Le nuove terre della pubblicità

Gabriella Ambrosio – Mimmo Calopresti, director, author, actor of films that entertain, excite, change inside. In your opinion, what is creativity, what does a creative leap consist of? When and how is something new born, capable of building and continuing to work over time within the spectator?
And again: does creativity arise from chaos or does it arise from discipline? Is it something naive or is it the result of experience?
I would say to start with these questions, and slowly come to touch on a fundamental theme for all of us who work in the fields of communication: that of social responsibility in the production of new values.

Mimmo Calopresti – It is very difficult to construct discussions around something so impalpable, so unscientific, so unrecognizable as creativity.
But if I think about cinema for example, I realize that, as a spectator, the directors and the films I love most are the unfinished directors and films, that is, those that leave room for something that has yet to happen, that goes beyond their capacity. control.
As Spielberg said when he came to Italy to the David di Donatello: ” You in Italy are happy because you are carrying forward personal cinema “. There is this big difference between European and American cinema. That in American cinema there is B-series cinema, the so-called genre cinema, and great authors, who are very few and very technical. Spielberg himself is a great director but very technical. However, someone who makes cinema in Europe is an author.  Within auteur cinema there are very great imperfections, but its great charm is precisely this, that it leaves room for something that is not controlled. They are films with many imperfections in language and timing, but which leave a very strong emotional space.

Ambrosio – Something that also allows the person receiving the message their space for creativity. That is, the spectator continues to create meaning, starting from the point at which the author arrived.

Calopresti – Yes. The difference between European and American cinema is precisely this, that the former, by controlling the spectator less, gives him more possibilities to interact with what is happening on the screen. In my opinion, the ideal film is a film in which the spectator and the film have a relationship, in the sense that the spectator understands what the characters in the film are doing or thinking, but also has an intimate conversation with himself: what do I think of this, what do I want from this, what emotions can it provoke in me… In my opinion this is a democratic way of making cinema, in which the spectator is deeply involved. American cinema has a strong idea, which is to impose the message on you. This type of expression fundamentally leaves me cold: it is too strong, too above me, too controlled outside of me. Then there are authors who are very good at doing it, which I don’t feel like questioning, however, as a spectator, every time I feel something being imposed on me it annoys me. If you are a critical spectator you do not accept being a passive spectator, neither when you go to the cinema, nor when you watch television, nor when you look at advertising posters in the street.

Ambrosio – So you don’t accept receiving a message passively, for you creativity is something that, after being expressed by the author, continues to circulate and produce thought.

Calopresti – Exactly. The greatness of cinema and other arts is made, I believe, within the individual. Even though I think that the collective relationship with the spectators is important, I never forget that there are no groups but people, that is,  Giovanni, Francesco, Anna… those persons there, who have every right to exist in the relationship with what I propose to them.
Television is used to talking about audience share, idealizing a certain type of audience or another. And in film distribution companies, absolutely useless trend lines are studied. There are films that have great success, then the film companies think that it is enough to repeat the same type of film to have the same success and instead this almost never happens. Luckily there is always a space for creativity, and the thing that makes us go towards creativity is the unknown, the mystery, what we don’t know yet. In my opinion, this is the challenge to accept in creative work.
Those who work with art, today more than ever, and I also mean those who advertise, that is, those who work in a creative sector, work on insecurities. We can do all the analyses and research we want, but we always work on insecurities

Student 1– In your opinion, how much is self-confidence a fundamental element in the creative process?

Calopresti – This is another difficult question, and I can only speak from experience. Today in Italy making a film is like setting up a small industry for a year, a very strong economic structure, with market, responsibility, employment problems, a difficult operation… in short, to start it you must certainly have faith in yourself . I imagine the same thing can be said for investments in advertising.

Ambrosio – Yes as far as the company is concerned, it undoubtedly requires a lot of trust on its part when you bet on a new idea. But as far as the creative is concerned, rather than self-confidence, don’t you think we can talk about the ability to come into contact at a certain point with one’s deepest self? What then leads you to bring out things that are inside you that you didn’t even know you had? Could this be the meaning of self-confidence, that of letting oneself go to one’s imagination at a certain point without exercising control, censorship or modesty?

Calopresti – Yes, I think that psychoanalysis from this point of view is a possible answer to what you are looking for. I say a word that is often used in analysis: the “relationship with reality”. That is, what you see, what passes through your sensitivity. Why can you only do this job if you are presumptuous? Because you demand, you must demand, that everything passes through you. This is your intention, this is your ability.

Ambrosio – When you say that reality passes through you, that it is filtered by you, you must always remember that it must then be communicable, otherwise you won’t go anywhere. For example, at a certain point we talked about artists who make “landscapes”…

Calopresti – It’s true, I like Van Gogh’s landscapes which are certainly not “little landscapes”… Cinema narrates landscapes, everything one sees around oneself, but it also gives the possibility of narrating another landscape, which is the internal landscape, what is inside people.

Student 2 – I would also like to express my opinion regarding the belief that creativity is linked to self-confidence. I would like to open a discussion on insecurity as a different vision of the world.

Calopresti – I doubt that this is the key. It can be one of the keys, it can be yours, it can be the one that allows you to express yourself, but it cannot be valid for everyone, it cannot become everyone’s theory.
Those who do the work you do here in this research course must have the courage to know that it will not be easy to find an answer. Whoever does the research work must have the courage to know, the courage to try, and the courage to have a result on which to be judged. What is before the result will be my suffering, it will be my insomnia… in short, something that is mine alone.

Ambrosio – Let’s return to the discussion of what creativity and the production of new meaning mean. And on the responsibility that this entails, because every new meaning conveys new values.

Calopresti –

As you said, at the end of this discussion on creativity there is this important thing: that sometimes you have to deal with morality, you have to deal with the sense of responsibility, and you have to do it because otherwise you create disasters , because people’s lives are important and cannot be manipulated. The more responsible you are, the less you have the courage to dare. You must have respect for yourself first and then for others.
You have to start first with deep self-respect: this is the most important thing I can say I have learned from doing this job.