Interview with Filmmaker Davide Carlini (TRATAK 1 – ANTARS)

TRATAK 1 – ANTARS played to rave reviews at the October 2019 TV Web Series festival in Toronto.

Matthew Toffolo: What motivated you to make this film?

Davide Carlini: During the course of directing at a private school in my splendid Marche region, the Officine Mattolì Association in Tolentino, was proposed to us and offered as part of the course to make one of our short films.

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this short?

I started to define a subject in October 2015 and then developed in the following months.

Instead, the production was only 4-5 intense days (stolen between weekends and bridges of the Easter holidays9 of April 2016.

Post-production is instead a labor that has not yet been completed. It began in June 2016 and partially ended in October 2016 with a privately projected version for the course of the school. After October 2016 I decided to take it further and divide the project into a mini series divided into 3 episodes, or rather call it phases of change of state of consciousness. So in May 2018 I completed Antars Tratak 1 and in September 2018 Reveil Tratak 2. Currently the last Tratak3 episode is still in post-production stage and I hope to be able to propose it from 2020.

3. How would you describe your short film in two words!?

Solicitation of doubts and questions about ourselves and others (which we are always ourselves, even if we do not recognize it in this time-space that is granted to us.)

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

The production time is limited to 4/5 days as there was no budget and the possibility of having the complete availability of help crews and cast of actors who were also trainees of the Officine Mattoli school.

The time available to prepare the actors’ parts was also very limited as they were also engaged in other work and commitments at the same time.
Then from the beginning of post-production I became aware of a real general ostracism of the Italian and regional cinema system that does not allow effective collaboration if there is not behind an economic and above all political support and the use of this media for the narration of the single dominant thought.

Unfortunately, this is one of the reasons why even Italian cinema has been practically embalmed and moldy since the 1970s. Power logic and control of cultural narration that do not favor any real and effective independence of the authors, actors and artists who as they go they become instruments of mass manipulation.

5. What were your initial reactions when watching the audience talking about your film in the feedback video?

I was very pleased to see him and listen to the criticisms and the questions and doubts raised and the considerations of all the public that I appreciated for the qualification and the real sincerity.

Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Video:

6. How did you come up with the idea for this short film?

At that time I was in a phase of experience in yoga practices, including the intense practice of Tratak (fixing a candle without closing my eyes, and accompanying this with particular breathing sequences) and studies of philosophies in different Western traditions and Eastern .
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I was also fascinated and increasingly intrigued by esotericism and by Western mysticism that apparently seems less rich than the oriental one but in reality if you start looking for it you will find universes that you don’t even imagine. Unfortunately in the European Enlightenment period and first the witch hunt and the Catholic repressions against heretics (which today we would call conspiracy theorists, no?..) Gnostics and other researchers not aligned with the Zeitgeist have veiled and muddied millennia of history of the western world.

The idea of ​​this series of short films was born to unconventionally tell all this. The title can be misleading because it is not a tutorial or guide to esoteric practices, but instead it was within a set of practices, the activation focus of a whole personal experience of self-awareness and a general change of perspectives and world view, and with the related traumas and cognitive dissonances in realizing the previous state of dogmatic certainty and running programs that are behind the reality that manifests itself.

7. What film have you seen the most in your life?

Like everyone here of the middle-bourgeoisie flattened under the oligarchic neoliberalism of this era, I am a child of television culture and the beginning of the multimedia era. I met the cinema with the comedies of the late 70s and early 80s, today it would be called the “trash” genre, yet it should not be so derided .. I was then fascinated by American productions of films like Blues Brothers of Landis, the insane comedies of Mel Brooks ..

In the 90s I followed a local cinema club in my city (which has not existed for 20 years now) and projected a film selected from those released during the year 1 day a week. The true love of cinema gave me Scorsese’s Raging Bull, it was love at first sight and you rekindled it for weeks and even now I see it again and again and find it always new and full of suggestions.

Surely among the films seen several times there is Doctor Strangelove by Kubrick, and Matrix saga by Wachowski (s) ..

Then the first films of Tarantino, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. David Lynch also with Dune, Eraserhead and Blue Velvet.

I have a love for two films by French director Coline Serreau, the Crisis! and La Belle Verte, and always on this mood I find many affinities with the Italian cinema of the 60s / 70s when it was still much more genuine and bold even in narrating different critical visions, for example films like “Io, io, io. and the others “by Alessandro Blasetti, or “L’ingorgo” by Luigi Comencini, or almost all films by the fantastic Luciano Salce (director of Fantozzi, Il Federale, Coup d’état, and others ..).

8. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway, what are you feelings of the submission platform from a filmmaker’s perspective?

There are many possibilities and a good selection of both festivals and works. I find it a great channel to help new filmmakers and emerging authors.

9. What song have you listened to the most times in your life?

Goodbye Porkpie Hat by Charles Mingus

10. What is next for you? A new film?

I’m busy solving various personal and professional issues and the time to write or edit my stuff and define new and old projects is very little. There are in some ideas on a series of short documentaries between philosophy and metapolitics and social psychology, then I am always working at the conclusion of the Tratak project the third episode of this filmic experiment. Thank you for your interest, and I always wish you good doubts! Thanks