Giuseppe Girardi
Italian video artist
–>
–>
Interview: 10 questions
1. Tell me something about your life and the educational background
They say there’s a law of compensation, it says that near a beautiful thing there must be something ugly…I have grown in an ugly city placed on the mainland of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the beautiful city is Venice, the ugly one on the mainland is called Mestre, nobody knows about it…a city of strong immigration from the coutryside during the second half of last century, a city grown without a shape, prey of building speculation…I think that growing in a city with no history nor roots influenced me at a deep level…
I attended scientific high school, then went to university studying architecture, both of them were not for me…
2. When, how and why started you filming?
An examination gone wrong at university made me realize I was following the wrong way…so the next year I entered in a direction workshop called “Ipotesi Cinema†headed by the italian director Ermanno Olmi…
In this workshop I was involved into an experimental project of audiovisive expression called “Placing for memory†based upon the observation of poetic aspects of reality using electronic devices such as videocameras…
Since this workshop was a place of “ideas†about cinema, there was a lot of talking, it was not a place for technical teaching so what I know about shooting and editing I’ve learnt by myself…
3. What kind of subjects have your films?
“Placing for memory†project developed in me an interest for what surrounds me, I understood that reality is the most complex script one can ever imagine to write…reality for me is not only the outer one, what we see, but also the inner one, what we feel…both realities are ambiguous, contradictory, impossible to define…at the moment I’m interested in exploring the relations between inner world and outer world, human beings have fondamental needs that in modern life are not satisfied any more, a sort of short circuit is having place between the world where we move and our personal world , made of thoughts and feelings…something is wrong in our lives…
4. How do you develop your films, do you follow certain principles, styles etc?
Since we prefer to see what is wrong in other people’s life, than in ours, I watch around myself, what happens, I watch how people live, what they do during the day, what they watch on TV, here I find the starting point to develop my films…the creative mind is a sort of filter, it collects images, words, facts, and crates new relations among all this rough material…
1. Tell me something about the technical equipment you use.
Just a videocamera and a computer…
6. What are the chances of new media for the genre film/video in general
and you personally?
There’s something worrying about what I see in new media, it seems to me that the direction of the development of media is taking nowhere…most of what I see on TV or on the internet is totally sensless…I see tens of short movies at festivals or on the internet, most of them are perfect from a technical point of view, but at the end you ask yourself “well, what did he say? I think there’s a big need of “sense 
7. How do you finance your films?
At the moment I spend my own money to make my films, but I must say that lack of money affects in a negative way my projects, besides using just a videocamera to realize my projects forces me to use only the language of fake documentary to make fictions…this is frustrating…
8. Do you work individually as a video artist/film maker or do you work in a team?
Film making is a team work, collaboration is fundamental, exchange of ideas is fundamental, everyone in a team must have his own role, just to avoid confusion, but collaboration is fundamental…I’ve been alone for a long time, now I’m looking for collaboration…
if you have experience in both, what is the difference, what do you prefer?
The second one, but I must say that during editing process I still prefer to stay alone…editing is a private moment…
9. Who or what has a lasting influence on your film/video making?
Music, not in a direct way…I’m not inspired, for instance, by the words of a song, but music produces in me a sort of “dynamic of sense†and a flow of images that I try to show to others, I try to build in videomaking the same dynamics of music composing…I think of myself as an audiovisive composer…
10. What are your future plans or dreams as a film/video maker?
It would be great to meet someone interested in my projects, someone who could help me to realize them…I wish I could have a good talk with a producer, an informal talk, drinking beer, just to exchange our ideas about movie making…My aim is to be a good european director, to collaborate with professionals of many countries, to set up my profession at a multi-national level…
Can works of yours viewed online besides on VideoChannel? Where?
Not at the moment, I’m working on it…