Clarissa Cappellani

Movies

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams
Cinematography
In the early 20th century, impoverished teenage Italian cobbler Salvatore Ferragamo sailed from Naples to America to seek a better life. He settled in Southern California, and became Hollywood's go-to shoemaker during the silent era. In 1927, he returned to Italy and founded in Florence his namesake luxury brand. This feature-length documentary recounts his adventures.
Cùntami
Cinematography
A road movie around Sicily in a red van loaded with "pupi", in search of new oral narrators to tell the other Sicily, the one that awakens through the universal force of popular stories.
Il Palazzo
Cinematography
In the heart of Rome, face to Saint Peter’s, stands a Palace. The owner, like a renaissance patron, has once been offering shelter to a bizarre group of friends, embracing their joyfully ambitious causes. The perfect hideout from where to pursue the most aleatory artistic projects, far from the hassles of life. Now in their 50s’, they are suddenly reunited by the premature death of their charismatic leader, Mauro. He left something tangible to the group of friends: hours of footage where he directed them in the most diverse roles, a supposed masterpiece that was never finished, and now a a mirror reflecting images from the past. The mourning, in the shudder of a moment, shakes the numbed spirits, leading them into a radical confrontation with their future.
Last Words
Director of Photography
The year is 2085 and no human babies have been born in over a decade. A group of disparate survivors respond to a call to meet in Athens, where the film’s narrator Jo, a boy of African descent, aims to make the world’s last film.
The Macaluso Sisters
Camera Operator
Maria, Pinuccia, Lia, Katia and Antonella are five sisters who live in an apartment in Palermo. They make a living by renting doves for ceremonies. On a normal day at the beach, tragedy strucks.
Normal
Director of Photography
Observes the mechanisms of construction and assimilation of gender in contemporary Italian society, through a kaleidoscopic mosaic of scenes of daily life: what are the choreographies of bodies, collective rituals, behaviors for each of the genres that condition our identities? Through paintings with a strong visual impact, Normal tells the story of normality making it alien to us, exploring the daily and collective staging of the male and female universe in which we all participate.
My True Brilliant Friend
Director of Photography
A unique portrayal of two young amateur actresses embarking on a journey that will forever change their lives as they star in the most eagerly anticipated new show of 2018, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend.
My True Brilliant Friend
Writer
A unique portrayal of two young amateur actresses embarking on a journey that will forever change their lives as they star in the most eagerly anticipated new show of 2018, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend.
My True Brilliant Friend
Director
A unique portrayal of two young amateur actresses embarking on a journey that will forever change their lives as they star in the most eagerly anticipated new show of 2018, Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend.
Frontiera
Director of Photography
On a ferry travelling towards Lampedusa, we find a teenager on his first day of work as a gravedigger and a boy on his first mission as a diver. They do not know each other, but when they will set foot on the island, both their lives will change forever: one has to retrieve the bodies of drowned shipwreck victims, the other one has to bury them. A sort of dance between life and death, innocence and its loss.
Hidden Identity
Director of Photography
A cold-lighted Palermo of the 90's. A single day. Unnamed characters slide towards the fulfillment of their destiny. A story of causes and effects, in which crimes affect not only the victims, but the perpetrators too. And from which no one, in a way or another, will stay unscathed.
Frank Zappa - Summer '82: When Zappa Came to Sicily
Director of Photography
In the feature documentary, Summer 82 - When Zappa Came to Sicily, filmmaker and Zappa fan Salvo Cuccia tells the behind-the-scenes story of Frank Zappa's star-crossed concert in Palermo, Sicily, the wrap-up to a European tour that ended in public disturbances and police intervention. Cuccia had a ticket to the concert but never made it. Thirty years later, collaborating with Zappa's family, he re-creates the events through a combination of rare concert and backstage footage; photographs; anecdotes from family, band members, and concertgoers; and insights from Zappa biographer and friend Massimo Bassoli. The story is also a personal one, as Cuccia interweaves the story of Zappa's trip to Sicily with his own memories from that summer.
Franca, la prima
Director of Photography
Directed by Sabina Guzzanti
Draquila: Italy Trembles
Director of Photography
A documentary in opposition to the government of Silvio Berlusconi.
Housing
Director of Photography
In the southern Italian city of Bari, desperate times call for desperate—and downright ridiculous—measures. After waiting for years to be assigned social housing, people become prisoners in their homes for fear of losing the roof over their heads.