HD Cinematography of "Angeli Dark "
by Paolo Guglielmotti

Some film projects are meant to be shot with HD cameras and "Angeli Dark" is certainly one of them. Its difficult sometimes for a director, and especially an aspiring one like myself, to put aside the opportunity to shoot with film and opt for HD. In this case the reasons are quite clear, but certainly worth telling about.

The film project "Angeli Dark" is a story commissioned by the Italian National Health Service ASL CE1, in collaboration with the "Societa Coooperative La Mansarda a.r.l" and is based on historical facts that changed in 1978, when children of mentally ill mothers, often fatherless and abandoned by their relations, where brought up within the same institutions in which their mothers were in care. The aim of this project is to show,through the influence of cinema, that mentally impaired people, are able, in their own way, to commit and meet obligations in a professional working environment, especially within the stressful world of film production.

My first concer was to find professionals that could carry the story forwards by working alongside non professional mentally disabled actors. A worry to start with, but magical when one realizes the depth and capabilities of some actors and how these capabilities are in fact enhanced by the presence of the mentally impaired supporting characters. My second concern, was to decide what medium to shoot on. I was very aware of the overall sadness and un-photogenic quality of the story and my first impulse was to shoot on film. I believed I should conceal the raw realism of the mentally impaired characters and also thought about an eventual paying audience, who, in my opinion should not be punished visually and/or morally. I soon realized that I would never catch the images and the spontaneity I was looking for if I had shot of ilm, and is so, I would have needed endless supply of film stock, which I obviously didn't have. In retrospect, it is the same raw realism that I was trying to conceal, that makes "Angeli Dark" sufficiently credible and dramatic, and HD has certainly contributed to all this.