L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JANUARY 7, 2016 www.italoamericano.org L'Italo-Americano 9 Dominic Angerame – A San Francisco Filmmaker Speaks on Chiaroscuro & More " To see the city through the eyes of Dominic Angerame is to see an organic beast of concrete that sifts and breathes in rich shades of black and wh ite." - S ilke Tudor, SF Weekly S ince 1969, D ominic Angerame has made dozens of films that have been shown and won awards in film festivals around the world. He has been honored by tw o Cine Pr obe series at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1993 and 1998. Originally from Albany, New York, Angerame lives in North Beach (the subject of two of his upcoming films , "tw o s hort comedies about coffee-shop liv- ing"), and is a visiting faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute. Under his leadership as Executive Director of Canyon Cinema for over thirty years, Canyon Cinema became one of the world's most renowned dis- tributors of avant-garde and experimental films. Its contribu- tion to the field of experimen- tal/avant-garde filmmaking is historic. Recently, L'Italo- Americano was fortunate to sit down with Angerame and ask the questions film buffs can't wait to ask a Bay Area film leg- end. When did you relocate to the West Coast and why? I moved to San Francisco in 1979, am currently living in North Beach and have been since I moved from Chicago. I found North Beach to be very visually attractive and supportive of me artistically. I was a filmmaker in Chicago w hen I read about Canyon Cinema in S an Francisco. They distributed films and I sent my films there. After I moved to the City, a job opened up at Canyon Cinema and I got it in 1980. When did you make your first film? Title? What was your inspiration? I shot home movies when I was in high school; however, the firs t s erious film I s hot w as called Demonstration 68. I had attended an anti-war demonstra- tion in N ew Y ork City and filmed some of the march with my regular 8 mm film. What have been the pro- jects clos es t to you r h eart (with particular emphasis on those in the San Francisco Bay Area). The City Symphony I create is the closest to my heart. In my filmmaking I cannot help but be influenced by the urban area in which I live, love and sometimes hate, affected by such filmmak- ers of the thirties such as Dziga Vertov, Walter Ruttman, Laslow Mohol-Nagy, Joris Ivens and others. I have been an urban rat mos t of my life, living in Albany, New York, Buffalo, Chicago and now San Francisco. City Symphony, is a collec- tion of s even s eparate films that I have been making since 1987. The series is ongo- ing and include my films : Continuum , D econs tr uction Sight, Pr em onition, In the Course of Human Events, Line of Fire, Battle Stations-A Navel Adventure and my most recent film, The Soul of Things. You are currently working on a film about coffee shop liv- ing in North Beach. What's it all about? I will be releasing a short comedy filmed inside the Cafe Trieste. It is a comical tale of the coffee house environment of San Francisco. It is about drinking espressos all day long and the consequences of doing such. One of your recent presen- tations at the North Beach library was titled "A Short History of Narrative Film: Th e I talian N eorealis m Movement." Please expand upon it? After WWII, there emerged a whole generation of new film- makers who were well trained in the industry and at their craft. Just as WWI unlocked the cre- ativity of the German artists, WWII released the Italian imagi- nation in cinema. Essentially, Neorealism was a product of political and social circumstances, like many other art movements around the world. The Neorealist films of Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio DeSica, Luchino Visconti and others felt the necessity to pre- sent how life was for most peo- ple during World War II. Please share your thoughts on the Italian Chiaroscuro movement. Italian Neorealism was revo- lutionary in its "real" approach to the subject matter. That is in the techniques used such as non- actor/actresses, natural lighting and on location filming. Most of the films of this genre do not attempt to be narrative, nor edi- torialized documentary (with some exceptions). These films are made without concerns of commercial success or failure. They are normally funded by the filmmaker and because of mone- tary restrictions are often short in length normally 25 minutes or less. This genre often uses tech- niques such as superimpositions, flash frames, jump cuts, abstract imagery, hand coloring, found footage and numerous other methods. I employ all of these tech- niques into my films. Once an audience sees my City Symphony series they probably will never view bulldozers, cranes, pieces of rebar, and those who perform manual labor in the same way. My intent is by doing such per- haps it allows a new perception of the urbanity in which many of us live. Check out more on Dominic Angerame at http://www.cin- emod.net and http://www.canyon cinema.com/catalog/filmmaker/? i=9. Also, note the following dates when Dominic will present four programs at San Francisco's N orth Beach Library (850 Columbus A venue) at 6:30 p.m.: February 24, 2016, "Early Russian Cinema", March 30, "Hollywood in the 50s", April 27, "New German Cinema", and May 25, "Surrealism in Italian Cinema". SAN FRANCISCO ITALIAN COMMUNITY CATHERINE ACCARDI Dominic Angerame stands in front of the Columbus Tower building in North Beach. Photographer: Dennis Letbetter

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