips for the success of the work.

Having shot the short film without any budget and without any member of the crew, I worked alone in total freedom, covering the roles of director of photography, sound engineer and editor and immersing myself totally in the technical and spiritual realization of the work.