WHEEL ME OUT - Abel Ferrara

Controversial film maker Abel Ferrara has turned his uncompromising gaze on experimenting with the documentary form. First with 2008’s tribute to the Chelsea Hotel, Chelsea on the Rocks, now with Napoli, Napoli, Napoli, about a women’s prison in Naples, and with the upcoming Mulberry Street, about the New York neighbourhood where he started his film career.

For Napoli..., the director of Bad Lieutenant (the first one) weaves fictional scenes with real life footage, visiting inmates and those affected by their incarceration to investigate the social implications of crime and punishment in a city with a notorious reputation. Wheel caught up with Ferrara after Napoli... launched the recent London International Documentary Festival.

Ananda Pellerin

How did you end up making a documentary about Naples? It basically came to us. I’d been shooting in Italy for about five years, working in Rome. The producers were from Naples and one of them had spent a lot of time in prison. They’d come from the ghetto and wanted to give a voice to people there. It’s a one way trip from growing up in the projects to ending up in jail.

Naples is also where my family is from. There’s a lot of poverty, a lot of anger, a lot of violence. It’s South Italy, you know – it’s dynamic. At the same time the traditions and economic depression, that’ll probably never go. Especially with the government promising more than anybody’s ever gonna deliver.

Naples has an especially bad reputation. Deservedly so! But it’s a beautiful place, Napoli. It has it all, Capri and the islands, the food. You go to some places... I mean you can’t even eat the food in London. What do these people do? So they just drink beer? The food in Napoli is the best in the world. What the volcanic ash does to the soil, I don’t know, there are all kinds of theories. It’s definitely got the best coffee.

Did you find any parallels between Naples and New York? It’s like New York in the 90s, in the crack wars; people getting blasted every day, you know what I mean? It’s just the reality, drugs are the big deal and people are fucking shooting off the shit.

What was it like living and filming in Italy? It was good. It was a positive experience for me. We made a couple of films, we lived the life.

What are some of the cultural differences you found between Italian cities and urban Italian-American areas? It depends where you’re living. I grew up in a very Neapolitan neighbourhood in the Bronx. I’m living in Little Italy now but it’s very un-Italian. It’s more Spanish, South American. Ecuadorean, Mexican, Chinese. In Italy it’s about city states. I mean Rome and Naples are like two different worlds.

"Every film is a new revolution, it's constant change; where you shoot it, who you shoot with, why you shoot it. These films, they create themselves."

But it’s two different things. We talked about how the Americans really fucked this place over. The war completely changed everything. These guys got screwed by Mussolini and then they got screwed by everybody else that showed up. It changed the whole mentality. It’s basically the same story around the world.

What’s Napoli, Napoli, Napoli about? We combine dramatic sequences with documentary footage. The story isn’t based on the narrative lines of the women’s stories from prison, but on the spirit of what’s being said there, and trying to dramatise some of these situations.

Why the mix of drama and documentary? Sometimes you get more to the truth with fiction. How truthful is a question and answer situation anyway? You bring the cameras there, you talk to the people, who knows what they’re saying and why.

What were your influences for this film? Michael Moore, ha. I don’t know. You see what you see and you make what you make, you know what I mean? If you’re not inspired by the idea then don’t make the film. Every film is a new revolution, it’s constant change; where you shoot it, who you shoot with, why you shoot it. These films, they create themselves.

Was it tough working with the women in prison? Well yeah. I mean it got stifling after a few days of hearing these stories... I wanted to get out of there, it’s sad but true. I started interviewing the people that were left behind, the families and the neighbourhoods where they came from and the people who put them in jail. We talked to the politicians about the purpose of this situation, asked them what’s the deal? Are you gonna try to turn these people around or are you gonna just keep them under lock and key from the minute they’re born?

Did you learn a lot about Neapolitan culture? Well, we were making a film about women in prison, not a film about statues.

How’s it going with Mulberry Street? We’ve finished that film. Now we’re doing a modern day version of Jekyll and Hyde with Forest Whitaker and 50 Cent. No one has ever done a real version of that book.

So you’re still making features? Oh yeah, we do whatever we can. We’re just trying to do as much as we can do under the circumstances. WMO

Abel Ferrara internet library

www.miscellanea.de/film/Abel_Ferrara/Abel_Ferrara_library