S IS FOR STANLEY

Alex Infascelli, the director of EFA-nominated documentary S IS FOR STANLEY, talks about his explorations of the lifes of Stanley Kubrick and his driver, and about documentary filmmaking as such.

Can you briefly describe what your documentary is about and how you got interested in the subject?
The film narrates the incredible story of Emilio D’Alessandro, Stanley Kubrick’s personal chauffeur and close collaborator for thirty years – legendary to anybody who has been close to the director but unknown to the public. Until now.

Was it clear from the beginning that you want to make a documentary rather than a fiction feature?
Yes it was.
I immediately imagined a narrative guided by Emilio’s own voice, with Emilio’s own photographs and Stanley’s handwritten notes that he carefully kept, along with the incredible array of memorabilia that go from Stanley’s favourite ballpoint pens that Emilio ordered in huge quantities to Jack Nicholson’s red velvet jacket from THE SHINING.
For Emilio these objects are solely sentimental mojos and in the years he has never investigated in any other value than that, either monetary or fan-driven.

How did you develop the concept and the style of the film?
I started from the time lapse of their friendship: 30 years. Two lifelines, slowly merging and ultimately colliding; two immigrants leaving their country and arriving in London from two different continents, two opposite social contexts, and cultural grounds, that eventually clicked into one perfectly working machine. Creating a touching friendship and a few masterpieces in the history of cinema. From the very beginning I had a clear vision of what the style should be: A dry, fact-driven narrative, a conversation between Stanley and Emilio, both narrators and protagonists somehow.

How detailed was the script before shooting?
The script was firstly an adaptation of Emilio’s autobiography and it was put together by choosing my personal favourite moments that I wanted Emilio to tell in his own voice, without the grid of a literary approach. When we had that down, we shot Emilio in his garage and that’s when all sorts of new stuff started coming out, personal and factual. One thing lead to another and soon we had hours and hours of material to study and sort through, sometimes travelling very far from the storyline dictated by the chronological order of events.

After that we travelled to London to capture Emilio in the places of his memories, a bit like travelling through time with him. I then locked myself into an editing room to ‘find’ my voice, along with Emilio’s and Stanley’s.

What was the biggest challenge in making your film?
The biggest challenge has been to keep the right distance from the subject: not too far and not too close. And sometimes feeling the terror when addressing something so close to and intimate in Stanley’s universe.

How would you describe the state of documentary cinema in Europe right now?
We have re-discovered the beautiful and noble art of documenting, witnessing. I think it is an organic of a new breed of filmmakers affirming themselves as an opposite voice to the saturated, plot-driven industry where simplicity and reality are not so hot anymore.

In recent years the borders between documentary and fiction have blurred. What do you think of this development and where do you see yourself in this development?
The blur between reality and fiction has occurred in our lives first. I think we have returned to storytelling mostly, and it doesn’t matter how we tell that story, it is really about choosing one’s personal point of view and following that all the way through. And the audiences all over Europe have proven that, above all, story is king.

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