Salento's Ozpetek, light , Baroque and food. After over ten years and five films shot in Rome, the director now says the Italian-turkish new inspiration Puglia and the locations that have resulted in ''Loose Cannons'', his latest film will be released Friday in Italian cinemas. The porous white stone called ''mazzaro'' reflects the luminosity of this land. The final sequence is a kind of ''farewell to the city,'' a roundup of the most beautiful. It took just because the Salento Ferzan Ozpetek abandon the gasometer, omnipresent in his films. After over ten years and five films made in Rome, the Italian-turkish director and went to look for new inspirations and scenes in Apulia, where he set Loose Cannons, from Friday in theaters. ''The first day of shooting without a gasometer - the game is Ozpetek - I felt very lost. It 'was like the end of a marriage, when you lose your head and go for another woman left home without knowing how it ends: Emotion and fear are the two emotions you feel. Then it was wonderful. Puglia has been a revelation. Places can be beautiful, but without the right people do not work and I Apulia have won. When you shoot in one place, you have to know the city and listen to suggestions that the ''fairies'' of the film they send you. '' Loose Cannons, and also the first film ever shot entirely in Lecce, who is also a natural set thanks to its magnificent facades of Baroque palaces, whose white stone and porous, said mazzaro here, reflects the special light of Salento. ''Wherever you put the camera in Lecce - says the director - and a nice shot.'' But Ozpetek has had the merit not to abuse the cards that Lecce offers an affectionate, if not in the final overview of the most popular port from being Rudiae Palmieri. He went to find valuable hidden corners, in some cases turning. For example, the square Carducci, magically set up for a night scene (the fight between the brothers Riccardo Scamarcio and Alessandro Preziosi, ''I suggested to the mayor to let our light in that piazza. Pugliese A director might have avoided altogether to frame the Cathedral or some other place more known, but I liked a lot and the final sequence and a kind of greeting alia city, not a spot. '' The desire for a change of scenery and Ozpetek coincided with that of Puglia to export their own, Air. The Apulia Film Commission since 2007 has hosted hundreds of productions last year yielded about one million euros of contributions: for every dollar funded, the return on land and 9 euros, rising to 15 in the case of films, as that produced by Fandango and Rai, the most important budget. The interior of the family home were filmed in Canton Villa Monteroni Materdomini on the road to a fully furnished home empty set designers, while the number of external ones Famularo House in the center of Lecce, Via Paladini. A sixteenth-century building with a superb terrace overlooking the garden dominated by a monumental example of ficus magnolioide: po'decadente atmosphere noble and a very suggestive. The house of Nicole Grimaudo and was located in a wing of Palazzo Tamborino uninhabited, where is the studio of the painter Mark Fiorillo who painted the pictures of the scene. Leccesalento, Lecce heart of life, can be seen only in the scene where his father (Ennio Fantastichini) and son (Scamarcio) go sit at the bar, the Cafe Tito Schipa because of the Faithful. Ozpetek, whose film in the food has always been an important aesthetic and narrative, was inspired by artifacts from the bakery Valentina, while the pasta Canton Ie scenes were filmed on the farm Pawn Lecce-Maglie. The opening scene has been made in the Masseria Ceppato, in the countryside of Otranto, a ruin among the olive trees belonging to the Region, and the only scene was set in the sea and south of Punta Swine of Gallipoli, pine forest and crystal clear water. With all due respect to the gasometer dell'Ostiense.

Nowadays it is very difficult to deal with the young artists increasingly pervaded by fashion art, what appear to be clear of colorful works that walk on two legs, or those who seek a complaint at all costs with the result that mimic one the other, approved, and then ending up looking the same. Marco Fiorillo is a talented young artist, with no excesses, no colored hair, very serious and tireless pursuit of his art is inspired, but never equal to anyone. Dealing with him is much easier because of his experience is the starting point to face the daily call to his artistic feeling. Professional restorer and artist always Fiorillo has successfully combined the two experiences, and his studio is able not only to restore life to works of famous artists sometimes forgotten, badly preserved by time, but managed to put service above all his skill for the passion, pouring, after a great deal of observation and study, in every work, the tricks of the masters of the past that come under its ultraviolet light. Fan of the Neapolitan school, over time has managed to capture the most beautiful aspects of this current prospective placing them in new contexts, for example a landscape or interior of a Costa Rican bar, loading the colors and contrasts, thus giving unique expressive elegance and continuity. Fiorillo was managed with the years to become independent from academic painting, classic out of the box size, thereby saving himself the empty surfaces, filling the sinuous shapes of the muses, or landscapes in a particular time is before the eyes without ever changing and improving the natural proportion / disproportion, leaving intact the imperfect perfection that nature gives us. Marco Fiorillo's painting is filled with the feeling that he carries within. Every touch, every stroke, she talks about him and what he saw and experienced. Captures moments and snapshots that makes eternal on the canvas, not as mere photographs, but as visions full of memories and meanings, far beyond the colors and shapes that gives us.

The first to talk about Mark Thomas Fiorillo (Lecce, 1974) was several years ago Enzo Guido, the protagonist of our old friend, along with writer and Riccardo Leuzzi, some initiatives promoted and held in the name of Luigi Carluccio, the late critic origins of Salento, in the emblematic figure of contemporary Italian history. And even if linked to the young artist (the particular relationship between grandfather and grandson), his words were highly weighted and involvement than ever park. More explicit, however, the friendship invitation to look at the works. What happened then is that in reality, in an almost systematic and continuous, one year after another, and since 1995 in personal and corporate events, mostly in the historical gallery ''Maccagnani'' of Lecce, following the young painter in a path very figurative and landscape, in its almost-full, full of atmosphere and references, and implemented within a clear expertise and technical skills. Writing in these same columns in January three years ago, saying: ''Mark Thomas Fiorillo'' moves along ''the saga'' of the Southern landscape that has never renounced its Neapolitan origins - remained, indeed, very involved -, stopping the his glance on wide ''views'' developed in our mind - and it appears to us that his intuition more personal - the system of naturalistic painting in Tuscany, in a sort of mix that accentuates the scarcity of the subject painting and poetry. '' And over time, the work of the late twenties artist Tolentino confirmed that his personal narrative ability (the images of Salento that belongs to us, but also others: the campaign to rise up and Florentine Way Cake, the coast after Otranto and the Marina Castro, not to mention the still lifes and nudes), thus facing a variety of topics. And taking advantage of that 'cultural and visual operation that has long seen him as a restorer of ancient paintings on busy, intersecting at a frequency ranging Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence to numerous private and public laboratories of restoration, the University of International 'Art in Florence, to the degree course in Conservation of Cultural Heritage at the University of Lecce. As well demonstrated by the landscape (often oils and pastels on wood), processed and resolved according to a compositional very few words on which the coloring does not accept that its dual membership of the 'news and remember, sometimes even bordering on excess - we had already written on another occasion - as in these patches of orange crossing cerulean skies regularly. But even some of the buildings still lifes and nudes essential fullness layouts and immersed in a sea of ​​white linens defeats. As if to go beyond the image for trespassing in the emotion and fantasy.

Poets and painters have competed, especially in the modern age, offering an effective representation of the landscape. Sometimes it prevailed overview, vast, panoramic, other times it has focused on some details. Processing industry in particular has often insisted on representing the country and its inhabitants as an exemplary model of life as opposed to the size of the new city inhospitable and alienating. If we consider the Italian artistic and literary production of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we note that while the traditional rules are still in the description of nature, trying new ways free from the bonds of conventionality. So, while respecting the rules concerning the distribution of spaces and views while presenting real, are inserted elements that express the conception of life and death of the artist as the use of images taken by the taste for ruins to communicate the sense of human frailty. In the landscape bursts into the reading that gives the artist of his age compared with the past, referred to in any work with nostalgia and regret. Beyond the viewing angles and interpretations of the landscape is always a place of mind, is the distillation of what is kept in memory, the values ​​for which we live, hidden torments of the soul, the hopes that we grow. Even when the vision, through the detailed analysis, comes closest to reality is not purely geographical description, but intertwining of memories, feelings, sedimentation of personal experiences and historical events and cultural activities. All this is not surprising because ''see'' the man expresses its structure, its spirit is the ability of disinterested knowledge and desire for the infinite. November 2007

On the mastery of technical means in the control of oil painting (but not only that) to be part of the first 'friend, artist Mark Fiorillo then, I have on several occasions had the opportunity to prove it, the ability to reveal the ineffable puissance in the determination of a color mapping within its aesthetic productions, I paused for a long time in open dialogues with the same, I have written several reviews on the soul ''neo-romantic'' that characterizes the work of this artist but ... CODEST occasion, I make a gift that comes from our usual acquaintances in his studio, including a rapid beat stroke and some playful friendship, through long ''walk'' through the streets of the city, coffee, talking of art, including a cigarette and 'another, in a nice ''period'' determined by the encounter with some mutual friend, where friendship, already blossomed, was consolidated. My little ''gift'' consists in a story unknown to him, deliberately not revealed to him that one day could bring about a just surprised, dear, who writes in this' because it brings to mind the moment, long walks ''discourse'' with Maestro Antonio Massari. Well, in one of my meetings with the teacher, the subject of our conversation fell on a young artist who had colpitoin a show that had gone to see at the Gallery Maccagnani: the ''scene'' takes place in Corso Vittorio Emanuele II . What aroused astonishment in Massari, it was impossible to assess the outcome of a painting style which proposed an aesthetic of the nuances related to both pre-Cezanne still life, and strong references to both English and German Romanticism the threshold of the Third Millennium. I asked the name of the artist. MARK THOMAS FIORILLO (I told Massari was a dear friend of mine!). My argument, strong in the end, supported also by the Master, was that Mark was moved not so much by intent anachronistic, because the originality of certain ideas was highly visible, but that would definitely place in the new century, a likely process ''motional / avant-garde'' restructuring of the figurative, at first, and that would then be expanded to include plans of neo-informality. I think it's a good omen ...

The artist shows an uncommon expertise in the control of the medium of oil painting technique. There is a realism in the paintings localistic covering the countryside and the urban landscape of Puglia property over time: the city ''white'', the house guarded by a lone pine tree just as an umbrella, the stony barrenness of a street under a driveway open and changeable. There is a realism ''quotes'' which recalls the ancient charm of painting through still pre-Cezanne, also set in a time without playing. September 1995