Director Leonardo Palmerini is using a crowdfunding campaign to try to bring his latest film, Angiò, based on the work of Viareggio author Lorenzo Viani, to the screen.
Palmerini’s experimental film set in Viareggio adapts Viani’s 1928 book Angiò uomo d’acqua (Angiò, Man of the Water), the story of a traumatized sailor who vows to never return to sea. Palmerini, who hopes to release the film in spring 2015, is using the platform Produzioni dal Basso, the Italian equivalent of Kickstarter, to raise 15,000 euro towards production costs.
Viani was an author and artist who worked largely in Versilia, and preserving Viareggio lore and traditions is at the heart of Palmerini’s project. Viani’s book was written in an old form of Viareggino dialect, which Palmerini maintains through the film’s narrator. (Just as the book came with a glossary, the film comes with English subtitles.) Technical aspects of the film pay tribute to Viani himself. A prominent Italian expressionist, Viani was known as much for his literary accomplishments as his painting, printmaking and engraving. To honour Viani’s skills, Palmerini used an animation technique called rotoscoping: the actors were filmed in front of a blue screen and animators then traced over the footage to create a graphic effect mirroring Viani’s drawing and etching techniques.
The campaign (produzionidalbasso.com/project/angio-il-film) runs until January 6, 2015.
