{"id":2627,"date":"2016-11-03T19:52:32","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T17:52:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/?p=2627"},"modified":"2025-10-23T15:26:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T13:26:05","slug":"luca-guadagnino-talks-carlo-antonelli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/2627\/luca-guadagnino-talks-carlo-antonelli\/","title":{"rendered":"Luca Guadagnino talks to Carlo Antonelli"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Photography by Luca Campri<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Luca Guadagnino is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time. His complex filmography includes extremely accurate, biting portrayals of the global privileged class, from the worldwide success I am Love in 2009, to the more recent A Bigger Splash in 2016, as well as the upcoming Call Me By Your Name and the following remake of Dario Argento\u2019s horror masterpiece Suspiria. He has also created thought-provoking theoretical and political documentaries such as Inconscio Italiano in 2011 and Bertolucci on Bertolucci in 2013. Guadagnino is a man possessing a multi-layered knowledge of deep aesthetics\u2014a rare and impressive quality. Dapper Dan talked to him to find out more about the source of this exceptionality, which seems to be entirely natural and inherent in him.<\/p>\n

CARLO ANTONELLI: Where were you born?<\/p>\n

LUCA GUADAGNINO: I was born in Palermo.<\/p>\n

CA: When? LG: On August 10th, 1971. CA: And did you grow up there?<\/p>\n

LG: No, I was born at eight instead of nine months, even seven I think, and at the end of the first month of my extra-uterine life we moved to Ethiopia with my family.<\/p>\n

CA: And how long were you there?<\/p>\n

LG: Until \u201976, five full years, that is until foreigners living in Ethiopia were no longer welcome because General Mengistu\u2019s dictatorship forced everyone out after dethroning emperor Selassie.<\/p>\n

CA: Do you remember any images of Haile Selassie?<\/p>\n

LG: Honestly I must say I don\u2019t. I know him because I\u2019ve recently seen some\u2026
\nCA: And Mengistu\u2019s terror?<\/p>\n

LG: I distinctly remember the curfew. In my mind I have very precise memories of what the atmosphere was like in those months of the curfew, of the coup, the resulting need to flee, to leave: that I remember perfectly well.<\/p>\n

CA: Was it frightening?<\/p>\n

LG: It was very exciting, at least to us, but that was also a strange time as a potentially, let\u2019s say, universal event occurred: two of my parents\u2019 closest friends died in a serious car accident, and somehow that anticipated the end of the idyllic time\u2014at least to me\u2014that was Ethiopia. I remember very clearly that the dark times of the curfew were heralded by this endless afternoon I spent locked in the car close to this little house in the middle of a plain with big trees, where my parents had gone to identify the bodies of their friends, the Denti family.<\/p>\n

CA: What else do you really remember about Africa?<\/p>\n

LG: I remember quite distinctly the house where we lived, I remember my toys\u2026<\/p>\n

CA: Did you have African servants?<\/p>\n

LG: Absolutely.<\/p>\n

CA: How many?<\/p>\n

LG: I could be wrong, but I imagine three or four people.<\/p>\n

CA: Because that\u2019s the way it was: you were expatriates.<\/p>\n

LG: We were expatriates, like in that Chris Menges film, A World Apart, but without the racist undertones, at least not from my point of view.<\/p>\n

CA: So you played with the children around you\u2026?<\/p>\n

LG: I played with my classmates, who were of all ethnicities.<\/p>\n

CA: Because it was an international school?<\/p>\n

LG: Yes.<\/p>\n

CA: And your father taught literature?<\/p>\n

LG: He taught Italian and history at the Technical Institute of something, I think\u2026<\/p>\n

CA: Do you remember the architecture?<\/p>\n

LG: I remember the cinemas: they had this otherworldly dimension, they were huge, they were magnificent. I think I started loving the architectural style of right-wing dictatorships from all of the fascist architecture that was left in Ethiopia, of which the cinemas were a brilliant example.<\/p>\n

CA: But you\u2019re not full Italian.<\/p>\n

LG: No, my mother is Algerian.<\/p>\n

CA: You\u2019re mixed-race.<\/p>\n

LG: Yes, proudly so.<\/p>\n

CA: And do you feel Italian?<\/p>\n

LG: I am naturally Italian, in the sense that my education is Italian. If you ask me if my imagery is based on the same elements as contemporary Italians\u2019 imagery, I\u2019d say no.<\/p>\n

CA: And when you see the immigrant landings, which you used as a subtext in A Bigger Splash (2016), whose side are your feelings on?<\/p>\n

LG: First of all, the landings in A Bigger Splash are not a subtext but a fundamental part of the film\u2019s setting, which takes place on Pantelleria and could not ignore the existence of a phenomenon that is deeply ingrained in the season and the place. How do I feel when I see the landings? You know, this question is potentially extraordinary or…<\/p>\n

CA: Foolish.<\/p>\n

LG: \u2026totally stupid, so between the two extremes I prefer silence.<\/p>\n

CA: Oh, come on\u2026 Do you feel a general brotherhood with migrants or political refugees?<\/p>\n

LG: Again, I must answer by not answering because these are topics that deserve a much broader discussion and examination. I can tell you that when I first set foot in Morocco, which is where my mother lived from the age of five to 20 (although she\u2019s Algerian, she was educated in Morocco) and when I went to Lebanon I felt a profound, DNA-deep unity with the Moroccans and Libyans I met: there\u2019s something that really runs in the blood.<\/p>\n

CA: On colonialism and the residual racism that still remains in the Italian population, who has forgotten Mussolini\u2019s brief but horrible colonial period, you wrote and directed a documentary\u2026<\/p>\n

LG: I made a documentary called Inconscio Italiano, presented at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2011.<\/p>\n

CA: But you also want to make a film about Africa titled Bambino Africano, which is something you\u2019ve been thinking about for a long time, right?<\/p>\n

LG: The idea behind this African film is that somehow, in a rather stupid way, it may be based on my personal experience. I understood that only recently: if I stupidly think of myself in the third person, I sense that mine will be a filmography about returning to the places of my desire and my passion. All of these films I make somehow represent the mise-en-sc\u00e8ne of my eureka moment as a cinephile when I was a child.<\/p>\n

CA: So what was I Am Love (2009)?<\/p>\n

LG: Well, it was Douglas Sirk, Fassbinder\u2026<\/p>\n

CA: So it\u2019s also about returning to the places of cinema?<\/p>\n

LG: To me, each film is an attempt to recreate, relive the main scene of a film I loved when I was the age at which, when you love a film, you love it in a total, absolute way. I love contemporary cinema less and less and I increasingly go back to the cinema of the past. Both to retrace and go over what was really love at first sight for me, and to go a little deeper. And Bambino Africano could be the doppelganger of the skipped heartbeat that to me was The River by Jean Renoir, which is about a family of expatriates in India.<\/p>\n

CA: A Bigger Splash is the return to Pantelleria because you remember travelling there when you were a kid? Would you say that\u2019s another kind of \u201creturn\u201d?<\/p>\n

LG: The return to places, to films\u2026 Yes.<\/p>\n

CA: What about the upcoming Call Me by Your Name?<\/p>\n

LG: That\u2019s a film I\u2019m still making, so I don\u2019t want to say too much about it. But while I\u2019m making it I\u2019m also thinking that it\u2019s a return to the desires I had when I was the same age as the characters in Call Me by Your Name, although at that age I was unable to fulfil them, express them and act them out the way the characters express them and act them out in the film.<\/p>\n

CA: So it\u2019s a re-enactment?<\/p>\n

LG: Completely. After all, all films are also a hand-tohand fight with the actors you\u2019re making them with.<\/p>\n

CA: And what about the next one after that, Suspiria? A return to the original cunt? To the uterus?<\/p>\n

LG: Suspiria is a return to me watching that film for the first time.<\/p>\n

CA: But it\u2019s going to be a very vaginal film, isn\u2019t it? So it\u2019s also a return to that particular hole\u2026<\/p>\n

LG: That\u2019s an inevitable return.<\/p>\n

CA: Are you going back in there? Are you inside a pussy and you can\u2019t get out?<\/p>\n

LG: I can\u2019t untangle myself\u2026 But it\u2019s also pleasant.<\/p>\n

CA: Of course, it feels good inside the pussy.<\/p>\n

LG: Yes, I\u2019m quite disgusted by those homosexuals who feel revulsion for the pussy. It\u2019s a revolting attitude; it\u2019s late-capitalist, ignorant\u2026 Fascist.<\/p>\n

CA: In other words, the dick is out?<\/p>\n

LG: I\u2019d say\u2026 I already got over it when, at 14, I read this learned essay on ancient Athens by a scholar named Eva Keuls, titled \u201cThe Reign of the Phallus\u201d, where she explained how the patriarchal system worked and the origins of our own patriarchal system.<\/p>\n

CA: So you like Reality with a capital R? You don\u2019t censor the inferno of the real?<\/p>\n

LG: No, why should I? But I did put in place some great forms of defence, including leapfrogging anything that might upset a vaguely peaceful dimension\u2026 Unfortunately by doing this you can put a damper on external agents, not necessarily on internal ones. I\u2019m waiting for the moment when I will end up in a clinic, too\u2026<\/p>\n

CA: What kind of clinic?<\/p>\n

LG: Psychiatric?<\/p>\n

CA: Bah, I just got out, it\u2019s not too bad.<\/p>\n

LG: Inside or outside?<\/p>\n

CA: Inside.<\/p>\n

LG: Right. We\u2019ll go back together.<\/p>\n

CA: With great pleasure<\/p>\n

Originally published in Dapper Dan magazine 14, 2016. Interview by Carlo Antonelli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luca Guadagnino is one of the greatest filmmakers of our time. His complex filmography includes extremely accurate, biting portrayals of the global privileged class, from the worldwide success I am Love in 2009, to the more recent A Bigger Splash in 2016, as well as the upcoming Call Me By Your Name and the following […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[59,38],"class_list":["post-2627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-14","tag-cinema","tag-interviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QZgE-Gn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2627"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2755,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions\/2755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}