Inside Faber

Romano Giuffrida and Bruno Bigoni

translation Enrico Massetti

Sardinia, Genoa and Milan, two directors have gone in search of Fabrizio's Friends .
The result is "Faber", a film made primarily with the heart.

Officially launched on 11 January 2000 (the first anniversary of the death of the singer) in Milan, in the lounge of the Province in via Corridoni, the movie "Faber", is dedicated to Fabrizio De André. To the two directors we have asked the meaning of their "product."

What are the paths along which it has developed the identity of Fabrizio De André? And these courses have unraveled in such scenarios? What the voices, emotions, feelings, over time, there has been accumulated up to become one with being and feeling of the individual?
These are questions that, for the creation of Faber, have guided our travel between Sardinia dell'Agnata, Genoa of the "alleyways" and Milan, a metropolis of close post-Fordist transition between old and new irreducible contradictions of poverty.
What interested us was to find out which "wire" had woven the tapestry of poetic Fabrizio, poetic so strong, unique and at the same time echo of ancient ideas and utopias that during more than three decades had contributed to form also our "feel" of the world.
The road we chose was to "not look" but to let the scenarios, places, voices, emotions, feelings about where we were questioned, found us in such a way that they would guide us along the "routes" of the poetry of Fabrizio De André.
We wanted, namely, that his poetry be materialized before us in its original form which had generated, we wanted to recognize colors and sounds of a place, in the words of his friends, and serenity in the faces of those who despair of the throng the eternal human comedy. We knew that this was the only way to find the words of Fabrizio in all its semantic richness.
And, in fact, they did.
From factor Philip to Don Vico to other friends of Tempio Pausania, Genoa and Milan; from the myrtle and places of impenetrable forests, from the alleys of mercenary love as well as from the "dressed up" streets of right-thinking exhibitionism, the "land of any "extra-metropolitan inhabited by Roma and "new miserables" that our civilization produces a profit, emerge, sometimes directly, sometimes almost filigree, the verses of the songs of Fabrizio.
Inevitably, this humus creative, it also appears that the great art of the poet of those scenarios and that humanity has sung, now moving the strings of pietas those hours of mockery and indignation.
Why did we "shoot" Faber? For a gift, for an act of love toward us who had an inextinguishable claim of poetry but also mankind's affection for the humble and the outcast, that is, to those who populated the horizons of our actions and that he, Fabrizio, was able to color of dignity and history.
Realizing Faber, we had confirmation - if ever proof were needed - that there was Fabrizio mannerism, there was the "cunning" of those who sang the utopia - ready to deny it the next day when the winds change - just to make a "place" in the hit-parade of consumerism and disposables.
Fabrizio for the word "commitment" was made with "gesture" and involved, involving, at the same time, those who heard him.
That's why we have written above "inevitably emerge" as "various" humanity sung by De André is so true, so real, because Fabrizio was there, with that humanity, with which it is facing, crashed, laughed and suffered, in any case it is always personally at stake not leaving it in as imaginative ruminations (so common in the miserimma often pedantic pomposity of the intellectual class), the ultimate meaning of his commitment.
Mission accomplished, then: Our journey has confirmed to us the certainty that after all we already had, but not limited to: our travel "around" Fabrizio, taught us some "rules", some people they have ways of being rigorous in honesty, in responsibility their foundation.
But this is a story of our own, personal, intimate little that may be of interest to our readers. On the other hand, to those who want to learn, they teach the same things all the work of Fabrizio De André.

rivista anarchica
anno 29 n.252
marzo 1999