“The important thing is to make a different world, to make a world that is not now. A real world, a genuine world, but one that allows myth to live. The myth is everything.”
– Sergio Leone
We are making a western, an Italo-Western. Could you call it a ‘Spaghetti-Western’? Perhaps … Could you call it a western set in Italy? Not really, since it’s not a film about the American West made by Italians, in the guise of A Fistful of Dollars, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, etc. In fact, the film we want to make is not a film about America’s Wild West, but rather a film about Italy’s ‘Wild South’, and – strangely enough – it’s a British production.
In my final year of studies at Oxford, I came across a diary – the diary of an Italian outlaw from the mid-1860s, the chaotic and violent years following the country’s unification. There are famous bandits in Italy, Robin Hood-esque folk heroes like Carmine Crocco, but this particular diary was written first-hand, by an old man forgotten by history, living alone in his small town nestled in the valleys of Basilicata. The diary reads like an Odyssean epic, a journey into the bloody inferno of outlaw life, only for the protagonist to emerge the other side as a reluctant legend. Seduced by the myth of banditry, he returns home the victim of this myth. This is what makes the diary so fascinating – the fact that so much of it is probably a fiction, and the film we want to make explores that fiction; what starts as a ‘straightforward’ western evolves into something much more labyrinthine and self-reflective. It’s a distant mirror of our own uncertain and equally violent times. Think Unforgiven or the Assassination of Jesse James, but set to a backdrop barely depicted on the silver screen.
Of course, the project is ambitious, and like the early Italo-Westerns, it’s being produced on a tight budget. In December last year I set out, with a group of collaborators I had met at film school, to the very town in which the author of our diary was born – Rionero. The support of locals has been crucial: within a couple days of our arrival, we had the help of the mayor’s office, local arts organisations, restaurants and production companies, even period costumes offered up from the ‘outlaw museum’, which organises reenactments of bandit battles every year. The tales of these brutal men really are still legend in this remote part of rural Italy, a myriad of unwritten tales passed down orally, and recounted over a hearty meal and a carafe of wine. Many residents seem thrilled that some filmmakers are finally taking notice of a region whose history has been neglected and rewritten by politicians in Rome for centuries.
That is not to say that it is all smooth sailing. There are plenty of challenges to overcome, not least Italian bureaucracy, local politics, guns, horses and the like. Fittingly, we are having to make the film like bandits ourselves – fiercely, independently, with a ruthless and unwavering resolve. So far, it’s paid off: we have raised 40,000 of our 78,000 euro budget, and now we are launching a crowdfunding campaign to help us bridge the gap. Naturally, there is an element of blind optimism in making any debut feature film, but the beauty of this project is that it has transformed into what our producer dubbed a ‘film popolare’, that is, a film made by the community for the community, but also with what we believe to be an international appeal. With our crowdfunder, we want to expand that community to the internet – whether you chip in eight euros or eight-hundred, your name will be featured in the end credits of the film. And we’re holding live fundraising events too – in London on 17th April, in Rome and Bari in May. They are not just an opportunity to fundraise, they are also a chance to build up the community that will make this film a success, a film that lives wild and free in the badlands, far from the cookie-cutter pipelines in Hollywood or Cinecittà. Especially in Italy, audiences are bored of the same old middle-class family drama flicks. We want to offer something with more guts, something the ghost of Sergio Leone would get behind.
To read more about the film, watch our teaser trailer, and support our crowdfunder, please follow the links below this article.
We are holding a fundraising event in London on 17th April and would love to see you there.
Henry Worsley, 23, earned his Bachelor’s in History and Italian at the University of Oxford, and studied at the Rome International Film School, where he won awards for Best Graduate Film and Best Cinematography. His shorts have won awards at the Oxford University Short Film Festival (Best Film), the London Director Awards (Best British Student Director) and been selected for the Rome Independent Film Festival, the Cinemagic Young Filmmaker’s Award and the BIFA-qualifying Worcester Film Festival. His first feature documentary, shot in Ukraine, premiered at the Torino Underground Film Festival and was acquired for distribution by STREEEN Turin.
Diary of a Bandit is Henry’s first narrative feature.
