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Stephano Odoardi learnt painting in Rome before he became a film-maker. A few short films later, when he began working on his first full-length feature film, A White Ballad, the painter in him made use of an abstract storyboard. The director who lives between Holland and Italy, has had a theatrical release of his film in both the countries and to a good response.

In India, he has already screened his film at film festivals held in Bangalore and Chennai and after Hyderabad, Mumbai is the next stop. “White is the colour of emptiness and A White Ballad is a poem of emptiness,” he tells us. The film takes us to the apartment of an elderly couple. The woman suffers from cancer and each action of the couple assumes enormous importance, given their situation of confronting death.

“All of us have to die and this film is about how a person who is confronted with death everyday deals with it. There is no answer to the questions posed by life, we have to accept and deal with the situations,” says Stephano.

“My film is a visual experience,” he says. There’s very little of the spoken word and those words too originate off-screen as against dialogues between the characters. “The voices do not interrupt the narrative,” he explains. The camera seldom moves too. The technique bears a striking similarity to that of Japanese film-maker Yasujiro Ozu’s work. Stephano considers Ozu as an inspiration for his mastery of technique and innovative narrative style.

Stefano’s short films have been featured in various international film festivals. He did his postgraduate diploma programme from The Amsterdam School Advanced Research in Theatre and Dance Studies. A White Ballad, filmed in 2005, featured in the official selection of the 36th Rotterdam Film Festival, followed by film festivals at Shanghai and San Francisco, among others.

The lead actors are a real couple and non-professional actors. “My cast is a mixture of professional and new actors. I like to work with untrained actors because their emotions and actions are for real. Shooting with untrained actors also means that I will have to make a few changes in the storyboard now and then so as to suit them,” he says.

Human relationships intrigue Stephano. “My next film is about love, but not essentially a love story. There are different layers to it and we are talking about different age groups.”

SANGEETHA DEVI DUNDOO

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