“In Canada, at the screening of one of our short films, a woman told us she completely forgot she was watching a person with a disability… That’s what we strive to achieve with every production: to tell the story of a person, with all their difficulties, but above all, their wants, dreams, and desires, which, at their core, are exactly the same as what I want, and what we all want: to be recognized. Our mission is to ensure that the viewer feels empathy and an emotion strong enough to identify with who and what we are portraying.”
This is the mission that Daniele Bonarini, a 44-year-old director and the creator of the first social film production company, Poti Pictures in Arezzo, pursues with a team of professionals and people with disabilities. He believes that “only through art, with its ability to evoke emotions regardless of the condition of the creator, can real inclusion be achieved.”
How did disability become part of your story?
“For about 30 years, I’ve been part of an association started by the Franciscan Third Order in Arezzo. Calling it ‘volunteering’ is a bit of an understatement… we are friends with people with intellectual disabilities whom we – simply – call ‘the guys’. Besides the weekly Saturday afternoon meetings, at a certain point, in the late 1970s, the need arose to take a real vacation together. We went with them, not for them, to a house on Mount Poti, near Arezzo, overlooking the Tiber Valley, a land walked by St. Francis in the Apennines. It was on one of those occasions that I met my future wife.”
A professional short film requires a year to prepare.
We try to grow everyones abilities.
An experience that started as a game?
“I bought a small video camera, and we started making little films, just for fun and without any pretensions. We put ourselves out there, creating parodies of Hollywood blockbusters. The production name: Poti Pictures. Filming went on throughout the year, taking the guys out of their families or institutions. We’d spend a Sunday together, filming in each other’s homes, in castles, with horses. I’ve always been very demanding, even for silly things! At the next Poti gathering, we’d screen the result of a year’s work in a way that was so natural, honest, and unpretentious that we could laugh about it together – something that’s not at all a given in our world, where people with disabilities are always labeled as such. Here, they felt part of something important.”
So, you deepened your film training, while Michele Grazzini focused on production. Now Poti Pictures is a social film production company, albeit a small one…
“A deep friendship: that was the beginning. The activity was so appreciated that we decided to continue, starting to make short films. The subjects and stories were, and still are, tailored to the actors. We invested time and resources, but the rewards started to come: initially participating in events like those promoted by Teatro Patologico or Capodarco, we then turned to purely cinematic festivals, without labels. Registering without any expectations, we’ve now received several awards, most recently a selection for the 2020 Nastri d’Argento for the short film Uonted!. We’ve traveled to Texas, Missouri, Canada… We were even invited to India, but we lacked the resources. In 2015, we structured the activity to make it a proper branch of the social cooperative Il Cenacolo (type B, indicating the employment of people with disabilities) where I was employed. We registered with Mibact (the Italian Ministry of Culture) to access funding, and we registered the trademark with EUIPO in Nice as the world’s first social film production company, creating five sub-classes that didn’t exist before.”
Experience and strong motivations have allowed for further developments…
“We wanted to be evaluated seriously, cinematically. This meant no special treatment for anyone: if Tiziano Barbini, one of our actors with a disability, dreams of going to Hollywood, and that’s my dream too (and the film we’re trying to make will be titled Ollivud), I know that to do so, I have to maximize the potential of myself and those around me – actors, screenwriters, crew, production, post-production… In a caring community environment, with the help of our psychologist Sara Borri, we’ve developed a method that has been studied and certified by the University of Siena. The costs and time required for a professional short film require at least a year of preparation at the Poti Academy, where we try to develop each person’s characteristics in a path that is not primarily intended to be therapy but becomes therapeutic nonetheless: it would be good for anyone, and we also bring it into schools. Beyond care and protection, in the fraternal relationship we have, we can afford not to indulge the ‘I’m handicapped’ attitude, which often becomes an alibi and prevents people from overcoming the limitations that those with disabilities often use as a shield. The actor is made strong and functional (we’ve even done ten hours of night shooting) with the support of professionals suited to each individual, such as a psychologist who is always present on set.”
And what’s at stake now?
“Paolo Cristini and Tiziano Barbini are now professional actors employed by the cooperative. But telling every person with an intellectual disability that they can become an actor isn’t realistic or honest: the film system as we know it would eat them alive. Working professionally provides immense motivation, and we are amazed by the progress the guys have made. We have to do it to the best of our ability because cinema is anything but non-profit, and the costs necessary for these results are not easily understood by those who consider only the journey together to be important. Our perspective, in which the person is at the center, represents the kind of cinema I myself want to make, and it also reflects the UN Convention when it asks society to measure itself against disability, and not the other way around. I must first change my own perspective. Every person has such dignity and beauty that they deserve to be portrayed in a film. If we’ve done our job well, everyone will be able to see themselves in it.”
