Film People is an ongoing project where I try to find out – through their choice of favourite movie – a little piece of someone’s personal story. I believe that we all hold close to ourselves a movie that has marked our memories, which in some way defines us. In this way, I believe that if a portrait can tell a lot about us, then a film we feel connected to can reveal even more.
This project, therefore, aims to enable people to tell their story through their choice of significant movie, thus revealing a piece of their soul within that process: as the “book people” in Fahrenheit 451 preserved the memory of the books, similarly my series wants to link every person to the film of their life, as ‘Humans of Cinema’.
#1 Marcel, Goodbye Lenin! (2003)
“Being a German born in 1988, a story like this touches me a lot. A beautiful story that helps to comprehend Germany today and explains a bit the feeling of the German people. I live far from Germany for a lot of years and when I speak about German cinema with people, this is a movie that everybody knows, so for me, it’s something familiar, with which I can identify myself”
#2 Gaetano, Bicycle Thieves (1948)
“After the Second World War, this is one of the first movies that they let us watch in the parish of our town, Lecce nei Marsi, in Abruzzo. It’s a memory that brings me back to childhood because watching this movie we discovered what cinema was”
#3 Marta, American Psycho (2000)
“I like the consideration about the role of the man and the woman and mostly the change of the male role around the ’80s; I dislike it, even though people think it’s a positive representation. It’s an interesting movie, every time I see it I can always find new details and I also like the book a lot”
#4 Valeria, Moulin Rouge! (2001)
“How beautiful was Paris at that time! It was the first movie that really touched me, it’s not only a romance but it’s also a story that leaves something inside you, I know the soundtrack by heart, ‘El Tango de Roxanne’ is my favorite scene. The first time I saw it I was at a friend’s house, me and my friend were around 12 and we chose a movie from her father’s collection. We chose this one because from the cover was clear that it was a romance, but maybe we were too young for this movie, so we felt a bit transgressive; at the end, we were crying”
#5 Mattia, Pulp Fiction (1994)
“Among all the movies that I like, this is the one that made me understand that cinema can be not only something you can appreciate but it’s something to love. Three years ago I came to Rome to become a film director and if I hadn’t seen Pulp Fiction maybe I would never have got out from Brianza”
#6 Martina, Annie Hall (1977)
“The first time I saw it I was at home, on my couch, and while I was laughing I asked myself how could this movie know me so well: Alvy represents my male side and Annie, somehow, my female side. It was the first Woody Allen movie that I saw. Since then, he became my favorite director”
#7 Marta, A Clockwork Orange (1971)
“I wanted to push the limits and also choose ‘Jules et Jim’ and ‘The State of Things,’ but I chose this one because when I was 18 it was crucial in that summer where I chose not to go to Villa Mirafiori to study Philosophy but to go to La Sapienza to study History of Cinema. These three movies, in particular, ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ were the triple jump that led me to La Sapienza, where I lived the happiest years of my life.”
#8 Renato, The Karate Kid (1984)
“I like the message: there is this humble guy, who is taken for a ride by everyone, that can succeed. He taught me that nothing is impossible in life. When I was a child I could choose to see a movie every week, at 8 pm, and I always chose this. I used to watch it with my bigger brother and my parents”
#9 Federica, Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
“This movie gave the name to my alter ego, Sally Van Tassel: Sally is the doll in this movie, Van Tassel is Katrina in ‘Sleepy Hollow,’ even if I am more Sally than Katrina. The first time I saw it I was at home and I thought that Sally was one of the most extraordinary, deep and at the same time light female characters I’ve ever seen, and that her incapability of expressing herself was me; for this reason, now Sally, through me, expresses herself on the stage”
#10 Giuseppe, 8 ½ (1963)
“It’s the first movie that gave me such strong openings on worlds parallel to the rationality. The protagonist personifies the figure of the director who would die for his psychosis. I am a director and I choose it also for that. The first time I saw it I was around 16 and I had decided to dismantle an attic that my parents used as a storage room, to create my little shelter. After clearing all the stuff, the first night, this was the first movie that I watched there”
#11 Gianmaria, Her (2013)
“It’s the movie that made me understand how it’s possible to communicate with images, colors, cinematography, soundtrack. On the other hand, I found emotional and sentimental affinities with the protagonist: in some situations that he lives, with some differences, I’ve seen myself, on some reflections, how the emotions resound in us, the relationship with others. These are all themes that I bring to my heart and I often come back to this movie”
#12 Sara, City Of Angels (1998)
“Free will is an important topic for me. How free are we to choose, really, even when we believe we have freedom of choice? How much was already written and how much can we choose? Just that, these are the themes that made me choose this movie: I’ve been always interested in reincarnation, about angels, so it’s not difficult to me to imagine an angel that falls and becomes human or an angel who cannot choose”
#13 Giovanna, Memento (2000)
“It’s the movie that made me understand the relevance of the instant, but connected to the memory, I mean: how important is the perception of the instant that we live in but at the same time referred also to what we remember. ‘Carpe diem’ is my motto, but it’s actually dilated and connected to what you have been. The first time I saw it, I empathized with the protagonist, I forgot to follow the plot to focus on him, on his energies, and for me, it’s rare because I’ve studied screenwriting at the Academy of Bari and usually I’m focused on the plot of the movies. ‘Perspective’ is the keyword, because I began to analyze it from a new point of view”
#14 Luca, Magnolia (1999)
“It’s the movie that made me fall in love with cinema. I saw it when I was around 13, in the open-air cinema of my city, Latina, and there were so many things in the film, the exuberance of the style and the direction, the use of music, the extraordinary performances: that impressed me a lot and since then it’s my favorite movie”
#15 Enrico, The Long Goodbye (1973)
“It’s not easy to choose the film of a lifetime, it depends on which phase of life. Among the films that I love I’ve chosen this one that I saw when I was very young, for a very personal reason: I was the first in the world to write a monography about Robert Altman and I also had the chance to meet him”
#16 Serena, Closer (2004)
“This movie represents my sentimental education: someone has Flaubert, someone Closer. In this film, you can find all you need to know about relationships, either good or bad way. After seeing the movie I read the play written by Marber. One of my dreams is to attend the play in a theatre”
#17 Mathilde, Bagdad Cafe (1987)
“I love the encounter between these two women, this German woman who doesn’t speak English and this African American woman, it’s an incredible encounter. This movie changed my vision of the world, I mean, when I saw it I was very young and I immediately understood that, even if a person comes from another country, he has another color or speaks another language, it’s possible to understand each other and share something. It was my mother who showed me this movie and I don’t know if she did it to teach me something, to show me the image of a strong woman, maybe yes. Since then I have greatly admired strong and independent women and I hope to have become one of them”
#18 Matteo, Salo, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom (1975)
“I was particularly struck by how it expresses the concept of beauty: this film has a very refined aesthetic, beautiful sets, as well as costumes, and I like how Pasolini tells, through beauty, something extremely rotten, like the nature of human being that always wants to prevail over others. There’s a thirst for power and prevarication in everyone, even in everyday life. I find it a unique film, I had never seen anything that went that far: it changed me, it forced me to do some considerations that haunted me for many days”
#19 Patrick, Letter From An Unknown Woman (1948)
“In life, you have to decide whether to make people remember things or not… And that’s true, it really happens. It’s a devastating sentimental story, with beautiful music. I really like the first line, when he says that he’s not afraid to die but he bothers to wake up early in the morning, so he wants to have this duel”
#20 Letizia, Elizabethtown (2005)
“I love road movies, I have written my thesis about it, then I like the script, the idea that traveling you can meet people with something in common with you, the idea of the unexpected meeting. I saw it for the first time by chance, then I’ve rewatched it many times and now I need to watch it every year”
#21 Maurizio, The Deer Hunter (1978)
“I’ve been hunting for 40 years and more. For me it’s a very exciting movie, Robert De Niro and the other actors are awesome. There is that scene when one of the protagonists goes hunting, he always forgets something and he asks to borrow the boots. I love it mostly because it reminds me when I go hunting with my group of friends”
#22 Fabrizio, Cinema Paradiso (1988)
“I saw this movie in my senior year of high school when I still hadn’t decided whether to leave for college or stay, it would have been a sacrifice for my parents and, on the other hand, I wasn’t sure I really wanted it. This movie was one of the main reasons that made me decide to leave for university. Later, every time I’ve seen this movie, it gave me particular significance regarding life. And then it’s a wonderful film for several reasons, still now when I see an empty square I imagine that someone arrives and tells ‘The square is mine, the square is mine!’”
#23 Chiara, The Thin Red Line (1998)
“When I’ve seen this movie I was at home and, even if it’s very long, I can’t stop watching: it gave me a sensation of connection not only with cinema, so with the beauty of what I was seeing, but with the idea of ‘Oh my God, I’m alive, I’m in this world, I have to do something!’”
#24 Maurizio, Raging Bull (1980)
“It’s one of the few movies that I can rewatch and I always like. I watched it for the first time alone, at night, and sometimes I watch it in the same way. When I don’t know what to watch and I want to see a movie that I like, I always pick this one or a couple of other movies”
#25 Gianluca, The 400 Blows (1959)
“This film is very close to my idea of education. Education is something that must be pulled out of adolescents, it must not be imposed, otherwise, it becomes instruction, which, in my opinion, is different. We often underestimate the teenagers, instinctively they already know what their path is, also because often when you get lost it’s the path that finds you. In my opinion, the film demonstrates that, especially in that wonderful ending. This film also makes me think of a person to whom I am still attached: although our love story is over, we continue to travel together on the wave of art (I am a painter). When our story began I was already grown up, I was 12 years older than her, who was nineteen: at that time she had the possibility to go to Cambridge but she chose to stay with me and then we watched this film: this choice still binds us and our relationship continues, in a different way, thanks to that”
#26 Adriana, The Way We Were (1973)
“I always think about that scene when Redford sat in a bar and Barbra Streisand, seeing him, passes her hand between his hair: all women would do the same thing to him! The first time I saw it I was in a theater that doesn’t exist anymore, Cinema Clodio. I was with a friend and I cried a river, I cry every time I watch this movie: once, after watching it, I went to a pharmacy to buy a thing with two very red eyes, so the pharmacist asked me what was happened to me and I replied: Nothing, I’ve just seen ‘The Way We Were’”
#27 Valerio, The Strawberry Statement (1970)
“At the time I saw it, I was passionate about Judaism and this film represents it in a very tough way, it tells many true and non-trivial things, without ever being didactic. When I saw it for the first time I liked it much more than I thought. At the time I also thought about converting, but then I didn’t. However, I have recognized myself in many things”
#28 Chiara, Jules, And Jim (1962)
“I love Truffaut a lot, he’s the director that made me love cinema. Like Jules and Jim, I’ve been thrilled by Jeanne Moreau, I really love her in this movie. Basically, it’s a film that breaks the rules, where there is neither winner nor loser, everybody suffers and rejoices in the same way. Then I read the book too. It’s incredible how Truffaut keeps their poetry and its mood”
#29 Paola, The Way We Were (1973)
“Beyond the beautiful love story, where love remains even if life can separate two lovers, I like the protagonist: a great woman who never gives up on herself”
#30 Francesca, Cléo De 5 À 7 (1962)
“I chose this movie as the opening of my film festival, Visionaer: every year we have an homage to a female director and last year we chose Agnes Varda, mother of the French New Wave. This is her second movie, it follows Cleo through the streets of Paris for two hours of her life: when I’ve seen it I would stay watching her life for more than 20,000 hours! I love the natural and enchanting way in which Agnes lead us in her protagonist’s life, it really touched me”
#31 Alessia, A Night’s Tale (2001)
“It’s a movie that pushed me to do things that maybe I wouldn’t have done because it’s about having the courage and follow our own way, being far from the family. If you want to come back you just have to do a step behind but, step by step, I’m finally going far”
#32 Cecilia, The Believer (2001)
“At the time I saw it, I was passionate about Judaism and this film represents it in a very tough way, it tells many true and non-trivial things, without ever being didactic. When I saw it for the first time I liked it much more than I thought, at the time I also thought about converting, but then I didn’t. However, I have recognized myself in many things”
About Alessio Trerotoli
Alessio Trerotoli is an italian photographer, born and raised in Rome, where he lives. Fine Art Photographer & Street Photographer. Author of awarded series Urban Melodies and Raindrop Blues, featured by the most important photo magazines.
Currently collaborating with art galleries in United States, France, Israel, China, Argentina, Australia and Mexico. Graduated in 2009 in Disciplines of Arts and Cinema. His first exhibition was in 2010, since then Alessio’s pictures were shown in several galleries, festivals and art fairs, in Italy and abroad. In 2019 Trerotoli begins Film People.
You can find more info about Film People on the web:
Copyrights:
All the pictures in this post are copyrighted to Alessio Trerotoli. Their reproduction, even in part, is forbidden without the explicit approval of the rightful owners.
