Thursday 7 April 2011

Dante Ferretti


Last Saturday I had the pleasure of moderating a BAFTA Masterclass with legendary production designer Dante Ferretti. We only had an hour-and-a-half to get through a career spanning forty odd years, but I could have quite easily chatted for another hour or two. I certainly didn't get round to all my questions, nor all the planned clips.

"Such is the depth — and weight — of production designer Dante Ferretti’s CV, a full day at BAFTA wouldn’t have been long enough," wrote ScreenDaily. "Instead the packed house for his afternoon masterclass received tantalising extracts from a life spent setting the stages, from his days as an assistant to Pier Paolo Pasolini to six films with Fellini and on to an enduring collaboration with Martin Scorsese and beyond (Baron Munchausen, Interview With The Vampire, the Name Of The Rose — any one of these films would be the crowning glory of another art director’s career). Appearing with his wife and frequent collaborator, the set decorator Francesca Lo Sciavo - they met on the set of La Pelle in 1981 — Ferretti barely scratched the surface of 42-odd years as a production designer (on Fellini’s Medea in 1969, although he had been an assistant for five years by then, starting on Pasolini’s The Gospel According To St Matthew)."

4 comments:

Matt Jones said...

Oh-how I miss BAFTA events! I would've loved to see this-perhaps it'll pop up online at some point, although these lectures always seem to be cut short on BAFTA's site. Isn't Ken Adam appearing soon also?

Gerard said...

Oh, that this had have been on during my impending visit.

Mark Salisbury said...

@ Matt J

As far as I'm aware both the Dante Ferretti and the Ken Adam events will be online soon. There was talk they'd be rolled into one video, although I'm not 100% certain.

@ Gerard

There's always stuff going on at BAFTA.

Matt Jones said...

Although I miss out on BAFTA these days we do get a steady stream of events at Pixar; just last week Joe Wright came through with HANNA and Jon Favreau dropped in to talk about his career. I always thought of BAFTA screenings and Q&As as a mini film school and Pixar is the same. The whole Bay Area in fact has a rich film culture/society. I'll look out for the interviews online-thanks for the info.