A Fantastical Imagination leads Filmmaker Maria C. Venturini to create “Fosca” with MiBAC Funding
As a youngster roaming the Tuscan forests with her sisters, Italian film director Maria Chiara Venturini’s far out imagination led her to use nature’s instruments such as rocks and branches to build fantastical worlds, transporting herself and her sisters to the big city where they lived in ‘big houses and worked big jobs.’
While many of us traded away slivers of the fantasy worlds we built and lived in as children in exchange for more concrete ideas, grounding further into ‘reality’ as we moved into adulthood — she devoted special care to maintaining the wild and precious freedom of her imagination. And it’s that nurtured aspect of herself that’s arguably made her stand-out amongst contemporary international filmmakers.
“With the risk that I will sound mental, I can say that I had a lot of imaginary friends that were living in my imaginary world. I was more or less 8 years old back then, now, after more than 15 years, I still hang out with some of my fantasies and we brainstorm about visions and ideas. This helps me in a way to come up with concepts that are considered different by a lot of people.”
Often mixing live action and animation through the use of stop motion, Venturini’s unconventional work weaves together visuals that are fantastically weird, quaint and repulsive all at the same time. And, as the director of successful projects such as the multi-award winning music video for Tom Rosenthal’s ‘Bob in the Rain and the Lizard of Hope’ and the new music video for Say Yes Dog’s song ‘Girlfriend,’ as well as the Sprocket Film Festival Award winning fashion film “Chanel Ancien Régime, and “Waiting for Adam,” which was chosen as an Official Selection of the Scrittura E Immagine Corto Film Festival and the Chella Vision Short Film Fest, audiences have clearly taken a liking to her style.
She explains, “People need something to escape the stressful reality that they live in and I’m more than happy to welcome them into my creepy little world.”
Her newest film “Fosca,” which is currently in post-production and will be submitted to the Venice, Cannes and Berlinale Film Festivals, among others, earned coveted funding from MiBAC, the Italian Culture Ministry.
“We were their number one choice on the list, I almost choked on my food when my producer called me and gave me the great news,” admits Venturini about winning the funding from MiBAC, which receives thousands of submissions each year.
Though she’s made numerous award-winning projects over the course of her career, ironically “Fosca” is Venturini’s first Italian production to date.
Depicting the story of the titular character, a young girl who lives in the middle of the forest with her bankrupt family, Venturini says, “I wanted to give to my country a different perspective. People seemed to be thrilled by the fact that we were making a sort of fairytale and this pushed me to give them a good one. The topic of the story is still pretty contemporary but the way that we made that happen is just different.”
After the unexpected death of her mother, Fosca proves to be the only one out of her father and brothers with the instinct to survive and move on from the tragedy however, the remaining family members paint her in a bad light. Despite being the only strong one in the bunch, her desperate desire to be loved leads her to make the bizarre decision to taxidermy her body in order to look like her beloved mother in hopes of gaining her family’s affection.
Inspired by “the grotesque Northern European tales,” Venturini says, “‘Fosca’ started more as a story that I would have liked to tell my future kids before bedtime. I’ve always preferred the Brother Grimm’s original version of fairy tales rather than the Disney version where everything is pastel and has a happy ending… I also got inspired by those Dutch flemish paintings from the 1600s for colours, costumes and production design. Everything, including the story, has this muddy look and feeling that I have a predilection for in my style.”
The music video she created for Tom Rosenthal’s ‘Bob in the Rain and the Lizard of Hope’ serves as yet another testament to Venturini’s boundless creativity as a director who’s able to command the audience’s attention and tell an unforgettable story in a matter of minutes.
The winner of the Best Music Video Awards from the Feel The Reel International Film Festival, Filmstrip International Film Festival, TMFF (The Monthly Film Festival) and MystiCon Independent Film Festival, as well as an Official Selection of the Rails to Reels Film Festival, Hamilton Music and Film Festival, Festival de Cinema Escolar de Alvorada (FECEA) and more, ‘Bob in the Rain and the Lizard of Hope’ was one of the early works that really put Venturini on the map.
Video Music Award nominee Mark Kohr, the executive producer on the music video, says, “She is an absolute joy to work with. She has all the elements of a great cinema director…. She consistently creates inspired playful and complex concepts.”
Kohr, who is known for his work as the director behind mega popular 90s music videos such as the one for Green Day’s hit song ‘Basket Case,’ adds, “She has incredible onset sensitivity to adjust performance and image to achieve the most emotionally appropriate and powerful images needed for editorial.”
The splashes of red that pop from the gray color scheme, the pacing of the visuals, the cartoonish set decorations intermixed with the real environment, and her highly stylized attention to costume design all come together to make ‘Bob in the Rain and the Lizard of Hope’ the kind of music video that leaves an indelible mark in our minds.
