Cinema for me is…
Italy – Tommaso Santambrogio from Europa Cinemas on Vimeo.
Tommaso in 23 frames
1. Describe yourself in ten words.
An ambitious dreamer in love with challenges, craziness and life.
2. Your best quality? Your worst habit?
Best quality: Sensitiveness
Worst habit: I want to do too many things and I fall in love with too many ideas, and then I end up starting millions of projects and not completing most of them.
3. Your dream job?
Movie director
4. What do you like most about your country?
The life’s quality and the historical, natural and cultural incredible beauty
5. Your favorite dish in your country?
Pizza, no way
6. Which word or phrase in your native language do you like the most and what does it mean?
“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle” Divina Commedia, Inferno XXXIV, 139, Dante Alighieri
7. What European capital have you visited lately?
Paris, London, Rome, Prague
8. Other than your own, which European country would you love to live in?
France
9. What does Europe mean to you? 3 values.
Heterogeneity, identity and time (Europe is my past, my present and my future)
10. What film made you fall in love with cinema?
Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979, US)
11. Your favorite film theatre? What do you like about it?
Actually I have to quote at least two theaters: Labia theater in Cape Town and Studio 28 in Paris. Of the first I love the old atmosphere, the program and the red neon sign, of the second one the building, the chandeliers, the history and the Montmartre area.
12. Who is your movie hero?
Fitzcarraldo
13. Which movie director would you like to be?
Actually is impossible to choose just one, I would like to be a bit Antonioni, a bit Truffaut and a bit Kiarostami
14. Briefly describe your favorite scene.
One of my favorite scenes is probably the Modern love’s one in Mauvais Sang by Leos Carax (1986, FR). In that scene the radio plays Modern Love by David Bowie, while Anna is laying on a red bed. Alex, once the song begins, starts to dance along the streets, running between one dance step and another and punching himself in the stomach, sudden realizing what is love. Love is an unstoppable and unexpected music that totally conquers you, a punch in the stomach between one step and another.
15. What are the 3 best European films you have seen in the last year?
Fire at sea (Gianfranco Rosi, 2016), IT
Victoria (Sebastian Schipper, 2015), DE
Zvizdan (Dalibor Matanic, 2015), HR.
16. Which film character do you most identify with?
Probably Woody Allen in Manhattan
17. Your favorite soundtrack or song?
“Once upon a time” by Morricone
18. If you had to live in a movie, which one would you like it to be?
Probably Before Sunset (Richard Linklater, 2004, US). Walking with the woman I love after a long time around Paris, talking about everything possible and losing the idea of time, ending up looking at her dancing on Just in time by Nina Simone.
19. Your life becomes a bio-pic. Who plays the role of you?
Humphrey Bogart, I love that man. Or otherwise, if it is strictly needed an alive actor, Joaquin Phoenix
20. Which talent would you most like to have?
Be Lucky, or even better, be happy. And yes, it’s a talent
21. What is your most treasured possession?
A Vespa PX from the ‘76
22. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Having loved and having lost
23. What is your motto?
I am very bad at this kind of thing, I do not have a motto, I thought 15 minutes about it but honestly I have no idea of a sentence or a funny joke that I could consider mine.