Versipellis
(Italy, 2011) by Donatello Della Pepa
21’, Italian with English subtitles
A fierce beast spreads panic and death in the streets of Rome, and there’s a connection between the atrocious murders and the two young twins Giulio and Francesco Ferretti, bond by a difficult family history. While Chief Vanni investigates on the mysterious murders, Giulio e Francesco start chasing each other, driven by a primordial, irrational instinct.
With a narration so rich it could be as well extended into a feature film, Donatello Della Pepa (who worked on the script jointly with Luca Ruocco) tries to find his own vision of werewolf cinema, and of a subject so often neglected by italian horror films. While proving to have uncommon directing abilities, he manages to focus on characters' psychological development.
Il mistero di Lovecraft – Road to L.
(Italy, 2005) by Federico Greco, Roberto Leggio
86’, Italian
In 2004, a small international troupe is summoned to Italy to collaborate with David,
an actor from New York, in the realisation of a documentary on the hypothetical journey that the american fantasy-horror writer H.P. Lovecraft might have made in Italy, even though he officially never left the U.S. But the Po river delta hides secrets that should never resurface...
It would be way too easy to label this mockumentary as “lovecraftian”: the film directed by Federico Greco and Roberto Leggio is without a doubt one of the most impressive works born from the rich culture of italian horror in the 2000s. A journey into Polesine’s dark heart, the film reveals all its eeriness in its stubborn quest for a truth which is proven wrong (but is it so?) by the same use he makes of photography. It was a much-discussed work, which needs to be rediscovered.
Introduced by Donatello Della Pepa, Luca Ruocco, Federico Greco, Roberto Leggio and by Focus On curator Raffaele Meale.