03/03/2020 - BERLINALE 2020: We interviewed David Zamagni and Nadia Ranocchi, the directors of the highly original reinterpretation of the myth of Hercules Zeus Machine. The Invincible, presented in Forum

(© Berlinale)

Cineuropa put a few questions to the two directors of Zeus Machine. The Invincible [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: David Zamagni and Nadia Ran…
film profile]: David Zamagni and Nadia Ranocchi. Produced by Zapruder Films and screened within the Berlinale’s Forum line-up, the film takes the form of a surreal and highly original reinterpretation of the Twelve Labours of Hercules. Our conversation explored their particular style, the casting and writing process for the film and potential new projects in the pipeline for the duo.

Cineuropa: You’ve made a film about the Twelve Labours of Hercules: why explore this particular topic at this point in time? And, more importantly, why use this particular cinematic language?
David Zamagni and Nadia Ranocchi: The film’s main theme is this myth and, therefore, mythology. In order to tackle this topic and harness it within a structure which moves forward in stages, we chose Hercules, a strong and brave hero whom everyone’s heard of, often thanks to film. The energy Hercules exudes reminds us of the ferocious energy which drives modern history forwards, which in turn absorbs collective and individual vicissitudes in the constant presence of labour, drama and comedy. The structure of this film is cumulative and combinatory. You could also see it as a film with twelve different beginnings, which then, in many different ways, develop a common core; one shared story which explores the life of one single person: Hercules, who, in this instance, we’ve taken to represent the whole of humanity.

I’m curious to know more about the writing process...
We started by re-writing the Twelve Labours, adapting them to our modern-day reality and the world around us. The overall design was planned in the minutest of detail, but we also kept our options open within each event or episode and prepared another two or three alterative versions of each “labour”. We didn’t want to enclose the film’s structure in any kind of closed or harmonious shape; we were more interested in the centrifugal force generated by the variety of languages involved, and in constructing some sort of mechanism to multiply the film’s narratives.

How did you organise the subsequent work?
Once the project was written, we sometimes organised ourselves, and decided which labours we were going to work on, based on the availability of the actors and locations. For example, we shot the twelfth labour The Ascent to Olympus first, as a staged performance which we organised as part of the Santarcangelo Festival and shot in the presence of the audience of that event. Over the course of two years, we put all the episodes together and started to work on their sequencing, as well as the film’s pace and flow.

How did you choose your actors?
In truth, we’d describe them as performers rather than actors; for the most part, this was their first experience in front of the cameras. We watched them in their daily lives - their activities and their attitudes. When we told them about our plans to draw a parallel with Hercules, they straight away embraced this connection with all the good humour, seriousness and determination that was necessary to see it through.

The film is full of absurd irony, with many surprising and original staging choices. Are there any particular filmmakers who inspired your style?
The way we write, film and edit our films has a lot to do with our research into film language, with theories on time, scenic space and film duration, which we’re constantly updating, and with the idea of film as a sculpture of time which we carry around with us as a result of our earlier stereoscopic productions. There are filmmakers and artists with whom we might have themes or practices in common, but that’s a whole other story which it would take far too long to go into at this point.

Do you already have new projects in the pipeline?
In January 2020, we started work on a new film project consisting of three different staged performances, and these will eventually flow into our next movie. It’s a project which explores the origins and the visible and invisible qualities of language, as well as the importance of roles and of learning to communicate, a fundamental skill for all relationships. The first staged performance, intitled Anubi Is Not a Dog, was held during the Arte Fiera art fair in Bologna, where we worked with three dog dancing trainers and their dogs, developing choreography and steps to be danced as a couple.

(Translated from Italian)