Lorenzo Castore: All About the Impulse and the Supernatural
Between still and moving images, carnal desire and fear of death, beauty and ageing, W brings extremes into tension. Lorenzo Castore returns to a primitive vision of the world, making here a savage gesture at a time when he himself is about to be confronted with death.
***
Caroline Henry: W is your latest film, initiated by a performance by Alice Raffaelli inspired by Death in Venice, and unwillingly involved with your more personal life. This film leans surprisingly more towards the moving image than photography. What can film do that photography cannot?
Lorenzo Castore: The moving image film creates a flow of action, a continuous movement. It is a sequence of individual images pushed to the extreme. The continuity of action is a very relevant aspect of the difference between still and moving image, it is to me as simple as that... but then the choice of what to use and how is always crucial.
CH: There is a strong animal and archaic imprint in your film, which also sets it apart from Thomas Mann's text. What prompted this direction?
LC: Thomas Mann's text is a pretext that addresses a theme as old as the world: the desperate attraction of those who grow old and inevitably approach death for beauty and young flesh, the antidote to the fear of decay and the end. It is a primordial theme that taps into dark places of our animality, despite the attempts of religions and philosophies to civilise and elevate man to more algid and ethereal feelings. The Apollonian trying to rule the Dionysian and the Dionysian wanting to put everything on fire and flame... The vigor of physical and sexual power is an undoubted synonym of strength and vitality in the presence of which the resistance of the inevitable decline of the flesh generates a ravenous voluptuousness and a yearning tenderness that in their unresolved tension creates emotional short-circuits of meaning that I find difficult to talk about rationally but which exert an exciting and irresistible creative thrust on my unconscious. The mask (which I found after extensive research had been created and then used for decades by the artist Mauro Vizioli) erases inhibition, allows one to relate directly with animality, with wild desire without the romantic filter of the face. We see Alice with her back turned in the first part of the film, then naked with the mask on, and finally revealed in the angelic essence of her face. The body disappears... then everything disappears.
CH: The soundtrack is once again extremely rich, with a strong presence of water and Piercarlo Sacco's strings in evidence. Was this work on the sound composed before the film or all afterwards? How did you manage it?
LC: All sound was created after the pre-editing of the film and then refined. The music was again composed by Emanuele de Raymondi, who also did the sound design for the first part of the film. As I already said on the occasion of Sogno #5, for me working with Emanuele is an absolute joy because we are deeply connected and have a great facility for artistic dialogue on subjects that are difficult to explain in words. There is definitely a deep understanding between us that each time is finalised in completely different ways. I think the violin score he wrote for W is a masterpiece, it moves me every time I listen to it. In addition to this, Pier Carlo Sacco is also a world-class artist, who with his violin made the music written by Emanuele de Raymondi a whirlwind of emotions and moods that cling together. The beauty of filmmaking also lies in the pleasure one can derive from collaborating with artists who bring their emotional intensity and exceptional technical ability to the work; such contribution is an energy multiplier of the film's original idea.
CH: Two very intriguing photographs of your father open the film. Could you tell us about this?
LC: Photographing my father was never easy, not least because we had a somewhat distant relationship, certainly affectionate but with communication stumbling blocks. At one point he had throat cancer and poor him had to have his vocal cords removed. This was a huge blow for him but somehow it allowed us to get closer and opened up to more mutual tenderness. One morning, more or less a year after the surgery, I went to see him in Florence and at the end of his shower I asked him to be photographed naked, and he agreed. These photos were not taken for the film, which was not even remotely in my thoughts at the time. Back then I was inspired by Velasquez's Innocent X and then Bacon's Innocent X, that dull cry of a man sitting on a throne... but I think the deeper reason was to find a meeting ground between us, far from words…
CH: Why did you keep the German voice?
LC: I wanted to pay homage to Thomas Mann from whose text it all originated, and I wanted to use his real language, his real words, and not a translation. The panels in the film are an abbreviated English version of concepts that are expressed more complexly and richly in the original text. In addition to this, I have an old German friend - Peer Kugler - who has a wonderful voice, deep and sweet at the same time, which I have always wanted to use in some way without ever having had the chance...
CH: This film invokes the impulse and the supernatural. How do these words relate to your work in general?
LC: It’s all about the impulse and the supernatural, everything I’m interested in has to deal with these elements.
CH: Would you have a next film project?
LC: I’d like very much to make a feature hybrid film, I’d like to have a small crew and direct… I’ve written two subjects but I can’t find the money or I’m not good at finding them or my subjects are not good enough or they are too good… whatever, we’ll see…
Interview conducted in January 2025
The photos are taken from the film W
directed in 2022 by Lorenzo Castore
