-Who is Damiano Rossi?
How can someone define himself? It would be a useless exercise or the result of an inordinate ego. Of course, if someone carries out an artistic activity in any form, we are certainly talking about a person who needs attention. There is no doubt about this. So the need to communicate through sounds and images is definitely part of my essence but that doesn’t mean I seek consensus at all costs. My works have the ambition to act on several levels of reading and from a certain point of view they are not immediately readable, I am aware of this. But I like to inspire people to dig deeper than normal perception if possible (see how ambition comes back?), and I like to believe that someone out there can discover something about me through this extraordinary medium that is cinema .
-What prompted you to become a director?
I really can’t define myself as such. I have never studied directing or attended courses, even if only at an amateur level. I put together sounds, words and images trying to give everything a complete meaning. Just as I have always made music without ever having studied it at an academic level, I communicate sensations and if possible I try to make people think about issues that I consider important always having as a background women and all their problems. I consider this a pleasure and a duty towards a world that from a male point of view I often don’t understand and sometimes it scares me.
-Do you think cinema can bring about a change in society?
I think he’s already done it and not always in a positive way. Try asking someone young, and not only, what his favorite film is and you’ll get the answer. Also try asking who Tarkovsky is and you will get the answer, different but exhaustive. Of course we also need the first Fantozzi … but …….
-What would you change in the world?
Nothing. Everyone changes from if they want. No one ever changes because someone tells you to, and if that happens it means that something is wrong. Thought has thus flattened and discernment agonizes among the news bulletins of the various news programs or newspapers. It’s easier to rely on pre-packaged concepts than to go deep and opt for a totally personal point of view (I don’t mean right or wrong but free from conventional schemes). If this makes me an elitist snob, I take responsibility for it, but the lack of openness towards alternative concepts and visions is, I believe, the daughter of this society. And I say that not with anger but with absolute bitterness and concern.
-Where do you see the film industry going in the next 100 years?
There are independent directors and films of the highest level around the world but we need to understand what cinema really is and what it wants to bring into the future. In my opinion, if a film wants to transpose a novel from the last century or even older into images and dialogues, it doesn’t make much sense. In my opinion cinema should act first of all through images, then through sounds and only finally through dialogues. I think the mainstream is going in the opposite direction.
