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Vito and the Others
Director: Antonio Capuano
Screenplay: Antonio Capuano
Photography: Antonio Baldoni
Editing: Valentina Migliaccio
Set Designer: Mario del Gaudio
Cast: Nando Triola, Giovanni Bruno, Mario Lenti, Pina Leone, Giuseppina Fusco, Antonio Farak, Enzuccio La Molla, Rosaria De Cicco, Alfredo Tassiero, Pasquale Amore, Massimo Antiacido, Gino Apicella, Sergio Marra, Vittorio Baratti, Guido Piccioli, Vera Metania
Producer: Soc. Coop. Dionisio in collaboration with RaiTre
World Distribution: Mikado
Length: 85’. Origin: Italy, 1991
Vito is a 12-year-old Sicilian boy with a tragic past: he watched his father Rosario kill his mother and his brother the last night of the year when the city was celebrating the New Year. His father pointed his gun also at Vito and he was about to shoot but Vito managed to say something, just a few words and the man put down his gun. After his father’s arrest Vito is alone. Now he lives in his uncle’s house in a family of people who are just as alone as he is, without any bond of solidarity. This sense of inner solitude makes the attraction of the streets irresistible. He learns to survive, to live without the help of adults. When Vito and his little band of street kids learn to handle guns, they rapidly descend into a violent life: petty thefts, drugs, prostitution, and worse. Step by step he gets closer and closer to a precipice where he finally falls until he hits the bottom and becomes a hit-man. A killer at twelve years old. The story is told with the staccato rhythm of a videogame.
Pianese Nunzio Fourteen in May
Director: Antonio Capuano
Screenplay: Antonio Capuano
Photography: Antonio Baldoni
Editing: Giogiò Franchini
Music: Almamegretta, Umberto Guarino
Set Designer: Mario Di Pace
Cast: Fabrizio Bentivoglio, Emanuele Gargiulo, Manuela Martinelli, Tonino Taiuti, Rosaria De Cicco, Teresa Saponangelo, Nando Triola
Producer: A.M.A. Film, Istituto Luce, G.m.f. in collaboration with
Mediaset
World Distribution: Adriana Chiesa Enterprises
Length: 115’. Origin: Italy, 1996
The most talked-about Italian film screened in 1996 Venice Film Festival,
Pianese Nunzio 14 in May takes the viewer deep into the heart of the poorest quarter of Naples, the
Sanità. It is depicted as a neighbourhood where robbery, street violence and killing are everyday occurrences, and children are often the innocent victim.
Director Antonio Capuano’s first film, Vito and the Others (screened at Nice in 1991), centred on a child forced to become a killer.
Pianese Nunzio shows another tragedy, a gifted boy (Emanuele Gargiulo) pressured to betray his one friend. This friend is a young priest (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) who has taken a vocal stand against the local mob, the Camorra. But their relationship is also a sexual one, and the viewer is called on to see the story not a simple fable of good versus evil, but as part of a much more complicated moral universe. If the film’s title itself underline Nunzio’s tender age, the hard-hitting reality Capuano depicts leaves few illusions about a childhood scarred by violence.
The Vesuvians: Sofialorén
Director: Antonio Capuano
Screenplay: Antonio Capuano
Photography: Antonio Baldoni
Editing: Giogiò Franchini
Music: Flavio Brunetti, Lelio Di Tullio
Set Designer: Mario Di Pace
Cast: Tonino Taiuti, Flavio Brunetti, Gino Intartaglia, Clelia Rondinella
Producer: Mikado and Megaris
World Distribution: Rai Trade
Length: 27’. Origin: Italy, 1997
Toritore, a fisherman who lives in the Rione Terra of Pozzuoli, catches a polyp that at night is transformed into a sensuous woman. An odd black prince who claims to be the brother of the unfortunate woman tells the fisherman about the sad fate to which she has been condemned by a magic spell. But the polyp, which has taken lodging in a tub and at night visits Toritore’s bed, in spite of it all will ultimately meet her fate in a frying-pan.
Napoli's Dust
Director: Antonio Capuano
Story-line: Antonio Capuano, Tonino Taiuti
Screenplay: Antonio Capuano, Paolo Sorrentino
Photography: Pasquale Rachini
Editing: Giogiò Franchini
Music: Marco Zurzolo
Set Designer: Mario Di Pace
Cast: Silvio Orlando, Tonino Taiuti, Lola Pagnani, Teresa Saponangelo, Raffaele Musella, Antonino Iuorio, Giovanni Esposito
Producer: A.M.A. Film in collaboration with Rai
Cinemafiction; Cinecittà Holding
Length: 100’. Origin: Italy, 1998
The title deliberatly recalls the famous L’oro di Napoli
(Napoli’s Gold) by Vittorio De Sica (1954). Alike De Sica’s film here Naples is the real protagonist: Naples and its dust, not its gold. Through five episodes expressing different aspects of Naples, we have a picture of the town that doesn’t belong to the postcard stereotypes…
Story 1. Four friends play a card game “scopa”; two of them keep losing and at the end they lose themselves.
Story 2. Teresa and Gigino, a young couple, wander in town while quarrelling. Finally they make peace and decide to get married at the Church of Carmine, just the two of them.
Story 3. Two Argentinean tourists of Italian origin come to visit the archaeological site of Pompei but they find it closed owing to a strike. They manage to convince the custodian to let them in. The three establish a sort of complicity…
Story 4. Mimmo Pezzella, whose idol actor is Richard Gere, wants to become an actor himself and to be able to participate to a “general”, asks a widow Lit. 300,000 even threatening her to obtain what he wants…
Story 5. Ciarli and Gerri are sax players at wedding parties. When finally they are invited to perform at a jazz festival, they find out that their saxes have been stolen. Obliged, nevertheless, to go onto the stage, they obtain a great success thanks to a comic sketch they manage to improvise…
Red Moon
Director: Antonio Capuano
Story-line and Screenplay: Antonio Capuano
Photography: Tommaso Borgstrom
Editing: Luciana Pandolfelli
Music: Paolo Polcari, Luca Gatti
Set Designer: Paolo Petti
Cast: Carlo Cecchi, Licia Maglietta, Toni Servillo, Antonino Iuorio, Domenico Balsamo, Italo Celoro, Antonio Pennarella, Enzo Romano, Susy del Giudice, Antonia Truppo, Lucia Ragni
Producer: Andrea De Liberato for Poetiche Cinematografiche
World Distribution: Sharada Film
Length: 116’. Origin: Italy, 2001
Red Moon is the story of a repentant member of the Mafia, who confesses to a judge, in a lengthy flashback to all the misfortunes wrought by the horrendous crimes of some families that struggle to perpetuate the logic of their evil power. Since the beginning of the 1970s, the Cammarano family has extended its rule over a wide territory, with coldness and no scruples. Nobody would dare to dispute its control and its increased power. Yet things are bound to change, as the new generations feel estranged from their own lives. The balance within the family starts to collapse, and the old grudges re-emerge.
Red Moon shows the end of the family, at the hands of a young offspring. It is the end of the Mafia family. This tragedy is inspired by Aeschylus’
Orestiadi as the name of the main character, Orestes, clearly implies.
Mario's War
Director: Antonio Capuano
Story-line and Screenplay: Antonio Capuano
Photography: Luca Bigazzi
Editing: Giogiò Franchini
Music: Pasquale Catalano
Set Designer: Lino Fiorito
Cast: Valeria Golino, Marco Grieco, Andrea Renzi, Anita Caprioli, Valeria Sabel, Anita Caprioli, Rosaria De Cicco, Nunzio Gallo, Antonio Pennarella, Lucia Ragni, Imma Villa
Producer: Domenico Procacci, Francesca Cima and Nicola Giuliano
for Fandango; Infigo Film in collaboration with
Medusa Film
World Distribution: The Works Ltd
Length: 97’. Origin: Italy, 2005
Mario, eight years old, is considered “a difficult boy”. The Juvenile Court took the decision to take him away from his family in order to protect him and give him a chance. Giulia and Sandro, a couple in their forties are apparently happy and satisfied with their life. They are not married but they have lived together for two years when they decide to apply for the custody of a child. The temporary custody of the child is, for the three of them, an opportunity to get to know and interact with two totally different realities. Giulia simply loves her new role of “vice” mother while Sandro remains more detached, though the great change in his life makes him curious and shy at the same time. Mario is thrown in a world completely unknown to him. He has a room for himself, a computer, a large balcony from where he can see the sea. The whole environment is just the opposite of the one he has lived until the present day. Unfortunately this is not enough to alleviate his sense of solitude and displacement. To find relief, he creates his own world where he meets Shad-sky an imaginary playmate, with whom he establishes a complex friend-like relationship. The road Mario, Giulia and Sandro have taken to live together is difficult and at times very painful. Giulia and Sandro fade out and they are pushed into different stories where they may find a new awareness and a different life. Now Mario is only nine.
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