Breakfast with Bavure [Dripping]
Interview with Donato Sansone, director of Bavure [Dripping]
Is Bavure primarily a film or an example of surrealist automatic writing?
Bavure is a bit of an “instinctive” short film that derives almost automatically from the end point of things I’d already dealt with in other works. There isn’t a real story, well actually there is one, but it’s simply banal because the story here is an excuse to experiment with a technique for visual narration that exploits the physicality of pictures.
What is your connection to the theme of Creation?
In Bavure, the theme of creation is dealt with very succinctly and simply. It almost seems like a game tied to a divine creator who plays at transforming human destiny over the centuries until it cross-breeds with other alien races. It’s playful amusement by a presumed divinity.
Where do you situate the artist? Are they a decision makers and strong-willed or do they simply use their art to transpose a creation that exists independently?
Here the artist appears as the divine hand that creates everything because it’s its mind that plays with the possibility of creation. As I said earlier, it’s a divine game that the artist tackles with his imagination of the universe.
Have you ever experienced creator’s block?
I don’t believe in inspiration so I’ve never had problems with that. I do believe that the brain has a fantastic inclination to play with the imagination, so I believe in an intellectual premise of creativity that’s determined by thought and not in a divine or transcendental “inspiration”.
Do you paint on canvas to prepare for your films?
Bavure is a work that was almost entirely digitally created with some external use of real paint. It’s a technically very complex job where I combined paint on canvas with digital compositing effects. So I really did have to paint the scenes and drip paint on the canvas.
Why did you want to “leave” earthly space?
I wanted to leave earthly space out of curiosity and a desire to play. Everything I do is a game for me, life is playing at living, the imagination is playing at creating realities that we don’t see or that we postulate. For me, going out in space means travelling in the imagination, which to me is the only truly unbounded space.
