«100 Years from Now, My Screenplay Will Still Be Studied»: The Phenomenon of Director and Screenwriter Alessio Della Valle

«Everything that remains of humanity is art», — says Alessio Della Valle. Long before Hollywood, his life was intertwined with painting, music, poetry, and cinema. He grew up surrounded by the artistic masterpieces of Florence, worked behind the closed doors of the Uffizi Gallery, filmed a unique movie at Villa Borghese, and made his way from volunteer work to international film directing.

His debut feature, American Night, starring Hollywood actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the lead role, became part of the permanent collection of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Following this achievement, Alessio Della Valle was officially recognized as one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary cinema.

In this extensive interview, the director recalls helping create frescoes in a Florentine church at the age of seventeen, filming at night among Caravaggio’s masterpieces, explains why he believes art «chose» him, and reveals how painting, poetry, and cinema became parts of a single creative universe.

— Your debut film, American Night, was submitted in all categories for the Oscars. In addition, the film was included by the Academy Awards in the Academy’s permanent collection to be preserved and studied. How did you react to such an important worldwide recognition?

— We premiered the film at the Venice Film Festival. I returned to Rome two or three weeks later, just before the film’s release in the United States — and it was going to open simultaneously in theaters all across America. It was the first time in the history of Italian cinema that a debut Italian film was distributed throughout the entire United States. Even Fellini’s films only arrived in America around his fourth or fifth movie, and the same happened with Sorrentino: those were not debuts. In this case, however, it was truly a first film. For me it was an enormous honor.

Then suddenly I received an email through the contact form on my website. Normally I just get spam, honestly. The email said: «We are from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Academy Awards. We would like to receive a copy of your screenplay in order to include it in the Academy’s permanent collection for preservation and study». At first I thought it was phishing — one of those emails from other countries saying «insert your credit card details». But there was also a phone number. I called, and the answering machine started: «Welcome to the Academy Awards…». That’s when I realized it was all real.

They told me they had loved the film and wanted to preserve the screenplay in their archive so it could be studied. When I understood that it was real, I realized two things: not only that the film had been understood and embraced by Americans I had never even met, but also that in one hundred years, when I am no longer here, that screenplay may still be read and studied. And that was an incredible honor. After that, the producers decided to try for the oscars nomination. Аnd they accepted us. Another miracle. Тhat is how we officially entered the Academy awards race, not as a foreign film, but in all categories, exactly like an american film.

— Did your creative activity begin with directing or with screenwriting?

— I started by making short films, commercials, and music videos. At that time I was more interested in the shooting process and visual construction. I had thousands of directing ideas, so I gathered all my friends who could become actors because they had interesting looks or access to unusual locations, and I made them act. I shot short films and entered competitions. But even before directing, music came first, because I played several instruments, had different bands, and we performed in the most important clubs in Florence and outside the city as well. At 18 years old I played in front of 4,000 people — an incredible emotion. We had a huge following among high school bands.

— At what moment did you realize that directing would become an essential part of your life?

— When I started studying cinema at the University of Bologna. One day I watched the film Il Grido by Michelangelo Antonioni. Watching that film, I understood what a director truly does, because the camera moved independently from the actors. There was even a scene where the actors stood on a bridge and the camera suddenly started showing another section of the bridge, made a complete turn, and only then returned to their faces. At that moment I said to myself: besides being an incredibly well-shot film — and at twenty years old my absolute love for Michelangelo Antonioni was born — i thought that this, this exact thing, moving the camera, choosing the point of view, directing the actors, and the film, this is a profession that i can do! But I was not the one who chose art, in the most physical and concrete sense of the word — art chose me.

— Did the fact that you were born and raised among the artworks of Florence influence you?

— Probably yes. When I was 17, I went to a charitable organization in Florence because I wanted to volunteer, help people, and work on ambulances. But they told me I was too young to take the emergency responder course. However, they had just built a church — designed by Giovanni Michelucci, in fact his final project. He was an important Florentine architect who built the Santa Maria Novella railway station in Florence and the Church of San Giovanni Battista on the Autostrada del Sole, among many other important works.

They told me that inside the church there was a famous painter named Luciano Guarnieri working there, the last student of Pietro Annigoni — the celebrated painter who portrayed kings and queens between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Luciano Guarnieri was about to paint the church frescoes using the same technique as Michelangelo: fresco painting on fresh, still-wet plaster. It was a technique handed down for 500 years. And this was also considered volunteer work, so I accepted. At 17, I became the assistant of an elderly famous painter. I spent an entire summer on top of scaffolding, thirty meters high beneath the church ceiling, physically helping create a triptych — three different frescoes depicting the Madonna. Since it was fresco painting on fresh plaster, I prepared the mixture — the recipe was secret and I did not know what was inside it. Then he painted using a particular technique, illuminated by two special lights, one warm and one cold. Before that, I had to nail to the ceiling the Sinopia, the preparatory cartoon of the Madonna — an enormous sheet, not exactly paper but a material similar perhaps to leather, containing tiny holes outlining the Madonna. I had to burn wood to create charcoal and then rub it through the small holes of the Sinopia so that the charcoal would leave marks on the ceiling. In this way the painter could already see the outlines of the future image. That was my first encounter with art, when art arrived to me unexpectedly. The second encounter happened when I began working on film sets as a runner — the lowest role one can have in a film production.

— Which moment in your career became decisive for you?

— A friend of mine from Rome came to Florence to meet the world president of UNESCO and asked me to accompany her. I simply took her to one of the Medici villas outside Florence where the meeting would take place. The UNESCO president spoke with me for a while and eventually offered me a job. My friend became upset because it turned out she was the one trying to obtain an interview, while I knew absolutely nothing about it. That was when I started working for UNESCO, becoming the director of their productions and live events. For example, I directed World Poetry Day at the Cherubini Conservatory in Florence. I also directed poetry reading and concert with an African American actor event at the American Consulate General in Florence. One day they told me there was a scholarship from the United States government — the Fulbright Program — for a directing master’s degree in Hollywood, and that there was only one spot available for all of Italy (one place for 60 million Italians). I thought: they will never give it to me. But the president of UNESCO, an eighty-year-old lady who helped me enormously and taught me so much — Doctor Maria Luisa Stringa — convinced me to apply. She told me: «If you apply, you will win». It was necessary to pass extremely difficult tests (GRE, TSE, and others) for which people usually prepared for an entire year, while I only had two weeks. But I tried anyway — and incredibly I won the scholarship. So, at twenty years old, I found myself in Los Angeles studying directing thanks to a scholarship from the United States government.

— What moments in Los Angeles were especially meaningful for you?

— They even took us to the United States Department of State in Washington, where we met the Government representatives. Everything felt like a movie. During that first year in Los Angeles, one morning at dawn — around 4:30 or 5:00 AM — I was pushing a cart full of lights, cables, flags, and filmmaking equipment. We had blocked Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and I was shooting a short film for the Los Angeles Film School. And suddenly I realized that everyone was looking at me, because I was the one directing the shoot. In that moment it became clear and I thought: this is the work that I know how to do. It was precisely that morning in Los Angeles that I truly understood, for the first time, that I could be a director, that I knew how to do it. After that I remained in Los Angeles for several years, working in film crews, directing second units for American films, and also working for California public television. Even the mayor awarded me for work that helped improve the local Los Angeles community. And from that moment onward, one incredible story followed another.

— Yet you returned to your Florence.

— Yes, and I continued working intensely. The mayor of Florence, UNESCO, and The Department of Culture decided to create a short film at Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery. So, at twenty years old, I found myself inside the Uffizi Gallery after closing hours, directing a short film with famous Italian actors. I was there alone with the crew in front of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Filippo Brunelleschi, and the entire heritage of the Italian Renaissance. I spent entire weeks alone in front of paintings worth billions of euros. I lived in more than 25 countries and then I moved to Rome, continuing to pursue my cinematic dream, and eventually I worked on more than fifty films as a crew member. And once again, completely by chance, I was contacted by the cultural councillor of the city of Rome and by the director of the Galleria Borghese because statues that Napoleon had stolen from Villa Borghese were about to return. That collection was so important that even today two-thirds of the entire ancient collection of the Louvre Museum comes from what had been taken from Rome, from Villa Borghese. So those statues were returning to Rome for the first time after two centuries for an exclusive exhibition, and they asked me to make a documentary. Once again I found myself inside Villa Borghese — the museum with the largest collection of Caravaggio works in the world. We filmed at night, when the museum was closed, among Bernini sculptures and Caravaggio paintings, shooting those priceless masterpieces for hours.

— You also worked on artistic masterpieces with international crews.

— I am a friend of Christopher Doyle, the cinematographer of In the Mood for Love and many other masterpieces by Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai. He profoundly influenced the way I look at works of art. In the Netherlands, during a meeting, Christopher brought around one hundred paintings made by himself to auction them in order to help the Dutch production company Fortissimo Films, which over the last thirty years had produced and distributed many important films. So I found myself not only becoming friends with Christopher Doyle and spending a week with him between Rotterdam and Amsterdam, but also participating in the auction and even buying one of his paintings. From that moment on, I practically became an art collector as well and started purchasing artworks.

— Was that when you decided to challenge yourself as a painter too?

— I had already started painting during my years working with UNESCO. They also entrusted me with directing an art gallery in the building opposite the Uffizi Gallery, which they called Uffizi Center. That was when I founded an artistic movement called «Art of Awakening». I gathered around thirty international artists — Italians, an artist from Hong Kong, the famous Italian singer Franco Battiato, who also painted, and another singer, Claudio Rocchi. There was even a Zen monk in the group: it was an extremely heterogeneous collection of people. We began creating exhibitions for the «Art of Awakening» Manifesto, and UNESCO even officially published the Manifesto. I then continued painting throughout the following years.

— Were the paintings we see in your film American Night created by you?

— In the film they are made by the character Michael Rubino — the son of a New York mafia boss, whom we meet on the day of his father’s funeral, when all the «godfathers» and mafia bosses of New York gather to crown him as the new mafia leader. But under one condition: he must stop painting and become a «serious person», dedicating himself completely to the mafia. It is an interesting character because he wants to be an artist, he wants to paint, but he has family obligations. In my film American Night this character is shown throwing paint onto canvases and then shooting at them with a Kalashnikov. And I created those paintings myself for the film. We made them exactly that way: we threw paint onto the canvases and then military men with Beretta pistols, Kalashnikovs, and other weapons, inside a specially prepared location, would shoot them while I directed where to place the holes, how to «paint», and supervised the composition of the artwork itself.

— What themes did you want to explore through this expression of emotions?

— When I started writing the screenplay for American Night, the story revolved around the theft of Andy Warhol’s painting «Pink Marilyn». It is a film that asks questions: what is an icon? What is pop art? What is a cultural symbol? All the characters in the film are connected to art and represent different points of view about it. Michael Rubino (played by Emile Hirsch from Sean Penn’s Into the Wild) is a man who wants to be an artist and who buys artworks, therefore a collector. The character of John Kaplan, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Match Point by Woody Allen), is instead a gallery owner, former art forger, and art expert gifted with a rare talent: he can distinguish an authentic painting from a fake simply by looking at it. Paz Vega (Lucía y el Sexo by Julio Medem) plays Sarah, a restorer who works on recovering paintings inside a museum. John Kaplan’s brother (played by Jeremy Piven from Entourage) is a stuntman who represents the point of view of the «ordinary person» toward contemporary art: according to him, certain works could have been made by a three-year-old child. There is also the Italian actor Fortunato Cerlino, famous for starring in the TV series Gomorrah, who plays the courier responsible for transporting the artwork to New York from the buyer. Every character therefore has a personal relationship with art and represents all the possible relationships between human beings and artistic creation. When I began writing the screenplay, I realized that everything that remains of any human being who lived before us on this planet is art. In the broadest sense of the word: buildings, books, music, painting, sculpture… all are forms of art. And ultimately it is the only thing that truly remains of people on Earth. That is why art is an invisible chain connecting us to the rest of humanity. We decided to include literally every possible form of art in the film: poetry, painting, sculpture, performance art, street art, graffiti, video installations, and more.

— Are all the artworks we see in the film authentic, or are they printed copies?

— All the artworks seen in the film are real. They were works I had encountered over the years in galleries and photographed myself. To gather them for the film, we sent people back to those cities, squares, and galleries to track down the artists and ask: «Who was this artist four years ago?» We loaded all the works onto trucks and transported them directly to the film sets. Artists from all over the world even sent us their works, including from Iceland. There was an artist who creates covers for the famous Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós — we used his works (the artist’s name is Gotti Bernhoft). There were also artists from Japan, London, and many important names from the international scene. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts granted us the rights to use Pink Marilyn and original Andy Warhol works. The Mario Schifano Foundation provided us with works by Mario Schifano. And contemporary artists such as Jeff Koons even sent us sculptures. Even Banksy had agreed to participate in the film, but unfortunately, because of the extremely tight schedule, we were unable to involve him.

— As is now evident, behind every painting appearing in every scene of the film there is a particular story. Are there stories that come from your youth?

— Yes. At seventeen I read the poem Le Dormeur du Val by Arthur Rimbaud. It was wonderful: a spring valley, flowers, butterflies, green grass, yellow sunlight, a young soldier who appears simply asleep. But in the end a terrible truth emerges: the soldier is dead. And I transferred this combination between the beauty of life and the macabre nature of death into the film. In fact, I literally transformed that poem into a cinematic scene. There is a scene in which the character Shakey is brought by criminals into a villa. At first he sees a beautiful young man lying beside the swimming pool, illuminated by sunlight. We deliberately chose the colors of his clothes and hair inspired by a nineteenth-century British painting I had seen at Tate Britain. At first it seems there is a flower on his chest — exactly as I had imagined the poem when I was young. But then it is revealed to be a stream of blood, and that the young man is actually dead, exactly like in Rimbaud’s poem.

— What role does the color palette play in the film?

— One of my ideas is that 100% of world cinema simply points the camera at something and films what already exists. There are of course color palettes used. But all colors are present: the ones already present in the set designs or costumes. In my film American Night I invented a completely crazy rule: to use only the three primary colors. I told the production designer, the costume designer, and the cinematographer that they could use only red, blue, and yellow. Other colors did not exist. I used colors as a narrative tool. And only when something happened to the characters within the story could purple, green, or other colors appear in the frame. When you make a film, in a certain sense you paint with reality. You use fragments of reality to create another reality: your film, your story.

My work is not to control everything, but to inspire. To allow the crew to surprise me, to create something even more beautiful than what I myself had imagined, while all moving in the same direction: toward the film we are building together. In short: I am not a destroyer. I am a builder. I like building.

— What is the greatest happiness for a director?

— Once we were doing a screening for the Academy Awards and someone in the audience asked me a question that, at the same time, was already an answer. They spoke about the polysemy and monosemy of artworks — and I understood that this person had grasped one of the deepest meanings of the film. Let me explain better. One of the central themes of the film is precisely the question: what is art? At the beginning of the twentieth century Marcel Duchamp completely revolutionized this concept. He took an ordinary urinal — a bathroom object — removed it from its context and placed it inside a museum. And in that moment, he transformed it into a work of art. The simple fact that an everyday object was placed inside a museum became enough to make it art.

For example, a pen in everyday life has only one meaning: it is used for writing. It is a monosemic object, with one function and one meaning. But if that same pen is placed inside a museum, it becomes polysemic, meaning it acquires infinite meanings. It may represent a writer’s desire to create new works, creativity, memory, history — anything. And this idea is strongly present throughout the film. When that viewer asked me a question that revealed the deepest meaning of the work, for me it felt as if the circle had finally closed. It was one of the greatest joys of my life.