-Who is Silvia Mantellini Faieta?

I am a visual artist and filmmaker, living and working in Pescara, Italy. Involving different communities of people and embracing inner thoughts, my artistic research shows social experiences as a simple representation of the eternal changing of life in a continuous dialogue with our own spaces. Using moving images, words, and sounds and referring to specific human conditions (in choosing participants for videos and actions), this representation lets the emotional and spiritual dimensions emerge, creating a connection with the world in which we live and within us.

-What inspired you to become a filmmaker?

Creating has always been a way for me to protect myself from danger.

The reason that moves me in my research is the deep will to wonder about the importance of human connections, keeping an open state of mind to attract new experiences and relationships, sharing in the way of listening and being heard/seeing and being seen through collective eyes.

I make films to have the possibility to unify words, images, and movements, creating a connection between those elements and direct contact between me and the other.

My research started with painting, photography, and performance, but that was not enough for me. The more I practiced, the more I understood that I wanted to say, feel and give more.

Still images were not enough. I was looking for time. Well, performances are time-based, but (I apologize to all performers for saying that) those are not, as someone says, deeply connected to life: Cinema belongs to life. All other art forms are just a part of it.

Think about Parajanov, Kiarostami, Pelechian, Tarkovskij, or Bergman among others…

So, I started seeing creation as a way to live in the outer world, normalizing social patterns, wondering about what being human means, as well as being conscious, being present, and last but not least, experiencing freedom.

-Do you think the cinema can bring a change in the society?

Cinema, or better, moving images is the only way to unify our emotions and intuitions with literature, painting, photography and daily experiences.

Through moving images, we can say more than words, more than experiences, more than still images (of every nature). We are natural beings and cinema is the only way to represent our deep nature. Videos are freedom.

Being free to express ourselves reduces the need for affirmation and our survival mode. Each of us, in some way, experiences this condition: living in the run, hide, or fight mode.

If our collective and biological memory, the idea of ourselves and others, the space in which we live and aggregation rituals affect the connection between us and others, exploring cultural behavior and experimenting through art can help overcome social patterns.

Indeed, we can use words, sounds, and images as the basis of coexistence: they are fundamental to creating dialogues, sharing and progress. They are our instruments to build a society based on empathetic understanding using the first things we have since we were born: senses.

Every human being has those elements to create his reality confirming that every human is a creator, an artist.

-What would you change in the world?

Nothing that exists outside of myself. Everything happens for a reason, as a lesson to learn. Only when we stop repeating mistakes and acting with mediocrity the true essence of the world open to us. Beauty is in everything that surrounds us, but we must dream with open eyes and act with awareness in order to live with beauty. Letting go and

being open to receive is the way I live, without the need to change things we cannot control: we can only control our reactions to happenings.

-Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?

There are lots of fields that are not being explored enough yet. One of those is poetry. I imagine human psychology, emotions, and poetry being explored through moving images. I imagine a throwback to our true nature: being emotional by living collectively and avoiding ego. I imagine memories, dreams, desires, and life experiences becoming the reality.

Cinema is still young and will grow in inspected ways.