Marco Ferreri: The Director Who Came from the Future

“My method for making films is anarchy. I hope I can keep on doing it for a while longer, and that making something anarchical with cinema would still be possible”. These words by Marco Ferreri open the documentary Canale made about him ten years after his death, trying to bring back the memory of an artist who was forgotten too soon, his talent, and, as the title suggests, his unique ability to read between the lines of the present to find the signs of the future. The film features interviews with the filmmaker –including one for Spanish TV in which the eternal image of him as an agitator gives way to a touching sincerity– and with those who took part in his topsy-turvy film-sets both in front or behind the camera (especially Azcona, the great screenwriter who died shortly after giving out his testimony). It also features rarities like the scandal that arose with the premiere of La grande bouffe at Cannes; and, of course, lots of fragments from Ferreri’s films. All these things form a ride through a visionary body of work that faced the “rotten world” around it with fury and black humor. –Mar del Plata International Film Festival