Lee asks dead greats to bless film
US director invokes neo- Realist legends for WWII movie
(ANSA) - Fiesole, July 9 - Spike Lee on Monday invoked the ghosts of
Italian neo-Realist greats Vittorio De Sica, Cesare Zavattini and Roberto
Rossellini to 'bless' the film he is set to shoot in Italy next year.
Speaking at the Fiesole Film Fest, Lee said: "I call on the spirits of De
Sica, Zavattini and Rossellini to help me".
"I hope they're looking down kindly on me and the film".
Lee, who will receive a career achievement award here Tuesday night,
added: "I've never tried to imitate any director in my work. I'm drawn to those
who can tell good stories, because that's what the cinema is for me: telling
great stories". Previous recipients of the Fiesole Masters prize include Ken
Loach, Costa-Gavras, Aki Kaurismaki and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Lee is currently scouting locations for his film, which blends the
experiences of the Second World War Afro-American 'Buffalo Soldiers' with a
Nazi massacre of Italian civilians that took place in a Tuscan village.
Shooting is scheduled to begin next spring.
The film has the working title Miracle at Sant'Anna, the same as the 2002
book by bestselling African-American novelist James McBride on which it is
based.
The director, who has charted multiple aspects of the African-American
experience since his debut in the mid-1980s, is eager to tell the world about
the segregated black soldiers who took on a crack SS Panzer division in western
Italy.
"If we look at Hollywood productions we scarcely find a trace of the
exploits of our coloured soldiers in the Second World War," Lee said. The
Italian Resistance helped the Buffalo Soldiers break through the German lines
in the coastal area of Tuscany in 1944 - despite ferocious SS tactics
exemplified in the murder of the village's 560 men, women and children.
In McBride's book, toward the end of World War II, four Buffalo Soldiers
from the army's Negro 92nd Division find themselves separated from their unit
and behind enemy lines.
Risking their lives for a country in which they are treated with less
respect than the enemy they are fighting, they discover humanity in St. Anna di
Stazzema - in the peasants who shelter them and in the affection of an orphaned
child.
"Even in the face of unspeakable tragedy they - and we - learn to see the
small miracles of life," according to the book's publishers.
http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2007-07-09_109107657.html
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