If you ask people about Italy’s golden age of films some will talk about Fellini, but others will think of Giallo, the genre that in Italy refers to stories of crime and mystery; Giallo, in Italian, means “yellow”, literally, and refers to cheap detective novels that had trademark yellow covers. The rest of the world thinks of Giallo as something else – movies of horror and eroticism made popular by directors like Dario Argento in the 70s. In the effort to learn more, I’ve been twisting the arm of Nigel Maskell, director of Italian Film Review for an interview (hey there, Nigel!). He’s the expert, and I’d love to hear what he thinks of the new horror directors like Federico Zampaglione.
Zampaglione is relatively new to film – he was the singer and front man of an Italian band called Tiromancino. His (2009) english language film called Shadow is about a young soldier who leaves for a mountain biking trip and meets a beautiful girl and then a group of violent locals who try to kill him. Zampaglione says that there are political messages in his work, and that he “showed a lot of violence and pain in the film, but didn’t want to do it for nothing. There are enough movies doing that.”
In an interview that I found on bleedingcool.com Zampaglione said, “I’m a very good friend of Dario Argento, Lamberto Bava and Ruggero Deodato. They are my masters and I truly love them. They gave me a lot of support and precious advice. I feel myself lucky to have such great masters and friends. However, I would love to keep working in the horror genre. I already have a couple of interesting projects – both really scary!”
One of the new ones will be called Tulpa and according to Zampaglione, it’ll be “a very bloody and tense Italian thriller with some supernatural elements”. Tulpa is written by the legendary screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, who has worked with all the great Italian horror masters including Fulci, Bava and Argento.
Federico explains the title: “Tulpa is a term which comes from Tibetan Buddhism. It’s a kind of projection of your metaphysical part, which, through meditation, can become real. But sometimes tulpa goes the wrong way and turns unto an evil presence… which then wants to kill its creator. It’s mysterious and creepy stuff.”
From 24framespersecond.net The, “The film will be shot on locations in Rome and North Africa. It’s waaaay too early for any media to do (anything) with the new production, but you can already check out Shadow in the US.”
So is there a rebirth of Giallo? You tell me. (Nigel)
Here’s the trailer for Shadow.
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