Vinicio Capossela: his film at the Rome Film Festival

“Christmas Out of Hours”, the new film by Gianfranco Firriolo written by Vinicio Caposselawill be presented at the Rome Film Festival in the Freestyle section on Thursday 17 October at 9pm at the Teatro Olimpico.

The director, Vinicio Capossela and part of the cast will be present at the official screening.

There is also one planned second screening Friday 18 October at 12pm at the Teatro Olimpico and a third Tuesday 22 October at 9pm at Cinema Aquila.

“Christmas Out of Hours”, defined a “documentary disguised as a film”, moves between irony and melancholy, in an anomalous hybrid between road movie and concert film, a praise of the unifying power of music and at the same time a reflection on the passage of time.

The work pays homage to the tradition, which began in 1999, of Vinicio Capossela’s “holiday concerts” at Fuori Orario, a historic venue overlooking the railway tracks in Taneto di Gattatico (RE). Since then, the artist has continued to give life to exuberant concerts every December, which glorified the holiday and brought it to life. Concerts thanks to which a community and a tradition were created, celebrated in the singer-songwriter’s album “Sciusten Feste N. 1965”, released on October 25th by Warner Music Italy, and in this documentary film built on the footage taken by Gianfranco Firriolo during the holiday concerts from 2007 to 2023.

The film is set in Christmas 2047. The Wizard, the Giant and the Singer, on the threshold of the end of the world, decide to return to the “station” club which saw them as protagonists for many Christmas shows, the Fuori Orario, and renew for last time their ancient pact of friendship long ago christened “the Trinity”. “Christmas Out of Hours”, which features protagonists Vinicio Capossela, Christopher Wonder, Marco Cervetti And Franco Bassi, develops between “reality”, imaginative narration and “real” repertoires, archive materials that act as “memories” of the protagonists of the work.

Tells Vinicio Capossela

The title refers not only to the name of the local historian, but also to walking through time by means of that loose cannon in the calendar that is the Festival. The narrative imagines the story of a party at the moment in which the world has lost the party and is coming to an end. It is a collective story of friendship, music, participation in that mystery of plasticization and at the same time redemption of the human that is Christmas. In fact, in the holiday lights you can find both the Christmas junk of compulsory consumption and that lost innocence that is often evoked in Christmas songs.

Adds the director Gianfranco Firriolo

In its deliberate lightness the film ironically touches on various very serious and topical themes, Virtual realities and their induced dependencies; catastrophes induced by human stupidity; the growing phenomenon of “cryopreserved” humans and then above all a reflection on the ritual of parties and music “in presence”, their vital function even in moments of darkness. The ironic tone of the documentary is a direct extension of Vinicio’s language, constantly balancing between the sentimental and an unscrupulous irony, between delicacy and viscerality.