We met Italian filmmaker Marinella Senatore a few months ago when she was in town casting for her latest collaborative film project, Variations. She was looking for residents from the neighborhood to write, shoot and perform in the production. Now, the completed piece is included in No Longer Empty’s group show, About Face. This evening, you can watch a preview of the film and hear the filmmaker talk about the process of creating such a unique project. It’s being screened at the Millenium Film Workshop on E. 4th Street at 7pm. They write:
Senatore’s film, Variations, redefines each stage of traditional cinema production. Organizing the creation of the film on a didactic model, the artist casted a group of New York City residents with no previous film experience and facilitated a collaborative process of writing, directing and filming. The film draws on the character of the Lower East Side for its subject matter and physical location and evokes the language of the serial in its four episodes, each of which elaborates on the theme of the neighborhood from a different perspective. The footage in the film documents both its own filmmaking process and a series of fictional stories about the neighborhood, recording the interchange between community members that occurred during production and inviting the possibility for parallel relationships to emerge through shared interpretative engagement in the film’s open narrative structure.
This preview screening is free and open to the public. A Q&A session will follow (film runs approx. 20 mins.)
