Program
2025

18 June
Wednesday 18-06-2025
time 18:30
Chiesa della Maddalena

Foto 4 Como suturar la tierra

Tommaso Ottomano

QUANTO TI VORREI – Chiello

Italy 2021 , 4'02''

 

Chiesa della Maddalena
Ore 18:30
Vedomusica – Omaggio Tommaso Ottomano

QUANTO TI VORREI – Chiello (Italia, 2021, 4’02”)

   

Vedomusica – Omaggio Tommaso Ottomano
LOVE – Baustelle (Italia, 2017, 0’56”)
ALTALENA BOY – VERSIONE SGRAVATA – Lucio Corsi (Italia, 2015, 4’23”)
COSA FAREMO DA GRANDI? – Lucio Corsi (Italia, 2019, 8’23”)
QUANTO TI VORREI – Chiello (Italia, 2021, 4’02”)
LA PRIMAVERA – Jovanotti (Italia, 2021, 4’59”)
THE LONELIEST – Måneskin (Italia, 2022, 4’42”)
DOVE VAI? – Chiello (Italia, 2022, 4’06”)
GOSSIP – Måneskin feat. Tom Morello (Italia, 2023, 4’44”)
TU SEI IL MATTINO – Lucio Corsi (Italia, 2024, 4’28”)
VOLEVO ESSERE UN DURO – Lucio Corsi (Italia, 2025, 5’52”)

PAURA – LA VERGINE NELLA FONTANA (Italia, 2021, 7’)
PAURA – LA NOTTE DI EVELYN (Italia, 2022, 13’)

 

 CASA TOMMY29864

Tommaso Ottomano is a Tuscan film-maker, creative director, author, and composer. As a director, he has mostly worked in the world of fashion and music, writing and directing many remarkable music videos for artists such as Lucio Corsi, Måneskin, Jovanotti, Chiello, Baustelle, and others over the past few years. In 2023, his music video for Måneskin’s The Loneliest won the Best Rock award at the MTV Video Music Awards. Ottomano also received the “Regista dell’anno” title at the 2022 and 2024 Videoclip Italia Awards.
Tommaso is equally renowned for writing and directing experimental videos, short films, and advertising campaigns for fashion brands such as Prada, Gucci, Versace, Dior, Armani, Missoni, Bulgari, Roberto Cavalli, and Moncler. He directed two original shorts (PAURA) inspired by the Italian horror cinema of the ’70s in collaboration with CAM Sugar.
Over the years, he has established a close collaboration with Chiello and Lucio Corsi as their art director and author, directing all their music videos. An artistic brotherhood developed with Lucio in particular, which culminated in Ottomano co-writing and performing Volevo essere un duro – now a certified gold record – with Corsi on stage at the 75th Sanremo Festival and then again at the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest. In 2024, Tommaso Ottomano joined the Sugar Music Publishing roster as an author.

 

 

How did music videos enter in your life?

Music and cinema have always been my passion; on top of this, I have always thought of music in visual terms. I actually sort of bumped into music videos, when with my band we had to come up with some images. In Porto Ercole, where I lived, there was no one who worked in this field. I had to improvise myself as film director. Experimenting with means and techniques, I developed my own language; and when I met Lucio Corsi, our collaboration extended naturally to videomaking.

The key partnerships in your career are those with Lucio Corsi and Chiello: can you identify a common thread between your videos for these artists?

There is the research of an accurate imaginary that develops in parallel with the evolution of music. Corsi’s videos used to have a naturalistic look but then became more visionary and surreal, if not oneiric. For the latest, we made still different choices: Tu sei il mattino is set in a lift; Volevo essere un duro plays out within the family atmosphere of a household. These choices reflect the evolution of his musical journey, which the music video transposes into images. Same thing happened for Chiello, with these somehow wild, punk – but also ironic – videos, with a mise-en-scène that sticks out. The latter is an element found in the videos of both, and also one that fundamentally distinguishes my style. On top of this, add the work on the general look: I am in charge of the artistic project, from video to graphics, something that enables my control over the artist’s creative line and the way it is perceived.

Something striking about your videomaking is the wealth and complexity of the imagery: there is a precise idea of mise-en-scène, an articulate world, painstakingly detailed in terms of production design. A trend that is poles apart from the typical minimalism of Italian video.

I want to have fun. I want to do what I like and be happy with what I see: I’m not into videomaking for the money, because, as everyone knows, there is no money for music videos in Italy. Record executives are demanding, but then they won’t give you a penny. Through music videos I make a revolutionary gesture. I don’t want to adjust to this state of affairs, but prove that, if one has ideas, there is a way to do nice things even with little money. Therefore, I push to get the most out of what is available. I always find a way to complicate things and go over budget. But then it’s right, because I believe in this, and don’t want to make do.

From your works, beginning from the videos of your band Blind Fool Love, transpires a tone that I’d define epic, something that eludes a precise time period, locating itself on an almost abstract chronological dimension.

Correct: I don’t want my works to be recognizable from a chronological point of view. I often create actual ‘bugs,’ mistakes, anachronisms, mixing time periods. You can’t get the decade in which Volevo essere un duro is set, because there are elements evoking several of them. In fact, as you say, this aspect is recognizable right away; my band’s videos already featured this approach.

How do you construct a music video?

I draw up a plan, a fully accurate scene list. At this point, you need to be the greatest jazz musician alive and improvise: ready to change the script on the fly and adapt to circumstances, because there will always be something that goes wrong. It is in this precariousness that I am at my best – on no-budget films, there where you sweat blood. When I work on advertising campaigns loaded with money, I don’t have fun, the challenge is missing.

Did you have a good budget for Jovanotti’s La primavera, which is a masterpiece in my opinion?

From a certain point of view, I did: the question is always relative to the song and artist involved. The video was nonetheless made with basic means. It was shot on film indeed, but the set was in cardboard – even though I did like the resulting look.

As usual, it is a layered, complex work…

… and filled with insider tips. The general plan was clear only for yours truly. Those on the set did not understand what they were doing. Much of the merit goes to Jovanotti, who trusted me and gave me carte blanche. The best of music video is the collaboration that is established between two artists, the film director and the musician, their visions which mix up. For me, the human relationship with the artist is crucial – I need to meet him.

What’s your work on the music track like?

It works like this: the music needs to give me something, to inspire me with the idea; if it doesn’t click, I give up right away. It means it’s not for me. This also explains why I make videos with the same artists: I received so many proposals but the feeling was missing. I never look at the advantage: I need to like the song and artist.

Can we discuss the characters that populate your videos? For example, I’m thinking of the hyper-characterized individuals in the videos The Loneliest and Gossip.

I pushed a lot on that aspect, because I thought that Måneskin’s videos usually feature them and only them. I thought that placing them in wider contexts with other characters would be interesting. In Gossip, I liked the idea of studying each individual character: each of them had a strongly-identified look, I knew who they were and what they did in their life. It was a structured work, close to cinema. I adore the video in which not everything is explicit, those that leave room for the viewer’s insight or imagination, those in which you get lost and in which everyone can imagine their own film.

Your shorts Paura show that you aim at cinema.

The project stemmed from a Sugar collection, a selection of 1970s soundtracks of horror movies: they wanted to link something visual to it. I said yes and, as usual, I went too far… This is how I came up with these amateur, mannerist short films. Here I evoked the typical scenes of those films with no dialogue and just musical accompaniment, that seem to foreshadow music videos. I was interested in highlighting that all-Italian aesthetics, paying homage to masters like Bava and Argento.

 


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