We all carry the title of a movie within us that has marked our memories and which, in some way, defines us. If it’s true that a photographic portrait can tell a lot about a person, I believe that the movie we are most attached to can tell even more.
The goal of this project is to use cinema as a tool that will help people to tell their stories. These people were asked to define themselves through a movie, revealing a piece of their soul. As the “book people” of Fahrenheit 451 preserved the memory of the book, my series wants to link every person to the film of his life.
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#1 Andrea, The Princess Bride (1987)
“Did I choose it because I’m romantic? No! There are two reasons: one is Inigo Montoya (and the characters in general) and then the cloak and dagger genre and these painted backgrounds that reflect its tradition. The characters are fantastic, somehow they are all heroes.”
#2 Micaelo, Back To The Future (1985)
“It’s the symbol of our generation, it taught us to dream about impossible things. We are the choices we choose.”
#3 Diego, Edward Scissorhands (1990)
“It’s the film that physically excites me the most, I mean, I press play, I hear two notes and I can’t hold back the tears, I am a river, really. In addition to this very strong physical motivation, there’s also the way how the theme of diversity is told, it’s wonderful, it’s like a fairy tale. And then him, Danny Elfman: the soundtrack is fundamental for this film.”
#4 Luca, Blade Runner (1982)
“I think it’s an unparalleled creative combination of three talents and their genius: Ridley Scott, Philip Dick, and Vangelis. It’s the perfect synthesis between literary and cinematographic work, it’s poetry, it lacks nothing and in Roy Batty’s final monologue there is everything. As a photography lover, I think it’s the film with the best cinematography ever and this makes the difference. I saw it recently, it gave me gooseflesh.”
#5 Francesco, Fantasia (1940)
“Working with Music is a useless profession, I don’t cure anyone, I don’t build bridges or roads. This film reconciles with my primordial world, thanks to its oneiric, creative and hardly simple material. Beethoven is complex, as well as Stravinskij, but we often forget how simple they can be if seen with the creative potential of a child. Thanks to this film, I’m a child and an adult at the same time, since ever, and when I watch it I remember why I choose to do this job.”
#6 Pierluca, Star Wars (1977)
“I saw it when I was 5 and since then, nothing has been the same. I saw it every day when I came back from school and it infused me with all the love I have for cinema. I think it’s the first movie I’ve seen in my life, I was shocked, every day I would come home from school and I would see it again and again, I must have seen it for a year in a row!”
#7 Vito, It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)
“It’s a film that always makes me cry, it has a wonderful narrative. Many years ago, I wasn’t a Capra fan, then I was sent to the USA because I was commissioned to write a book about him and I fell in love with Frank Capra. At that time, I thought he was a sort of paternalistic fascist, but he’s a director who talks about America’s contradictions. During this movie, the scene that makes me cry is when after the nightmare about never having been born, he returns to the real world. It seems like a Christian fairy tale for children but it’s a film about America.”
#8 Gabriele, Willow (1988)
“In our family, this film is some kind of a ritual. It’s one of those films that we have to see on TV when it’s on, no matter what. It’s part of my childhood and it’s definitely the main reason for my choice. Together with my brother, we always repeat the line: “What? What? Oh, Rool, you and your stupid rat dreams.”
#9 Mattia, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)
“It emotes me every time I see it.”
#10 Massimiliano, Ghostbusters (1984)
“It’s the first film I remember seeing as a child and it’s the first movie that I learned by heart. At every carnival, I wanted to dress like them and then the Ghostbusters are the Ghostbusters, period!”
#11 Roberto, Matrix (1999)
“I think I saw it a million times. I like the characters from Morpheus to Cypher but above all, the philosophical references from the Oracle to Ancient Greece.”
#12 Martina, Dead Poets Society (1989)
“This movie is a part of my childhood. That scene where everyone gets on the desk, well, I always wanted to do it too. Every time I watched it, I was waiting for that moment, he has incredible power. Then it’s the kind of rhetoric that was useful to me in my teenage years!”
#13 Gabriel, The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
“This film is the first memory I have of my life. It was New Year’s Eve, I was about 3 years old and I remember the big worm that came out to eat the Falcon, that scene really impressed me. In my eyes, this movie is a perfect summary of everyone’s life: we joke, we laugh, there is love, there is suffering, family dramas, problems with teachers. I love Star Wars!”
#14 Roberto, The Naked Gun (1988)
“I’ve seen it 600 times! It’s the kind of humor that I like. I enjoy studying it and, when it’s possible, use it in my daily life, even if it’s not that easy. I remember that Leslie Nielsen died the same day as Mario Monicelli and I quarreled with a person who said that I shouldn’t talk about Nielsen just because Monicelli was more important: “What’s the point?” I told him and we began to argue. But today, that’s something I wouldn’t do again.”
#15 Alessandra, Moulin Rouge! (2001)
“When I was a teenager, I watched this movie many times. I learned the songs and I never stopped singing them. I used to love singing, and I also loved this tormented and passionate story.”
#16 Dario, Jaws (1975)
“The story, with its epicness, is truly incredible, it’s a sort of modern version of Moby Dick.”
#17 Valentina, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
“I think it’s the greatest film ever made. I connect it to my mother, she made me see it, it was one of her favorite films: when I was 10, I used to play the piano, as a conclusion of the recital I had to play the Blue Danube and I couldn’t do it right. So she let me see how I had to play it showing me 2001 and there I said: “The piano is ok but… the Cinema!!”
#18 Viviana, Gone With The Wind (1939)
“My father has an endless collection of films on videotape. I remember first seeing this film with him at 5 or 6 years old, I didn’t understand much but it was my first contact with Cinema, with scenarios and photography. It’s a very colorful movie and it fascinated me for this reason, it opened the door to me and I thought: “So this is Cinema!”
#19 Emanuele, Big Fish (2003)
“In my life, I’ve always tried to put together all my passions, that are a lot and the circus and medicine are among these. Sometimes my life looks like this movie, when I tell my experience about the circus, people often believe it and don’t believe it, these stories are so unusual (like a World Record and a Guinness Record in the Yucatan) that immediately create the “Big Fish” effect, it’s like a syndrome. Some years ago, when I was a warehouse worker, I did a commercial for Discovery Channel as a juggler: at work, my boss asked if that juggler was really me. I told him: “If I could do these things, you think that I’d work in a warehouse?” I didn’t tell the truth because if you reveal yourself, you change the balance. Even now, I work in a hospital, when I arrived, they had already seen me on TV, everybody recognizes me for the Mirror Show that has been on television in Italy and around the world: unfortunately you become immediately popular and it’s wrong because I could be the greatest impostor in the world and people talk only about a single episode of my life, not about my studies or what university I attended. At the end, you become a prisoner of your stories.”
#20 Giovanni, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (2004)
“I’ve always liked it, always. It has various themes that strike me, as the fatality of life: in the end, even if you want to forget a person, it’s impossible, you can’t. The most beautiful thing is when he thinks he has lost her forever, she says: “Meet me in Montauk”. It’s thrilling.”
#21 Barbara, Hair (1979)
“It’s a film that represents me a lot since I was a child due to the importance I give to friendship, justice, the way to compare each other, trying to make the best of life. I remember seeing it one Sunday at the old Cinema America in Rome, my father was working, so I watched it with my mother and my grandmother; it’s funny to think that my grandmother saw a movie like that!”
#22 Vittorio, Coming To America (1988)
“This movie brings me to my childhood, the years when John Landis did amazing movies, every year at Christmas I turn off my phone and I rewatch “Trading Places”, that is another movie that I love, so I chose this one mostly for reasons that make me think about my childhood: my friends and I know it by heart and we often quote the lines of this movie.”
#23 Marco, Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
“The first time I saw it, I was in Praia, where I used to go on holiday with my parents. It was the summer of 1999, I was 15 and the movie was only for over 16’s but I managed to get in with an older friend, lying about my age. It’s the movie that changed my life after seeing it. When I came back home, I told my mother that I wanted to be a director. Then my life evolved in a different way and I became a director of photography, but this was the movie that made me decide to pursue my career in cinema.”
#24 Martina, Apocalypse Now (1979)
“It’s a film about limits, about surviving. I saw it with my dad when I was a child and I love it.”
#25 Carla, Irma La Douce (1963)
“It’s my 140 minutes of good humor. I mean, if I feel down I watch Irma and then I feel better. I have a total passion for Jack Lemmon and I like that there is female friendship, then the love story: it’s a fantastic movie.”
#26 Federica, Django Unchained (2012)
“I saw it with a friend who loves Tarantino very much but she didn’t like the film. I remember that while everyone around me was watching the scenes of violence, I cried a lot. I was very struck by the story of how this man allied with the bounty hunter: the theme of slavery, told in this key, made me think of our world today, I imagined all the suffering, the inhumanity that existed and that still exists. And then that final revenge, typical of Tarantino, really filled me with energy, it was liberating.”
#27 Andrea, Solaris (1972)
“Humans for many years tried to look outside the Earth to find answers about Cosmos or the infinite, but they didn’t solve their own problems, they didn’t look inside themselves: but looking inside themselves, is it useful? It’s easy? Or does it only bring new questions? I chose this film because it questions us and it does it on another planet. My high school philosophy teacher showed me this film, it thrilled me because it wasn’t the usual sci-fi movie that we Westerners are used to, it didn’t have the usual plot where someone has to save someone else or where they have to save the Earth, but it’s focused on characters and their problems. This film is certainly the origin of my passion for Russian Cinema.”
#28 Marco, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
“I’ve always been obsessed with space, my father liked “2001”, he always talked about it and when I was a kid, I finally saw it on TV: obviously I didn’t understand everything but, I mean, you’re in space! Then every time I saw it again, I discovered new things, it’s the definitive cosmic film, there’s everything, there’s all the cinema, there’s video art, there’s music.”
#29 Valentina, 8 ½ (1963)
“It is the first film I fell in love with and that made me think, “Oh my god, are you really describing our inner life so well? Our inner crisis?”
#30 Luigi, Goodfellas (1990)
“As far as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.”
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