Words by Sofia Brizio<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anna\nAlfieri is a young Italian actress and filmmaker who spent the entirety of her\ncareer in London. Every creative in the world will tell you it’s tough to make\nit in the real world, even more so in London. But it’s not often that you hear\ntheir stories of victory or defeat, whatever they might be. The typical\nmediatised story of a woman in the film industry would probably include a\nperiod of vaguely defined struggles to then reach the final breakthrough where\neveryone lives happily ever after. What nobody tells you is that it’s never\nthat neat. It’s a constant rollercoaster of never knowing where you will end up\neven when you think you know exactly where you’re going; it’s getting the news\nyou’ve been waiting for one day, and then having your entire work thrown upside\ndown the next. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\nasked Anna to tell me about her experience as a lesbian woman in the industry\nand how difficult it has been for her to make her voice heard, not necessarily\nbecause she is a woman and\/or a lesbian, but because pouring your heart, soul,\nblood and sweat in what you’re convinced is the film of your life, only to end\nup having to sacrifice its very essence to commercial pressures is something no\none is ever prepared for. And yet it happens more often than you’d think. The\nparadox of the film industry nowadays is that if you want to emerge, going\nagainst the grain isn’t always what is going to get you there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anna\nknows it all too well and experienced it while working on her film, Borderline<\/em>, for over three years now: “I don’t even\nknow how to start describing this film. Three years of pitching and I still\nhaven’t found the perfect way to put it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Borderline <\/em>was born out of desperation, out of Anna’s\nneed to find herself as a creator, actress and filmmaker, as well as on a\npersonal level, but also to feel represented and bring something innovative to\nthe filmmaking industry. “Four years ago I reached rock bottom in a way I never\nhad before. Having spent the previous eight years working my socks off to\nbecome a professional actress, taking part in innumerable projects that had\ntaken me nowhere, for the first time in my life I was really starting to see\nevery last strand of hope in the career I had invested so much in completely\nvanish. And when that career is your biggest passion, trust me, it hurts! To\ntop it all off, around that same time, I went through the final breakup with\nthe first woman I ever loved, which I still consider to be my first real\nrelationship. Running in the background of all this, a somewhat dramatic\nsituation with crazy live-in landlords and no support network around me. I was\nalone. I was desperate. I was borderline suicidal. And I didn’t see a way out.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “That desperation gave birth to my film and the story depicted in it. All the crazy stuff going on in my heart and head was desperately trying to come out and that I was going insane trying to find an outlet for. It’s a process I’ve always liked to call \u00d4\u00c7\u00ffthe dancing with my demons’. It was all the things I loved the most, but that I never had a chance to see in a script I was called to audition for. It was raw. It was dark. It was meta. It was layered. It was crazy. It was Pink Floydian. It was beyond everyone’s expectations, including mine, and, most of the time, it felt impossible. But I had a vision and an indescribable drive for it. So all obstacles felt irrelevant. I was making a film depicting my current life struggle, with that very film being the tool I was using to hang on to life. The majority thought it was crazy. A few thought it was genius, but not many”. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As\nif a film of the sort wasn’t difficult enough to make, Borderline<\/em> had the added difficulty of relying\nmostly on improvisation, which is what makes it real and magical, but also\narguably not that marketable to audiences who tend to go crazy over Below Her Mouth<\/em>, or what have you. But Anna carried on:\n“The film was shot in three different countries (Italy, France and the UK) and\nmade using all of my savings, which amounted to the tiniest budget ever heard\nof for a feature. In a way, I wanted to show the world that, as long as you\nhave that desperation to tell your story, it doesn’t really matter how much\nexperience, money or resources you have. On the contrary, your limitations\nmight as well turn into your assets”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anna\nwas convinced she would make it: “The film was shot beautifully, the acting is\nmore than decent, the story is original and the overall message quite strong”.\nYet, three years and an indefinite number of cuts later, she still hasn’t been\nable to sell the film. Why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My\nfirst director’s cut was selected for a festival in the US in 2019. There I met\nmy \u00d4\u00c7\u00ffdream distributor’. They told me the film had a lot of potential, but,\nbecause that version was two hours and 25 minutes long, I had to withdraw it\nfrom festivals and cut it down so they could help me take it to a bigger\nfestival for the premiere the following year. Hence, I spent the following six\nmonths re-cutting and perfecting the film, which they later approved. However,\nshortly after signing the contract I was told that the film was still about 20\nminutes overlong, so festivals were rejecting it. With a lot of effort, I went\nback to editing, after thinking I had finally got to a final cut for the third\ntime in a row in two years. I had basically done the whole post-production\nprocess twice with this film. I took another 10 minutes out, but it still wasn’t\nenough. So in essence, I could either let the distributor re-cut the film for\nme, or wave goodbye to the distribution contract”. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most creatives know that if you leave your story in someone else’s hands, your project will probably lose its original reason for being. So, as you can probably guess, Anna decided to rescind the contract, which is all but easy when you’ve been dreaming of and fighting for success your whole life.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n While\nit’s natural that some levels of gatekeeping are present in every creative\nindustry, and it is notorious that the film industry is especially hard to\nbreak into, her experience highlights another side to the sector which is often\nignored: “The request to re-cut the film didn’t come from just this one\ndistributor, and I will spare you the details of how many companies I got in\ntouch with. Let’s just say that for every ten people you get in touch with, you\nget one reply, if at all. I guess the irony is that all the things that enabled\nme to make this film in the first place are the same things which are now\npreventing me from selling it. I can either bend to the market’s demands and\nget away from my vision, probably ending up with a product I would barely\nrecognise as my own, or just leave this film in my drawer. I really don’t know\nwhether it’s because I’m too sensitive or I was just wired differently or\nbecause we live in the world we live in, but I really wish the film that once\nsaved my life was not killing me now”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you create something this visceral and heartfelt, it’s like your life depends on in. And that’s exactly how watching the first cut of Borderline<\/em> felt for me. Sure, it’s not an easy film to watch, but sometimes we need stories that make us uncomfortable because that’s how you change the world. That’s how people begin to feel represented. Anna’s experience shows how commercial gate keeping can take valuable stories away from us and, most importantly, how disheartening it is to see your creation turned upside down when you’ve put all you had into it. Being told that your film is “too personal to fit the business model” hurts not because of the criticism in itself, but because it makes you realise your story will probably never see the light unless you construct it on someone else’s terms. And yes, creative careers are all about compromise. But compromise doesn’t allow for change. This is why it is imperative that we keep telling stories that usually go unheard. In a world where a variety of voices is needed more than ever and innovation is constantly encouraged, it is paradoxical that to make a name for yourself in the industry you have to bend to the market’s demand to then (maybe) get your creative freedom back. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Words by Sofia Brizio Anna Alfieri is a young Italian actress and filmmaker who spent the entirety of her career […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":562,"featured_media":23280,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,3523,119],"tags":[5522,5524,3041],"class_list":["post-23279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-tv","category-interview","category-lgbt","tag-boderline","tag-female-creators","tag-lgbtq"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n