By Tommaso Villani
Filippo Cavalca, aka Feel (Parma 1983) is an author, director and film producer. He founded Feel For Films NY in 2016, after fifteen years spent between Rome and New York and after being awarded ‘Best Independent Director’ at the prestigious New York Film Awards in 2020 (with ‘Essere Leonardo Da Vinci’). When he got back to Parma, Cavalca started working on a docu-drama named ‘Hollywood is a whole other thing’, whose trailer, released on February 18th, is now available on the web site feelforfilms.net/en/michele and on Youtube.
“I wanted to create a story” Filippo Cavalca tells us, and continues “a story that combined narrative with documentary to tell the life of a real, not fictional, character called Michele. A fifty-year-old man, born and raised in Parma. Michele looks himself in the mirror and retraces the inexorable bullshit made in all these years. He analyzes in a disenchanted and non-victimized way the illusions and disillusions of life, the broken youthful dreams, highlighting his absolute inability to adhere to the contemporary world”. Filippo adds: “Hollywood is a whole other thing” is inspired by the currents of the Nouvelle Vague and Cinéma Vérité. In this sense, despite having a detailed script, I decided to adapt many dialogic parts during the very shoot, to the point that they were rewritten on the set. This to give as much voice as possible to the characters, who have been chosen to interpret themselves.
Furthermore, dealing with a tragi-comic topic, the challenge of the movie was to understand which photographic language to use. I these regards, we were inspired by David Lynch and Todd Phillips”.
Filippo also talks about the team he chose for his production: “My crew is mostly made up of people from Parma. The cast consists of about fifty bizarre, eclectic, extremely interesting characters. Speaking of this, I would like to start a film project based in Parma to foster the creation of film products on regular basis. I would create an Italian production house – Feel For Films Italia – involving local technical personnel and artists. Last but not least, I want to thank the Municipality of Parma for the sponsorship and support during the shooting”.
Feel For Films – Italia has been working for over a year on a solidarity project, ‘Pandas: il film’, to talk about a pediatric autoimmune syndrome, still not recognized, and to raise awareness among Italian public opinion to support this cause.
