DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

Where does a story come from? In my experience (and I think I'm in good company), stories grow along the fine line that divides the real and the imaginary. Often those two dimensions become confused, to the point where you no longer know which is which. That's certainly true in my case - I've always succumbed to the vital charm of that fascinating confusion - and its also true of Ethan Wildwood, the main character in Promised Land.

The story of the film was inspired by a real-life character, a would-be actor whom I met on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles some years ago. For me that man became a kind of icon for all the people who dream of making movies and who, when that dream fails to come true, gradually create a world of their own, losing touch with reality. That way of taking refuge in an invented world, which borrows bites from reality then uses the imagination to turn them into a story that is unique and true – that’s the key to the meaning of this film.

In writing the screenplay I slowly transformed the real-life person into a “character”, and in so doing I re-invented a possible story for him.
Without consciously meaning to, I found myself making a film about dreams and nostalgia for lost childhood; about the search for identity of an individual who lives his own life like a film. He’s a drop-out, a loser in a society that does not tolerate mediocrity, let alone failure. It’s no surprise that Ethan Wildwood would love to disappear without trace, to vanish in the vast open spaces of the boundless America that reminds him, wherever he goes, of what for him is the land of the movies.
His solitude verges on madness. Reality blends with fiction in a subtle interaction that the film deliberately never makes too explicit; the idea was to maintain a certain ambiguity and to make room for this meeting point where the real and the imaginary merge, creating a single story.

It was exciting to write and then make the film, keeping that ambiguity as a narrative choice.
It was a fairly natural choice to make, too, in a film about someone like Ethan. It was my love for a character of his kind, apparently all sham, a childish prisoner of his futile ambitions, a dreamer to the end, that drove me to make the film in the first place. To demonstrate that behind every “loser” is a human being with his own riches, his own way of existing and his personal interpretation of life. One day when I was still working on the script, an American producer asked me: how come you insist on trying to make a film about a loser, who do you think is going to want to see it? Well, in my opinion, “losers” or “drop-outs”, whatever people call them, are not trite and predictable; on the contrary, they’re characters that experience the contradictions of our time more intensely than others. Isn’t the history of the cinema full of movies whose heroes and heroines are losers and no-hopers?

For me, this was a fantastic opportunity to go along for the ride on Ethan’s incredible journey, and unleash my imagination together with his.

Michael Beltrami

 

DIRECTOR'S BIO-FILMOGRAPHY

Born in Cologne in 1962, Michael Beltrami began at the age of 9 his first filmmaking attempts with a super 8 camera. In 1981, when still a student and as an autodidact, he began shooting his first film Bella? which he finished in 1984. The film was presented at various European film festivals and was a revelation in competition at the 33rd Mannheim International Film Festival. After working as an assistant director and assistant editor, Beltrami moved for five years to Los Angeles, where he lived and studied directing and script writing at the University of California. In 1991 he made the documentary Our Hollywood Education, an original and at the same time ironical journey into the myth of "film-making". With this documentary he won in 1992 the Swiss Film Center Award. For the following two years he worked as a line producer for some independent U.S. and European features. Since 1993 he has collaborated with Swiss Television, making a dozen or so documentaries to date. If his film Bella? made exactly twenty years ago, was a sort of first practical film school, Promised Land has now to be considered his true first professional feature film.

FILMOGRAPHY

"BELLA?" (1981-84)
Debut film, feature, 115 minutes
Participation at several Film Festivals: Mannheim; Torino, Solothurn, etc.

"CITY" (1985)
Experimental film, 12 minutes

"OUR HOLLYWOOD EDUCATION" (1991)
Documentary, 85 minutes
Participation at several Film Festivals: Locarno; Vancouver, Montreal, Los Angeles, Figueira da Foz, Solothurn, etc.
SWISS FILM CENTER AWARD FOR THE BEST LONG FILM OF THE YEAR 1992 - PROMISING YOUNG DIRECTORS (Prize awarded at the Solothurner Filmtage 1992)
PRIZE FROM THE SWISS FEDERAL BUREAU OF CULTURE

"JOHANNA AND PATIENCE GO TO HOLLYWOOD" (1992)
Documentary, 20 minutes

"FIGLI DI TELL: L'EUROPA S'AVVICINA!" (1993)
TV Documentary, 47 minutes
FIRST PRIZE AS BEST EUROPEAN TV DOCUMENTARY
PRIX CIRCOM 1994

"VIA DEL CENTENARIO DEL CINEMA" (1994-'95)
TV Documentary, 54 minutes
In the video competition Locarno int. Film Festival

"STORIE DI ORDINARIA MUSICA" (1995)
TV Documentary, 48minutes

"7 GIORNI IN OSPEDALE" (1996)
TV Documentary, 54 minutes

"MISSING IN BOSNIA - THE STORY OF AVDO PALIC" (1997)
Docu-drama for SWISS TV, 90 minutes

"DANZA LA TERRA" (1997)
TV Documentary for the European TV Magazine "ALICE", 8 minutes

"IL PAESE CHE NON C'E'" (1997-98)
TV Documentary, 48 minutes

"INVITO A NOZZE - appunti per un film sulla coppia" (1998)
TV Documentary, 52 minutes

"MURI E FANTASMI" (1999)
Portrait of the writer and poet Alberto Nessi
for the television series: "Letters from Switzerland", 17 minutes

"NIGHT & DAY - Fragments of American Life" (1999)
TV Documentary, 53 minutes

"VALENTINA E' PARTITA" (2000)
Documentary, 80 minutes
In competition Torino int. Film Festival
Honorable Mention

"PROJECT ONOMA" (2001-2002)
7 Short films (7 x 7 minutes) for the National Swiss Exposition - EXPO.O2

"TRISTE E ARRABBIATO - LA STORIA DI MARIAN" (2002)
Documentary, 88 minutes
In competition Torino int. Film Festival

"PROMISED LAND" ( 2004)
Feature Film, 99 minutes
In competition 57th International Film Festival, Locarno

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