Corsicato, Pappi

(I960-)

   Director, composer, scenographer, video artist. Corsicato studied dance and choreography in the United States before serving his first apprenticeship in filmmaking, working as an uncredited assistant on Pedro Almodovar's jAtame! (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! 1990). In 1991 he made a feature short to which, two years later, he added another two episodes to construct his first full-length film, Libera (1993). Featuring Iaia Forte, a dynamic actress whom Corsicato would continue to use in most of his subsequent films, Libera was shown to great acclaim at the Berlin Festival and in Italy was awarded both a Ciak d'oro and a Nastro d'argento as a most promising first work. Two years later I buchi neri (Black Holes, 1995) mixed realism and fantasy to present an unusual love story between a prostitute and a gay truck driver. At the same time Corsicato produced a number of videos on the work of artists Mimmo Paladino and Jannis Kounellis, as well as Argento puro (Pure Silver, 1996), a documentary on the making of Marco Ferreri's last film, Nitrato d'argento (Silver Nitrate, 1996). In 1997 Corsicato directed La stirpe di Iana (Iana's Descendants), an episode of the compilation film I vesuviani (The Vesuvians, 1997), made in collaboration with four other young Neapolitan directors. After I colori della citta celeste (The Colors of the Celestial City, 1998), a short film focusing on an installation by Italian artist Mario Merz in the Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples, and a series of documentaries on artists Gilberto Zorio, Luigi Ontani, Robert Rauschenberg, Riccardo Serra, and Mimmo Paladino, Corsicato returned to fictional filmmaking with Chimera (2001), a complex and multilayered narrative of the chimerical strategies enacted by a couple in order to reignite their flagging sexual passion.