One of the most welcome surprises of the last Venice Film Festival was the directorial debut of Gian Alfonso Pacinotti, aka Gipi, one of the most important and refined Italian designers (he collaborates, among other things, with La Repubblica and Internazionale). Struggling with a profound creative crisis, Gipi accepted Domenico Procacci's proposal and chose to open his artistic experience to the seventh art. The challenge was a non-trivial one, especially since for Gipi it was not a question of staging his own comic book universe, but of creating a new one, capable of mixing science fiction and urban drama and of embracing an increasingly disillusioned society with his gaze. For his debut behind the camera, Gipi was inspired by a colleague's comic book (Nobody will hurt himself, by Giacomo Monti), demonstrating how prolific the paths of creativity between graphic novels and the big screen are.
“Outside the cinema, meanwhile, everything is falling apart. But it's normal, because films beat existence sixty to zero on the table. As Truffaut said: “Films move forward like trains, you understand? Like trains in the night." Speaking of trains. Yesterday, on the train, I wrote the first ten pages of what I would like, if I don't die first, to be my second film. We will see". (Gipi)
Enrico Magrelli: Journalist and film critic, Enrico Magrelli has been, since the first episode, one of the authors and hosts of the Rai 3 daily program Hollywood Party. He was director of cinema news at Tele+. From 1979 to 1982 he was part of Carlo Lizzani's creative and organizational staff at the Venice Film Festival. From 1988 to 1990 he was Director of the Critics' Week of the Venetian festival. In 1991 he was Guglielmo Biraghi's right-hand man at the Venice Film Festival. His monographs dedicated to Robert Altman, Roman Polanski, Nanni Moretti. He has edited a dozen volumes including: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marilyn Monroe, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Satyajt Ray. Since 2004, he has been part of the Selection Commission of the Venice International Film Festival, an event in which he works side by side with director Marco Müller. Since 2009 he has been Curator of the National Film Library. He is the author and host of Ciakpoint, a Rai Movie program dedicated to cinema.
Gian Alfonso Pacinotti (Gipi) was born in Pisa in 1963. In 1994 he began publishing cartoons and short stories in the satirical magazine Cuore. The first comic stories appeared in the monthly magazine Blue and then in other Italian newspapers and newspapers. For the publishing house Coconino Press he has created several books: from Esterno Notte to Appunti per una storia di guerra, awarded as Best comic of the year at the Angoulême International Festival in 2006. Among his other works, Questa è la stanza, the series Baci dalla Provincia, S., La Mia Vita Disegnata Male, the anthology Diario di fiume and Verticali. In July 2011, Omnibus Gipi, a paperback collection of his major works, was released in bookstores. Gipi is also an illustrator for the newspaper La Repubblica and collaborates with the weekly Internazionale. L’ultimo terrestre is his first film.