Simone Rapisarda Casanova

Blending documentary and fiction, Rapisarda Casanova’s experimental films are the result of a process-driven approach in which the filmmaker, eschewing screenwriting and production-planning, personally tackles all aspects of preproduction, production and postproduction. His style is marked by an oneiric approach to storytelling, long takes, fixed camera positions, and the choice of non-actors who improvise on a loose outline. The filmmaker only shoots one take for each scene and, at a later stage, chooses and assembles only what seems to evoke the most intimate essence of characters and places. Metacinematic narratives, diegetic soundscapes, low-angle shots and the extensive use of wide-angle and ultra wide-angle lenses are other trademarks of his style. Those stylistical choices are driven by multiple intents: to explore the boundaries of the medium, to make the spectator aware of cinematic artificiality, and to question the ethics of Western ethnographic filmmmaking.

(Canada/Haiti/Italy/United States, 2018, 70 min) The film captures the daily life of a boy named Widley in contemporary Haiti, as it unfolds between mundane activities, mystic presences, the turmoil caused by upcoming elections, and his interest for the making of a weird film. With this film Rapisarda's research moves further into experimental ethnofiction following the shared ethnography path opened by Jean Rouch.

Simone Rapisarda Casanova is an Italian experimental filmmaker currently living in Canada. In 2014 he won the Leopard for Best Emerging Director at the Locarno International Film Festival.

(Italy/Canada, 2014, 90 min) An aging but tenacious Tuscan shepherd, Pacifico Pieruccioni, is forced by the economic crisis to give up the house and land where his parents had fought in the Resistance against the German Army during World War II. Oddly enough, the prospective buyer is a young German. The shepherd and the prospective buyer start a conversation about history and present-day Italy. The film has won the Best Emerging Director award at the Locarno International Film Festival in 2014.

(Canada/Cuba/Italy, 2011, 71 min) The first feature-length film by the author is an experimental ethnography that captures the last days of the village of Juan Antonio, Cuba, shortly before hurricane Ike wiped it out. The film was included in Film Comment’s list of the “Fifty Best Undistributed Films of 2012.”

Rapisarda Casanova was born in Sicily, Italy. He developed an interest in photography and cinema while studying Computer Science at the University of Pisa. Soon after moving to Canada in 2000, he abandoned his career in the software industry to devote himself to studying film, first in Montreal and later in Toronto.