Author: Dreamate Demo

-With this victory, you have achieved an important milestone and have become an authoritative voice in international independent cinema. What are your next projects?

I am obviously honoured to have my work recognized by the TriBeCa Film Critics Circle Awards this year. It is always gratifying to have informed persons in your chosen field acknowledge that they find your work worthy of celebrating. However, I must admit to a certain reserve concerning your very complimentary categorization of me as an authoritative voice in international independent cinema. I simply strive to create work that is appreciated as being relevant in some way to the contemporary
world in which we live. From this perspective, my experimental video work NOISE is an important work for me, not only because it deals with a topic that I personally consider relevant – the potentially harmful messaging noise created by billions of posts created daily worldwide on social media platforms – but also because it is the introductory element in a larger interactive multimedia project that involves interviews with persons around the world expressing their frustrations and preoccupations with both interpersonal as well as regional, national and international social situations.
The project began to take shape in 2025. It involved my identification of artists in a variety of countries around the world capable of conducting the interviews I designed in each country. These interviews would serve as the data I required to build an interactive installation illustrating messaging noise as a problematic international phenomenon. By early 2025 I had already gathered the data I required from 4 countries (a total of 20 interviews) thanks to the collaboration of four very talented artists: Joan Logue (USA), Hervé Nisic (France) Ana Carolina von Hertwig (Canada) and Flávia Baxhix (Brazil).
However, I wanted both the Asian and African continents involved in this first edition of the project and I am currently seeking to identify artists from these two regions interested in taking part in the project. In the meantime, the technical structure of the multi-projection, multi-media installation has been finalized including the interactive portion involving the possibility for the public to add their frustrations in real time to the mix of audio-visual commentaries of the participants from around the world. The film NOISE serves as the introduction to the main room of this interactive installation. One last note: this year marks the 50th anniversary of my work as an artist in the fields of analogue photography, musical composition and new media creation in the areas of photography, graphic art and video. It seemed to me only fitting that I mark this event with a project. This month I have
completed two comprehensive 3D simulations of my work: one dealing with my figurative work in the fields of photography, music, new media and video art; the other dealing with my abstract works that have had such a profound influence on my figurative works over the years. These simulations can be visualized in a retrospective dossier using the following link: https://bit.ly/42ASphd

-Describe yourself with three adjectives that best reflect your vision of the world.

Ambiguous / Uncertain / Doubtful

Although these three adjectives might, at first glance, seem to reflect a rather pessimistic vision, that is not my intention. I believe that the world suffers from a profound lack of what I refer to as informed understanding, that is, the form of understanding that results from in-depth investigations of issues coupled with the ability to observe and analyze the results of such investigations from multiple cultural and socio-economic perspectives. A quote from the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus comes to mind: “First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.” With informed understanding, situations and events automatically appear less “black and white” or” right or wrong” and we appreciate the inherent ambiguity in them creating what I feel is a potentially
helpful dose of uncertainty and doubt about our initial “home grown” way of looking at them. This, for me, is the first essential step to finding solutions that involve relevant compromise, that all important step in affirming a belief that two competing visions can both be partially accurate and partially inaccurate depending on context and perspective. My work of the past twenty years has
been largely devoted to suggesting the inherent ambiguity and uncertainty of situations that we observe and the inevitable doubts generated by such qualities. This social perspective is akin to the conclusions of quantum mechanics which state that it is our
observations themselves that shape the reality we observe and that therefore our universe doesn’t possess definitive, objective properties that are independent of the observer.

-WILD FILMMAKER is, above all, a space for freedom of thought and sharing. Who would you most like to find yourself in front of, and what would you say to them? You may include figures from the present or the past, from Julius Caesar to Marilyn Monroe, just to give an example.

I couldn’t possibly name just one person. I can think of many.

• I would love to sit down with 18th century ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro and say “Thank you for showing me that flat field perspective and texture-free faces can produce such timeless universality”.
• I would love to sit down together with Marcel Duchamp and John Cage and say “Thank you for opening up my mind”
• I would love to sit down with photographer / video artist William Wegman and say “Thank you for showing me that a lighter, often humorous perspective on a topic can be as powerful as a purely intellectual approach to the same subject matter.”
• I would love to once again have the opportunity to sit down in a Paris café today with my dear friend video artist Joan Logue and say “Thank you for showing me the incredible power of video portraiture and for your profound kindness and generosity.” With a bit of luck, perhaps this year it will be possible. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. I feel deeply indebted to so many remarkable human beings who have consciously or unconsciously marked my journey through life, expanding my horizons and providing the inspiration and stimulation necessary to making my journey a productive
  one – an ever-present challenge requiring relentless dedication and focus.

-Through the WILD FILMMAKER Community, we have succeeded in bringing independent filmmakers under the same spotlight as mainstream industrial cinema. How do you evaluate our work and activities?

I find the work of Wild Filmmaker extremely important to the health and well-being of the independent cinema universe and the artists working in it today – not only because it heightens awareness of the importance of independent cinema as a relevant vector of artistic expression, but also because it has demonstrated that it cares about the artists themselves by offering a wide variety of festival opportunities worldwide to artists of different sensibilities and priorities as well as offering awards that cover a broad spectrum of areas and expertise (both technical and aesthetic) that more accurately represents the preoccupations of artists working in the field today. Simply put, “Bravo.”

-With this victory, you have achieved an important milestone and have become an authoritative voice in international independent cinema. What are your next projects?

At present, I am preparing a larger and more comprehensive solo exhibition and film project entitled In the Artist’s Eye, which will be presented together with a catalogue at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, Sweden, from 20 March to 1 May 2027.

I have also had the great fortune of collaborating with brilliant actors throughout my artistic practice — individuals who have enriched and coloured my works with the depth of their lived experiences. Most recently, I have worked with the artist and actress Ebba Melber, who performs the lead role in the film The Rorschach Test.

Simultaneously with the development of the solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, I am creating new short films. These will primarily be presented at film festivals and in cinemas, in order to achieve the most optimal and resonant environment for this particular kind of cinematic work. We shall see what unfolds; perhaps a new documentary will also emerge within this framework. In this endeavour, I am seeking visionary collaboration partners who can help realise this journey on both a financial and structural level.

All my artistic works require considerable time to create, even though some of them are short films such as The Rorschach Test, Not Without Gloves, and The Aesthetics of Failure, with which I proudly won the TriBeCa Film Critics Circle Award 2026. My films are always meticulously tailored to the contexts in which they will be shown — whether in cinemas and festivals, outdoors on cliffs, islands, buildings, and houses, or within art institutions such as galleries, art halls, and museums, where I frequently work sculpturally with the moving image. For me, there are no boundaries to what film and art can be.

I always depart from the inherent poetry of a given place when creating my works. Now, as I begin this exhibition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm — having carried out thorough research and carefully studied the spaces and site — my mind begins to work frenetically with ideas, scripts, filming, editing, and the complete visualisation of the spatial experience. One should step into the work and be enveloped by it as a viewer. I always strive to create a space for reflection. For me, it is of the utmost importance to artistically craft a multifaceted moving-image project that touches the depths and opens pathways for profound reflection upon what one sees — or perhaps does not wish to see. To penetrate beneath the surface is, I believe, what I continually strive for when creating new works. Perhaps I may succeed in opening the door to that which cannot be described in words, only experienced.

It is profoundly important to me that my works and films pose questions, becoming an open dialogue with the audience in which the answer perhaps always resides in the beholder’s eye. The new work will illuminate that which we may prefer not to see — the things we entirely close our eyes to.

I always work subliminally and poetically, and I am deeply grateful to collaborate with a truly remarkable individual who creates magical music for my works and films — the exceptionally gifted composer, critic, art historian, philosopher, musician, and visionary artist Conny Malmqvist. He has composed the music for several of my internationally awarded works as well as my monumental site-specific pieces.

For me, when creating new cinematic works, the intellectual discourse, rhythm, and image within the film are of vital importance. I edit for months, sometimes years, on a new piece or a larger exhibition comprising several works before I allow the public to encounter it. I am extremely self-critical — a blessing as much as a curse. Art is difficult; remember this when you encounter a work you do not immediately understand. The simple is often the most difficult. I am not personally interested in creating mainstream film or art. For me, film is art, not entertainment; it is pure magic in its truest form.

My great passion in life is art, film, poetry, literature, and music. I am deeply engaged with our contemporary moment, yet I root my works in the past. If we are to learn anything about the present, we must know and understand history rather than censor it. Knowledge is the only true power the individual possesses. I stand for free art. Life has not been a bed of roses for me; violence, death, and illness have coloured my palette, yet instead of becoming bitter, I can transform these experiences in the hope that they may resonate with another person’s reflections. As an artist and filmmaker, it is essential to me to pose the difficult questions about life and death, about what it means to be human with all our faults and shortcomings. To gaze into our multifaceted psyche, to look at life and illuminate nature as a treasure we must protect — indeed, all living things — while death and the departed whisper in our ears if only we listen and open the window to the inarticulable.

-Describe yourself with three adjectives that best reflect your vision of the world.

Reflective visionary filmmaker, curator, and artist who does not shy away from the difficult questions of life and art.

-WILD FILMMAKER is, above all, a space for freedom of thought and sharing. Who would you most like to find yourself in front of, and what would you say to them?
You may include figures from the present or the past, from Julius Caesar to Marilyn Monroe, just to give an example.

I have no specific question for any historical figure. For me, it is more about learning from the past in order to understand the time in which we live and how the future might possibly take shape, in both positive and negative terms. It concerns seeing — or rather daring to see — the uncomfortable, daring to be critical of norms, looking beneath the surface, and attempting to transform the negative into something positive. To strive towards a world that is more inclusive and permissive. Perhaps it is a utopia, yet together we can try to change the rules of the game and make visible other ways of seeing the world — where power, money, war, and violence do not reign as the dominant ideology.

-Through the WILD FILMMAKER Community, we have succeeded in bringing independent filmmakers under the same spotlight as mainstream industrial cinema. How do you evaluate our work and activities?

I am deeply grateful and proud to be part of Wild Filmmaker, where I have had the pleasure of encountering remarkable artists and filmmakers who burn with passion for their craft. I have personally witnessed brilliantly accomplished films of the highest quality that could not have been created here in Sweden owing to the extensive economic cutbacks in culture. This is entirely the wrong path; one should invest in culture, film, art, literature, poetry, music, theatre, research, and more. That is how one creates a creative, sustainable, and reflective society.

In this regard, Wild Filmmaker is truly magnificent. You create opportunities for filmmakers across the world and bring their works to a larger audience. Therefore, I wish to offer you all a great tribute for your visionary work. Special thanks to editor-in-chief Michele Diomà and his international team, and of course I want to thank all the inspiring artists, screenwriters, and filmmakers, as well as all the international collaboration partners Wild Filmmaker has across the globe. It is a great honour to be part of this visionary journey. Only together can we change the rules of the game. Forward with new visionary film without physical boundaries — where art is free in spirit and soul.

-With this victory, you have achieved an important milestone and have become an authoritative voice in international independent cinema. What are your next projects?

Thank you. It means so much, especially because independent animation is made with heart, and faith in the magic of storytelling. My upcoming projects expand on that dream. I’m currently working on extending the adventures of Malibu and Roxie in my animated series. Through charming adventures for children and families, Malibu & Roxie share messages of kindness, compassion, and friendship. I look forward to creating impactful stories through animation that move people, and open hearts, while reminding us that even our darkest travels can lead us to a place of hope and greater meaning.

-Describe yourself with three adjectives that best reflect your vision of the world.

If you asked me to describe myself with three words that embody how ?I see the world, I would say “hopeful, compassionate, creative”. I’m hopeful because I believe that even in our darkest moments, we can emerge from trauma with strength, healing, and new beginnings. I’m compassionate because I believe in the power of human connection, kindness, and empathy to walk alongside others in their journeys. And I’m creative because I believe in the arts, storytelling, and imagination to spark change and inspire others, build community, and uncover the magic within our daily lives. Hope. Compassion. Creativity. You’ll find all of these in the things I make, from my books and films, to my work with kids, families, and our community.

-WILD FILMMAKER is, above all, a space for freedom of thought and sharing. Who would you most like to find yourself in front of, and what would you say to them? You may include figures from the present or the past, from Julius Caesar to Marilyn Monroe, just to give an example.

If given the chance to stand in front of anybody, it would be “Walt Disney”. I would express my gratitude for teaching the world that imagination could endure through generations, cultures, and circumstances. He turned childlike stories into timeless classics that empower dreamers everywhere. I would tell him his films and books inspired me to be a storyteller as well. Through animation and children’s books, I’ve created worlds of my own that emphasize kindness, hope, friendship, and perseverance. As a small independent filmmaker, I never lost sight of the fact that stories have the power to change hearts and unite people. But above all else, I would ask him what kept him going when no one believed in his dreams. Then I would say, “Thank you for teaching us that if we can dream it, we can create it.”

-Through the WILD FILMMAKER Community, we have succeeded in bringing independent filmmakers under the same spotlight as mainstream industrial cinema. How do you evaluate our work and activities?

I admire what WILD FILMMAKER does for the future of film. As an independent filmmaker myself, I know how easy it is to feel left out of the loop when you pour your heart into something from a place of passion, vision, and authenticity. Not every film comes from big budgets. Your organization allows independent filmmakers to be seen and heard. Not just around those with more access to film festivals and markets, but right alongside them. 
What you’re doing is creating a community that embraces free expression, artistic vision, and international collaboration. You’re allowing filmmakers to reach audiences that they may not have had the chance to reach if it weren’t for you.
Thank you for the work that you do for independent artists. Keep bridging the gap between undiscovered talent and the world. 

by Michele Diomà

For those who love the history of cinema, there are great auteurs to study and often rediscover—and then there is Charlie Chaplin.
Once, Federico Fellini said that Chaplin, in a way, is Cinema itself. I believe that if we want to understand the great tragedies humanity is experiencing today, we should revisit Charlie Chaplin’s films, because I think they contain the most precious message of peace that any artist has ever given to the world.
It is with immense honor that today we welcome Michael J. Chaplin to the WILD FILMMAKER Community.

(PH By Ashim Bhalla)

Who is Michael J. Chaplin?

I am a British author, born in Santa Monica, California, and raised in Switzerland following my father’s expulsion from America during the McCarthy era. I am the eldest son of Charlie Chaplin and Oona O’Neill. After a youth spent trying to escape my father’s overwhelming fame, which followed me everywhere, I eventually found a stable life farming land in Southwest France and raising a large family. My literary debut is the historical fiction novel, A Fallen God. More recently, I have dedicated myself to tracing my father’s English Romany roots, an exploration that is the subject of the theatrical documentary Chaplin | Spirit of The Tramp, in which I am the central participant and narrator. I currently live in Switzerland, but continue to write and travel frequently in Southern Europe.

The main mission of WILD FILMMAKER is to introduce younger generations to the history of cinema. Is there a project you would like to create to help contribute to this goal?

My current project, the documentary Chaplin | Spirit of The Tramp, is designed to do exactly that. The goal of the film is to revisit Charlie Chaplin’s work through the lens of his Romany heritage, which is a new perspective compared to other films about his life. The film is particularly important in cultivating a love of the big screen experience to build future cinema-going audiences as it was made in that spirit. I am the thread that runs through the film, and it features my granddaughter, Uma Bhalla Chaplin, who interviews me and also voices an animated version of my father in his own words. This passing of the torch within the family, and the inclusion of a younger generation, introduces the Maestro to a new audience.

What do you like and what don’t you like about the world?

I am a family man, I spend most of my time at home reading and writing. I enjoy a simple life with my wife, children and grandchildren. There is much to dislike about the world but if I focus on basic goodness, people, my family,  nature and simple pleasures like reading and writing then there is so much to like.

Every artist has someone or something that inspired them. Where do you draw your creative drive from?

For my novel, A Fallen God, the inspiration was drawn from the land itself. While farming in Southwest France, a strong, melancholic feeling settled over me. Discovering the history of the 13th-century conflict between the Church of Rome and the rebellious Cathar movement—and the subsequent genocide—unlocked the world and theme for my historical romance novel.

For my work in cinema, the drive is deeply personal and began when my father told me about his Romany roots at the age of ten, a confession that impressed me greatly. The documentary, Chaplin | Spirit of The Tramp, represents decades of my dedication to tracing and honoring this English Romany tradition. Ultimately, this project is a pilgrimage of love, where I reclaim my father and his legacy.

What impression do you have of WILD FILMMAKER?

I have a  positive impression of WILD FILMMAKER. I appreciate it’s focus on preserving the history of cinema and promoting arthouse cinema at major film festivals. The mission to promote creativity and democratize cinema, while introducing younger generations to the history of the art form, is commendable.

-Who is Matteo Cerami?

I’m a screenwriter, director, writer and creative writing teacher. Alongside my artistic and professional work, I collaborate with my mother Maria Grazia Chiarcossi, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s heir, in the care, preservation and promotion of the poet’s literary legacy, organizing seminars, workshops and open lectures on his work, in Italy and abroad.

-More than fifty years after his death, what does Pier Paolo Pasolini represent today for Italian society and for younger generations? // In your opinion, is Pasolini today a figure who is truly understood and studied, or has he become a symbol that everyone interprets according to their own perspective?

To answer this question, we must first clarify what we mean when we talk about Italian society. Formed barely a century ago on the ruins of the postwar period, it is a provincial by-product of the great European bourgeoisies. It came into being through inertia, modelling itself on them, but without any history behind it, no shared zodiac of values, no cultural consciousness. That is why it has never been able to place any brake on the dehumanization that capitalism has provoked in the West. When it could, it has even done the opposite: invoked it as a blessing. Its defining characteristics have always been conformism and philistinism, and in a century of existence it has produced very few intellectuals of substance. The one and only figure who continues to carry enormous weight in the nation’s conscience – or perhaps, I should say, in its unconscious – is Pier Paolo Pasolini. But his work is complex, powerful, contradictory; it forces you to question yourself, and the average Italian flees from complexity and from confrontation with his own contradictions as he would flee from death, for fear of losing the small privileges to which he clings tooth and nail. He prefers escapism. Through television first, and now the anonymous, impalpable and magmatic virtual world of the web, capitalism has entered the psyche of individuals, into their deepest imaginaries, poisoning their capacity for fantasy and judgment. A textbook example of this involution is escapism. Mystification. Unreality. Pasolini’s cultural legacy has also fallen into unreality. Today his figure is miraculous, his words prophetic, his tragic fate the fruit of some dark conspiracy, a purely symbolic event, if not an outright sought-after destiny. If his contemporaries failed to defuse the explosive charge of his words by demonizing him while he lived, his successors have succeeded by deifying him in death. The logical consequence of all this is that in the age of profound cultural and ideological regression in which we live, almost no one in Italy is any longer capable of perceiving the protest that runs through every line of his immense work, let alone reckoning with it. Even Pasolini’s poetry has become Poetry
with a capital P, collapsing into a purely intimate, individual experience, detached from any immediate utility, urgency, or practicality. In other words, outside of History. Young people, who are still on the threshold of social life and see only its purest ideals, are not yet contaminated, corrupted, or mortified by petty-bourgeois cowardice and hypocrisy. They are generally
adorable beings, full of hope and goodwill. They are still free, available. They can believe. On them, Pasolini’s words still have a real, overwhelming effect. They remain perhaps the only true resource, the only valid instrument for developing critical consciousness and civic sense. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them, through fragility, loneliness, and abandonment, succumb very quickly to conformism and consumption. But in my personal experience, in my small, humble, laborious work of spreading the poet’s thought, there is never a shortage of young people capable of listening to his words, making his worldview and his rage against injustice their own. For how much longer will they be able to resist those invisible forces that try in every way to occupy their judgment and their imagination? On this I will not venture an opinion. All my hope rests in the new generations. For better or worse, it all depends on them.

-Pasolini was often described as a controversial and prophetic intellectual: which of his analyses on politics, consumerism, and cultural change do you believe remain relevant today?

What strikes readers approaching Pasolini’s work for the first time is the precision with which he was able to describe the transformations of society at the exact moment they were occurring. If we were to take all his works, from the first poem he wrote at the age of seven to Salò, his last film, and arrange them in chronological order, we would have a portrait of Italian history from the end of the fascist years to the mid-1970s, day by day. After his death, the world changed, and with him disappeared, at
least in Italy, an intellectual capable of narrating it to us. But his work remains indispensable for understanding the complex web of reasons that has brought us to where we are. His analysis of cultural homogenization through consumption and television remains entirely valid today – a diagnostic instrument for measuring the health of society that is perhaps even more powerful
in our present, in which the same logic has reached a global scale. His denunciation of “development without progress” remains entirely valid, now that the relationship between productivity and wellbeing has been inverted and means have achieved overwhelming primacy over ends. His attack on the false tolerance of power – which integrates what it once repressed, reducing identity, sexuality, and marginality to pure commodity – also remains entirely valid. I could go on at length, but verifying whether his analyses are still current or not is a pastime that doesn’t particularly excite me, because it conceals something rather base: the secret hope of discovering sooner or later that he was, after all, wrong, that the world is fine as it is, that there is nothing we can do
to change it, that one might as well enjoy life, that one can be happy even when others are not. And yet the opposite is true. Pasolini’s most important legacy lies precisely here: in hurling himself with all his strength against the injustices and the violence of power over the weakest, never letting his guard down, even at the cost of contradicting himself, even at the cost of exposing himself personally, even at the cost of his life.

-What don’t you like about the world, and what would you change?

This question too, unwittingly naive, springs from a completely mistaken ideological premise. For better or worse, there is no perfect world to aspire to. It is perhaps the most powerful illusion to which human beings fall victim, one that drives them, in all manner of ways, even the most inhuman, to impose their own idea of what is just, what is good, and what is beautiful upon others. Every individual is unique and unrepeatable: it would be enough to learn to live together respecting this principle, in peace. That,
perhaps, is the only wish I feel able to express regarding the fate of the world: a wish for peace. But what is peace?
For Pasolini, peace was not a state of serenity or restored normalcy after war. He abhorred what the world calls “normality”. “In the state of “normality” – he said – man tends to fall asleep; he forgets to reflect, loses the habit of judging himself, no longer knows how to ask who he is. And it is precisely during this “normality” that a state of emergency must be artificially created. And it is the poets who create it. The poets, those eternal indignants, those champions of intellectual rage, of philosophical
fury. What makes the poet discontented? An infinity of problems that exist and no one is capable of solving. And without whose resolution, peace – true peace, the poet’s peace – is unachievable.” And he added: “As long as man exploits man, as long as humanity is divided into masters and servants, there will be neither normality nor peace. The source of all the evil of our time lies here.”

-WILD FILMMAKER is a global community of Arthouse film producers, a movement inspired by the Nouvelle Vague but on a worldwide scale. Do you think it is still possible today for an independent movement to prevail over the distribution power of the major companies?

It would be wonderful, but it would presuppose a genuine revolution. And it is very difficult to imagine a revolution – a concrete one: economic, social, and cultural – in the traditional sense of the word, because revolution implies a struggle against those in power. And today power has no centre, no name, no face, no masters. It corrupts and devours everything, even the movements that reject it. Currently the most subversive forces running through the West come from within it, from the most reactionary, extremist, and fanatical fringes of society. A phenomenon destined, in the best-case scenario, to implode the system rather than revolutionize it. The only true revolutions today are being made by machines. Hoping that from the four corners of the planet a healthy subversive impulse might arrive, capable of opposing all this and overturning the balance of power overnight, might still have
made sense in the last century. Today I fear it is a vain illusion. But we must not surrender to despair. We live in an unjust society. But within this society our lives and our work unfold. So we live and work contributing to its sustenance. It compensates us poorly, worse, in a certain sense, it persecutes and humiliates us. So we criticize it, accuse it, oppose it. And this only worsens our practical situation, in terms of both life and work. Yet our criticisms, our accusations, our opposition do not prevent us from
living and working within and for this society. They are even its principal nourishment. All of this is absurd. So what is left for us to do? Push the protest to the point of breaking the law? Or organize a kind of moral strike, isolate ourselves in voluntary exile, observe a symbolic fast, oppose a categorical refusal, a definitive, almost mystical “no” to the world around us? Taking our dissent to its ultimate consequences, these are the only two solutions, in the end. Artists possess, fortunately for them, one weapon: that of poetic expression. With it they can fight, in a certain sense, outside the law. But everyone else? Everyone else is forced to split themselves, to dissociate into two different people. By day, to work for society. In the evening, at the bar or on social
media, to criticize it, accuse it, condemn it. It is the long tragedy in which entire lives are spent. But this tragedy, amid all the tragedies of the modern age, is the only one that presupposes a genuine hope. Perhaps independent artists should start over from here: fighting to put the human back at the centre, one battle at a time.

Who is David Ezell?

I am first and foremost a raconteur. When I was a boy, my friend and I used to play in Flannery O’Connor’s yard. Her mother, Miss Regina, would come outside and yell at us. Perhaps something rubbed off on me while I hid in the shrubs waiting for her to go back inside. I love telling stories. I am also a screenwriter, filmmaker, playwright, entrepreneur, and educator who has spent most of his life trying to better understand people. Before moving into filmmaking, I trained as a historian and therapist and eventually founded Darien Wellness, a behavioral health organization dedicated to helping people navigate life’s challenges. Looking back, whether in business, education, psychology, or filmmaking, I’ve really been doing the same thing all along: listening to stories and trying to tell them well. As a filmmaker, I’m particularly interested in the intersection of memory, identity, perception, and human behavior. Whether I’m making my documentary like PAPER MOON Rise or a psychological thriller like Occam’s Beard, I’m drawn to stories that challenge audiences to question what they think they know.

Do you remember the exact moment you fell in love with cinema?

I was pre-verbal—or perhaps just a child of few words—but I remember using movies, and to a lesser extent television, as an escape from my parents’ very unhappy marriage. Movies were a place I could run into and become totally absorbed. I was especially fascinated by films of the 1930s and 1940s. Many decades later, I figured out why. Most of those films were relatively short, and my undiagnosed ADHD worked well with that format. Long before I understood anything about attention or psychology, those movies were holding my interest in a way that many other things couldn’t.

Tell us about your project “Occam’s Beard”.

Occam’s Beard is a psychological thriller about a former child star who becomes convinced that his longtime psychiatrist has been replaced by an impostor. What begins as a routine therapy session slowly unravels into a confrontation about memory, grief, identity, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive. The title is a play on Occam’s Razor. The screenplay asks what happens when the simplest explanation is actually the wrong one. At its core, Occam’s Beard is about perception. Every character believes they understand what is happening, and every character, to some extent, does.

Which Director inspires you the most?

Wow. That’s an impossible question. F. W. Murnau, George Lucas, John Cassavetes, James Whale, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Spike Jonze, Richard Linklater, Sam Mendes… please stop me. I can go on for a very long time if you let me. The truth is that I don’t really have a single favorite director. Different filmmakers inspire me for different reasons. Murnau’s visual storytelling, Lucas’s world-building, Cassavetes’ emotional honesty, Whale’s humanity, Scorsese’s energy, Linklater’s naturalism, Mendes’ precision—each reminds me that there are countless ways to tell a story well. If there’s one lesson I’ve taken from all of them, it’s that great filmmaking isn’t about following a formula. It’s about finding the approach that best serves the story you’re trying to tell.

What do you dislike about the world and what would you change?

That they charge so much for really good coffee. If I ruled the world, I’d introduce an inverse pricing system. The better the coffee, the less it costs. The finest cup of coffee on Earth would be about fifty cents, while terrible coffee would cost twenty dollars.

How do you imagine cinema in 100 years?

It will be charcoal drawings on cave walls (again)

What is your impression of WILD FILMMAKER?

I think Wild Filmmaker is an amazing place to be—and to be seen. I recently read an article about Martin Scorsese and thought, “Well, I guess this is as close as I’m ever going to get to Scorsese.”

Sharing the pages of the same magazine with him is a real honor. As a first-time filmmaker, that’s pretty remarkable company to keep.

Who is Angelo Orlando?

I’ve been asking myself that question for quite some time. I think I’ve come up with an answer after all these years spent in this strange reality, but I’d be curious to hear what another Angelo Orlando would say about me. Maybe the one who lives in a parallel timeline, the one who solved all the problems that this Angelo keeps stubbornly collecting. Perhaps he would say that I’m an actor who tried to become a director, a director who tried to become a writer, a writer who tried to understand human beings, and a human being who, in the end, still understands very little. Or perhaps he would simply say that I am an observer. As a child, I observed people. Then the characters I realized were living inside people. Then films. Then dreams. Then coincidences. And at a certain point I understood that the most interesting thing was not observing the world, but realizing that the world was observing me. Since then, I have continued making films, doing theater, and writing for the same reason: trying to understand what we are doing here, telling each other stories. For now, I still haven’t found a definitive answer. But I must admit that the search is still a lot of fun.

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You were part of the cast of Federico Fellini’s last film, “The Voice of the Moon.” How did your collaboration with the Mozart of the Seventh Art begin and develop?

In reality, the story is both simpler and more mysterious than it seems. I wasn’t looking for Fellini. And, to be honest, at that time I wasn’t even thinking about cinema in a rational way. I loved it, of course, but my world was elsewhere: theater, comedy, variety shows, television. I was working a great deal and had the good fortune of collaborating with Renzo Arbore. It was Fellini who found me. He came to see me perform in the theater and wanted to meet me. Shortly afterward, he invited me to the studios on the Pontina highway, where they were building the set for The Voice of the Moon. He talked to me about the character, explained his vision, and immediately made me feel part of that world. The extraordinary thing is that I continued working simultaneously on the television show with Arbore. I even had special permission to leave the set and go record the program. Today it sounds unbelievable, but at the time I experienced it all quite naturally. Perhaps because I was young and had not yet developed the reverence that comes later. Fellini wanted me there. And that is one of the things that still strikes me today. Sometimes I would spend hours doing nothing. Observing. Waiting. Wandering around the set. Yet I always had the feeling that my presence was important to him, as if he were building something that went beyond a single character. Only many years later did I understand that the true privilege was not having acted in a Fellini film. It was having been able to observe up close the way he looked at the world. Because Fellini wasn’t merely directing a film. He seemed to be listening to something others could not hear. And every now and then, when I find myself doubting reality or following some apparently absurd coincidence, I realize that a part of that gaze has remained with me.

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Shortly afterward, you became the co-star of one of the most beloved comedies of the last half-century of Italian cinema, “I Thought It Was Love… Instead It Was a Carriage,” directed by Academy Award nominee Massimo Troisi. Could you tell us how legendary lines such as “Cecilia, Cecilia, Cecilia…” were born, and what your relationship with Troisi was like on set?

Massimo always repeated one thing to me: “You have to annoy me.” He wanted the audience, looking at Amedeo, to think: “My God, how annoying this guy is…” And that was exactly the heart of the character. Amedeo was the essence of contradiction. A man who hid behind words, theories, and intelligence. A writer who seemed to have an explanation for everything and who, precisely for that reason, could not understand the only thing that truly mattered: love. He talked about love constantly but could not live it. He built universal theories that ended up who knows where, argued, reasoned, explained. He was a man who used thought as a defense against life. Massimo understood perfectly who Amedeo was and constantly guided me in that direction. He was an extraordinary perfectionist. He would make me repeat a scene ten, twenty times until he found the right rhythm. But it was never a technical search. He was searching for truth, for naturalness. He was looking for that moment when a line stops feeling written and seems to be born there, for the first time. Many scenes were the result of a sort of controlled improvisation. We would lock ourselves in the dressing room. He would arrive with a pen in hand. He would write, erase, adjust. Then we would go to the set and change things again. A word, a pause, a glance. And then again. Until everything seemed to flow naturally. The famous “Cecilia, Cecilia, Cecilia…” scene was my true baptism of fire. Massimo was lying on a hospital stretcher, poisoned by my diabolical little sister. I was beside him. It was one of the most important scenes in the film and, for me, the very first one I shot. I never wanted to work with Massimo Troisi because I always knew that I would work with him. I remember the excitement, the responsibility, the fear of being up to the task. But above all, I remember him: calm, attentive, amused. He knew exactly what he wanted and managed to convey that confidence to everyone. He never imposed. He guided. He made you feel part of something that was being born in that very moment. It is an extremely rare quality. Many directors direct scenes. Massimo directed the energy that allowed scenes to exist. That is what I feel as an inheritance, and what I always try to seek whenever I find myself directing a film that I have imagined.

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In the final months of his life, Massimo Troisi’s face came to resemble that of Pier Paolo Pasolini. They seem like very different artistic personalities, yet I have always perceived a profound affinity between them in terms of intuitive ability and independent analysis free from external influences. In short, two pure thinkers. What is your opinion?

I believe the comparison makes sense, even though they belonged to worlds that appeared very distant from one another. There is one thing I can say because I lived it: Massimo loved Pasolini. How do I know? He told me himself. He often called me on the phone. He always asked the same question: “What are you doing?” Whatever I was doing, he would reply: “All right… come over.” And the incredible thing is that I really went. One day at his house, I asked him which Italian films he had loved the most. He didn’t even think for a second.

“La Ricotta,” he replied. “Pasolini’s La Ricotta.” At the time I didn’t even know what it was. I had never seen it. Only many years later did that conversation come back to me, and I went looking for it. I discovered that it was not a feature film, but one of the episodes of Ro.Go.Pa.G., a collective film directed by several filmmakers. Looking back on it today, that answer tells me a lot about Massimo. Behind the image of the popular actor, the comedian, the poet of irony, there was a man with profound intellectual curiosity and extraordinary sensitivity for everything authentic. Perhaps this is where I see the meeting point with Pasolini. Both were independent thinkers. Both observed the world without allowing themselves to be guided by fashions, affiliations, or convenience. Naturally, they did so in different ways. Pasolini sought conflict. He confronted it head-on. Massimo sought the human being. He observed people with tenderness. But both possessed that rare quality of seeing something before everyone else. Once Massimo told me something I have never forgotten: “Now I enjoy myself. Before, I didn’t even know I would make films.” It struck me deeply. He learned to love cinema by making it. Not by studying it. Not by chasing it. By living it. And over the years, that sentence has often returned to me because, ultimately, the same thing happened in my own journey. Today I enjoy it. And perhaps the greatest privilege is not understanding cinema. It is continuing to discover it.

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What don’t you like about the world, and how would you change it?

I don’t like cynicism. I don’t like the degradation I see on social media. I don’t like the ostentatious vulgarity that has almost become a form of social intelligence. I believe instead that the world changes when people stop considering inevitable what is not inevitable. Every collective transformation begins with an individual transformation. It is not a spectacular answer, but it is the one I consider most truthful.

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How do you imagine cinema one hundred years from now?

I have absolutely no idea. And every time I think I understand where cinema is heading, cinema changes direction. Probably, in a hundred years, screens will be different. Perhaps movie theaters as we know them today will no longer exist. Perhaps images will be three-dimensional, immersive, generated by artificial intelligences or even directly from our thoughts. Perhaps the viewer will enter the film. But I do not believe that this will change its deepest function. For thousands of years, human beings have sat around a fire telling stories. Cinema is merely the latest form that fire has taken. That is why I think that in a hundred years cinema will continue doing what it has always done: helping human beings remember who they are. Or who they could become. For me, the real question is not what cinema will be like in a hundred years. It is what the human being watching it will be like.

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What is your impression of WILD FILMMAKER?

My first impression is that you possess a rare quality: enthusiasm. In independent cinema, people often talk about budgets, markets, platforms, algorithms, and strategies. All important things. But sometimes we forget that cinema is born from a much simpler act: someone falls in love with a story and decides to tell it. WILD FILMMAKER probably comes from that spirit. I like the idea that there is an international community of people who continue to believe in auteur cinema, creative risk, and stories that do not always follow the rules of the market. Because cinema is a very serious matter. But it should never be taken too seriously.

Who is Karen Di Porto?

I am a woman who loves cinema and the possibility of telling stories through this incredible medium. I spent my final year of university in Paris. I left as a law student and returned knowing that I would work with moving images. In Paris, I went to the cinema every day and, unlike in Italy, films were always shown in their original language. There was a cinema that screened Death in Venice by Luchino Visconti every morning at 11 a.m. and that is where I truly fell in love with cinema.
My journey was quite varied: I studied acting, worked in theatre, wrote screenplays, and eventually decided to try directing the stories I was writing. That is when I found my place in the world.

Tell us about your film dedicated to Tanio Boccia.

The Great Boccia is a tribute to the legendary figure of Tanio Boccia, remembered as “the worst director in Italian cinema history,” and tells the story of his remarkable achievement of shooting four films simultaneously in 1964.
What immediately attracted me when producer Galliano Juso proposed the project was the opportunity to tell the story of the underbelly of Italian cinema, operating during the same years when Italian filmmaking was being celebrated worldwide thanks to great auteurs such as Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Luchino Visconti.
Tanio Boccia made popular, instinctive cinema, often improvised from script to production, attracting working-class audiences who filled cinemas and parish halls. The stories were simple, but the staging always aimed to be spectacular, even with minimal resources.
Anti-elitist and determined, Boccia managed to complete twenty films throughout his career, becoming famous among film crews for his creative solutions, which were always born out of necessity and a lack of funding. He was also known among major filmmakers as “the worst,” precisely because of the imperfections of his films. This reputation even led to a famous joke referenced by Fellini, when Alberto Sordi teased him after the Academy Awards by saying that the Oscar had not gone to him, but to Tanio Boccia!
Famous for never shooting the same scene twice, he was the king of “one take is enough.” In his films, it is common to find the same sequence reused multiple times or fragments taken from the discarded footage of other productions. For Boccia, everything was possible and nothing was impossible.

Are there similarities between Tim Burton’s Ed Wood and your film about Tanio Boccia?

I would say that both Ed Wood and The Great Boccia portray their protagonists with affection and curiosity. There is no mockery, but rather admiration for their relentless drive toward cinema and for the dream that cinema represents for these unconventional directors.

Both characters are driven by an absolute love of filmmaking, which pushes them to realize their projects at any cost, overcoming every obstacle and turning enormous limitations into creative inventions.
The main difference lies in the nature of the two protagonists. Ed Wood is a romantic dreamer who experiences his creativity as something brilliant and unstoppable, whereas Tanio Boccia, in a very Italian way, belongs to a more practical, artisanal, and opportunistic tradition. Less visionary and more pirate-like.
If Ed Wood is the unwitting poet of impossible cinema, Tanio Boccia is the anarchic survivor of Italian popular cinema.

Can the tribute to La Dolce Vita help young people discover that world?

The tribute to La Dolce Vita inevitably passes through the Café de Paris on Via Veneto, which Boccia exploits, together with some cheese vendors, to pretend that he belongs to the glamorous world of cinema, while in reality he is completely on its margins.
The setting is prestigious, but Boccia is a trickster.
The aim of the film is precisely to show the hidden side of Italian cinema in action and perhaps also to tell younger generations about the value of all those people who made, and continue to make, films without necessarily winning festivals or going down in history.

What do you dislike about the world, and how would you change it?

I have never been resistant to change, and I believe that evolution, technology, and any form of human progress should be understood, managed, and, whenever possible, used to improve society.
However, I am deeply concerned, I would even say frightened, by the increasing radicalization of opinions on every subject, from politics to science. In this regard, I believe social media, with its information bubbles, only deepens the inability of people to communicate with one another.
In my own small way, I try to counter this trend by talking with people who think differently from me and, through cinema, by seeking projects that allow audiences to empathize with figures who are difficult to love: antiheroes like Tanio Boccia or controversial characters who challenge immediate understanding.
I believe cinema can do a great deal to encourage doubt and imagine encounters that might otherwise seem impossible.

Your inspiration.

Italian-style comedy is undoubtedly my main source of inspiration: laughing at flaws, misery, and even cruelty, but always with a gaze full of love for the humanity of the characters.

What do you think of WILD FILMMAKER?

A project that dreams of democratizing cinema by promoting creativity, and that in just a few years has managed to build a platform dedicated to independent filmmaking with a community of more than 80,000 artists, can only inspire enthusiasm and hope. Identifying a free space, recognizing a real need, and filling that gap with ideas and hard work is a wonderful example for everyone.

-Who is Terri Battee?

A nervous, creative, book loving nerd, I’ve been writing manuscripts, poems, and screenplays since I was about 8 years old. I took the opportunity to write every chance I got. Children my age made me tense, but writing my thoughts down chased the demons away. Writing became vignettes of therapy to my child brain. The vignettes became television stories in my head, much like Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone.

-Do you remember the exact moment you fell in love with cinema?

It was 1968, I was 6 years old.  My 2 older sisters took me and my niece and nephew (their kids/same age) to the drive-in movie.The double feature showing that hot summer night were Planet of the Apes (1968) and Valley of the Dolls (1967).  I was looking forward to the latter film and it did not disappoint. The film based on Jacqueline Susann’s sensational novel.  How did I know it was sensational?  I had read passages of my sisters’ copy lying around the house.

That was true cinema to me at the time! “NEELY O’HARA” – Patty Duke

-Tell us about your project “The James Crow Hotel”.

My short film thriller, The James Crow Hotel, Winner of the Best Crime Category at Absurd Film Festival, March, 2026 in Milan Italy, invites the viewer into the warped reality of three 10 year old children, raised in a sundown town during the civil rights era, reimagined in current day america. The film is dark and a depiction of my formative years in my hometown, Shreveport Louisiana.

-Which Director inspires you the most?

Hands Down, Barry Jenkins!

I discovered Barry’s magic during his stand out LGBTQ-themed indie film, Moonlight (2016).

This film hit home.  I personally know of not just Black men, but men in general that exist inside a DL (Down Low) lifestyle, i.e. Thug Life, The Pulpit, Married Life, Political Life, Homophobic Life…

“In moonlight, black boys look blue” has many connotations.

-What do you dislike about the world and what would you change?

The hatred and jealousy of humans on this earth. The assumption of what humans possess and how they accomplished their feat. The “every man for himself” mentality vs the “no man left behind” theory.

-How do you imagine cinema in 100 years?

100 years from today would give us a 2126 existence, which could have humanity on the brink if extinction and completely operated by bots, or Technology will collapse and take us back to the days of Roundhay Garden Scene (1888), a one-minute, short, black and white, silent film that will give us plenty to talk about around the water cooler at work on Monday morning.

-What is your impression of WILD FILMMAKER?

Honestly, I had never heard of the magazine. When I read the bios of some of the recipients, I was very excited! I absorbed Alison Somilleda’s Interview! The trauma and later resilience of my journey…

From the racial iniquities as a child to the military sexual trauma as a United States Air Force Airmen during the Gulf War to the open hatred of queer people of color in today’s america, I concur with Alison’s message. The articles in WILD FILMMAKER keeps me interested and engaged! Thank You for the Invitation!

Who is Luca Pappadà?

I am the International Sales Coordinator of the international distribution department at Fandango. I began working in the film industry as an assistant director in Campania, contributing to several projects, including those of the acclaimed director Antonio Capuano, whom I am pleased to mention. I was then fortunate enough to join the editorial department at Cattleya before eventually moving into film distribution, collaborating over the years with several companies in the sector, including Coccinelle Film Sales and Minerva Pictures.

Cinema has always been part of my life, thanks to my father, Guido Pappadà, who has many years of experience in the industry as a visual effects supervisor and has received several nominations for the David di Donatello Awards.

What assessment can you make of your 79th Cannes Film Festival?

Given the current global geopolitical situation, I believe it would have been difficult to expect greater participation in the market. The real disappointment, unfortunately, is the ongoing shortage,following what was already seen at the Berlin Film Festival, of Italian projects within the Festival itself.

For this reason, we are proud that Fandango Sales can boast the only fully Italian production selected for the Festival, in the Cannes Classics section. This was made possible thanks to Francesco Zippel’s outstanding documentary “Vittorio De Sica – Una Vita in Scena”, produced by Quoiat Films and Cinecittà Luce.

Despite this rare exception, it is important to reflect on the work being done for the industry by the government, which evidently is not producing the desired results. This creates a vicious cycle that not only affects the nation’s cultural production but also undermines the export potential and international promotion that cinema can provide to the Italian brand. In a country that relies heavily on tourism, this should certainly not be considered a secondary issue.

What do you like and dislike about the world today?

We live in an era where opinions and beliefs are increasingly polarized. If we want to preserve the system of rights and responsibilities upon which Western democracies have fortunately been built, I believe it is essential to restore healthy dialogue. Unfortunately, from what I observe, such dialogue is often missing in many of the issues debated in public discourse.

This is why cinema and culture are important tools that deserve renewed appreciation. They should offer the opportunity to explore and portray the shades of gray within a generation that too often sees everything as either black or white.

What is your opinion on the use of AI in cinema, in all its various forms?

If we look at the evolution of creative expression throughout history, the tools and methods of artistic creation have always changed, and they have rarely been welcomed without skepticism. The most recent example that comes to mind is the transition from film to digital technology, which was initially met with doubt but ultimately expanded creative possibilities while also reducing production costs.Of course, evolution does not always equate to progress. However, I would focus more on the opportunity to improve the quality and diversity of the content we produce rather than on the potential disappearance of certain roles, which is a natural consequence of technological change over time. That being said, legislation will certainly need to be updated, as it is necessary to regulate certain copyright-related issues in light of these new technologies and possibilities. Overall, however, I am more interested in the quality of what is produced than in the methods used to produce it.

What is your impression of WILD FILMMAKER?

One of great professionalism and energy, qualities that are essential in this industry. The essence of cinema will always be measured by the dialogue and storytelling that surround it. Therefore, I can only encourage you to continue on this path, considering the results and achievements you are accomplishing. I would also like to express my sincere thanks for giving me the opportunity to be featured among your articles.