This week ÉCU is spotlighting Isabella Ferrari, an Italian actress and Jury member of the International Jury Prize “Luigi De Laurentiis” at the 69 edition of the Venice Film Festival, the oldest film festivals in the world. Isabella is also one of the most beloved actresses of “auteur Italian independent cinema”, highly esteemed by film buffs.
Isabella Ferrari was born in Ponte dell’Oglio, near to Piacenza, on March 31st, 1964. Over the years she has worked in Italy and abroad, with many Italian independent directors, such as Dino Risi and Jacques Doillon, Gillo Pontecorvo and Marco Tullio Giordana. In 1990, she was nominated for the “Silver Ribbon” for her portrayal in “Willy Gentlemen, I Come From Afar” by Francesco Nuti.
She has been on Italian film screens from an early age. Her cinematographic life is characterized by two different professional outcomes: an early girl disoriented and a bit ‘naive, a prototype of many teenagers who loved her unforgettable character of Selvaggia in the cult film “Taste of the Sea” (“Sapore di Mare”) in 1981 and then the dark lady, fascinating interpreter of roles mature and tormented, bearer of ideologies and moods that represented the kind of independent films made by Italian directors that stand out for their total independence.
Isabella Ferrari wants to demonstrate that the criticism “all Italian cinema is to throw away” is not real and her participation in the Jury of 69 edition of the Venice Film Festival proves her commitment. “The cinema always gives you the option of lying and the difficult thing is to be true in all fiction.”
She is an actress of great experience, chameleonic and versatile. Isabella Ferrari is representing Italian independent cinema, bringing forward her ideas both through her performances and in real life. She has the popular culture of instinctive women who was born more than once and she has always chosen different characters that represent different women with the ability to be autonomous and to show how criticism of the Italian cinema is not justified, but is just a mere instrument to avoid the possibility to finance it properly.
“I am going to say yes to a director only when I am useful for him and for his film. In recent years, I have succeed in that. That is the reason why I feel free. I have a deep desire to be in films, and while I am reading a film script, I hold the character very close to me, with so much effort, as if he was a ghost”
Daniela De Pace
