After finding an enchanted flower in their backyard, a group of friends experience a collective hallucination. Dell’Altro Mondo (Otherworldly), an experimental film, done mixing various techniques like pixilation and stop-motion animation, is a collaboration with the electronic musician BU’KE and a collective project crafted together with multiple artists. It’s up to the viewer to decide what the “otherwordly” is.
Katie Huelin: Dell’Altro Mondo (Otherworldly), intertwines themes of friendship and unity, with deeper explorations of transformation and identity–creating a captivating experience far from conventional. How did your visual approach capture these themes and blur the boundaries between reality and illusion?
Delia Simonetti: One of the main concepts in my research is the idea of magic seen as reality, rather than as a oneiric experience. In this work I needed to represent how deeply changing the bond with other people, how the otherworldly–that can represent another way of being, of thinking, a door to another dimension intended as in a hallucination but also something we feel, such as loss or love–is extremely close to our reality and dimension. It’s just a little far, glitchy, and unexpected. In this film, we needed to blur the line not just between dimensions, but also between us and the others, between us and the environment that surrounds us. So from the choice of framing to the use of colour we opted for something both realistic and dramatic.
KH: Could you share how your collaboration with emerging musician BU’KE for the film first came about? In what ways did BU’KE’s electronic soundscape shape your experimental visual approach, especially in crafting the dreamlike yet distorted reality that is central to the film’s aesthetic?
DS: BU’KE is the new electronic project of the musician and composer Eugenio Mazzetto. This project happens to appear more similar to a mute expressionist film where the soundtrack is not necessarily a counterpoint to the image but rather a parallel narration. I was listening to this track he composed as BU’KE as I was working on the shotlist and I just thought: this is it, it’s the other narrative line of the film. So we worked from the shotlist to the edit, where he modulated the track on the scenes he saw on the screen. For the end titles, the night of our last day of shoot, he recorded in location the actors speaking words in free association with a list of words he gave them, and he mixed them following the natural sequence of their associations. This was a way to provide a sort of third narrative line, giving voice to the characters themselves by making them speak through the actors, in a sort of haunting and magical ritual. And it happened to be magical, as the actors made word associations that were consistent with their characters’ personalities.
KH: Throughout Dell’Altro Mondo (Otherworldly), the stand-out pixilation and stop-motion animation, paired with impressive VFX, creates a unique space between reality and dream, allowing viewers to also feel immersed in this dimension. What influenced your decision to incorporate these techniques in crafting the film’s surreal atmosphere and did you encounter any challenges in the editing stages?
DS: In the ending titles you can see I thank Paul Bush for the pixilation inspiration. I attended this amazing lesson with him while I was studying at the NFTS in London, where he not only explained the technique but also the philosophical point of view behind it. If you edit a frame-by-frame image of six people all you see is “a person”. This was incredibly relevant to what I was trying to demonstrate in this film: we are what we perceive (in pixilation is the human eye that does the trick). I then developed this technique with the amazing VFX artist Chiara Feriani, who worked side by side with me in creating the pixilation sequences, and with the incredible animation artist Francesca Ferrario, who designed the flower, crafted it and animated it. The final edit of the film required six months of work, as you can imagine, and I have to admit I was not used to the times that animation required. I edited it frame by frame, sometimes Chiara also edited in the more complex scenes. For me this was incredibly important, editing is always a crucial part of my work. I intend editing as another form of writing, so as long as it is difficult and extenuating it’s also something I’m proud of.
KH: Collaborating with Costume Designer, Ilaria Demo De Lorenzi and Make Up Artist Erika Calabrò, how did you set out to create bold visual identities through fashion and styling? How do you hope the stylistic aspects, such as the distinct eye makeup, reflect the shifting perceptions of the characters and the otherworldly essence of the film?
DS: This question has a practical and a narrative answer. The practical answer is that we needed the styling and look of the characters to be different to one another so that in the pixilation sequence you can see the differences between them and the outline shape is constantly shifting. For instance, the two characters that merge in the beginning, interpreted by Nicol Quaglia and Soukaina Abrour, needed to be kind of complementary in colour and look, in order to give the impression of being the same person during the tug-of-war sequence. It was beautiful to see how on set they kind of became the same person, being constantly together and doing the same movements to synchronise. The narrative answer is that I wanted them to be characters, the stylised representation of a group of magical friends. The group of actors felt it, they were always together off-screen. Ilaria Demo De Lorenzi is a costume designer and also an artist, we kind of designed every character’s personality through the styling. The film doesn’t have dialogues, so the public needs to grab the characters’ persona in a few seconds just by how they present themselves. As for the make-up with Erika Calabrò, we needed them to stand out of reality, but just a bit. Gaia Ginevra Giorgi, with the green eyeshadow and the all-white look, represents the friend who saw what was going to happen way before, Cassandra, the clairvoyant, so this is why her eyes are more important than the others.
KH: You’ve mentioned that you drew inspiration from Norman McLaren’s ‘Neighbours’, for the symbolic use of the enchanted flower, representing nature and desire. In what ways did you reinterpret McLaren’s visual techniques for Dell’Altro Mondo (Otherworldly), and how did this symbolism guide the visual narrative?
DS: In Norman McLaren’s ‘Neighbours’ the flower is this symbolic beautiful thing that drags the two neighbours to war, as both of them want this beautiful thing just for themselves. In Dell’Altro Mondo (Otherworldly) the animated flower, probably the true protagonist, represents indeed a beautiful and disturbing thing, but in the end, it keeps the friends all together, uniting them forever.
KH: Throughout the process of bringing this mesmerising film to life, you’ve emphasised it as a collective creation shaped by an extraordinary team of artists. How pivotal were these collaborations in realising your unique vision? Looking ahead, how has this experience influenced your approach to future projects?
DS: In Dell’Altro Mondo (Otherworldly), I wanted to include artists I shared a lot of ideas with during time, to do something collectively with a shared vision, from cast to costumes to VFX. This worked very well, especially with the cast: Nicol Quaglia is a theatre director, Gaia Ginevra Giorgi is a poet and a performer, Soukaina Abrour is a visual artist, Edoardo Mozzanega a dancer and choreographer, Seba Lorenza Pala a musician, Naomi Oke a textile artist. It’s incredibly important that everyone involved in this is who he is because we shared a vision and we all put all our presence into it. Do you know that alchemist rule “As Above so Below”? For me, it means that what’s on set (the environment we create, the bond we share) is also what you see and perceive in the final work. One cannot exist without the other. In the end, this film is a spell, a ritual. And this is what I like to do, now and in my future work, to see if what I do can change something in who watches it, not so much, not that big, just a little shift like what happens in this film. Like in a sort of active cinema, you have to complete the puzzle of what you see. My films are questions, never answers.