Lorena Luciano

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Lorena Luciano
Born
Milan, Italy
NationalityItalian, American
OccupationDocumentary filmmaker
Notable work
  • Dario Fo and Franca Rame: A Nobel for Two (1998)
  • Urbanscapes (2006)
  • Coal Rush (2012)
  • It Will Be Chaos (2018)

Lorena Luciano is an Italian documentary filmmaker best known for her documentary film It Will Be Chaos, winner of an Emmy Award for Outstanding Current Affairs documentary in 2019.[1] and winner of Best Directing Award at the Taormina International Film Festival.[2] As a director, editor, and writer she has worked on feature documentaries and TV series for national and international cable TV and streamers. She is the recipient of the Sundance Institute/A&E Brave Storyteller Award, and her work has been recognized with art grants from the MacArthur Foundation,[3] the New York State Council on the Arts,[4] and the Ben & Jerry's Foundation.

She lives in New York City.[1]

Early life and education[edit]

Lorena Luciano was born and raised in Milan, Italy, where she majored in Law at the University of Milan. Luciano never trained as an attorney, and instead moved to New York, where she founded production company Film2 with film partner and future husband Filippo Piscopo. In New York, she pursued a career in filmmaking. She stayed in the United States, eventually gaining dual citizenship.

Career[edit]

Luciano's first documentary was Dario Fo and Franca Rame: a Nobel for Two.[5][6] The film is a portrait of Italian iconoclastic playwright Dario Fo and his lifelong partner and actor Franca Rame. Fo, one of political theater's leading figures, granted Luciano and co-director Filippo Piscopo exclusive access to never-before-seen archival footage of his plays all the way back to 1969.

On October 10, 1997, during the late production stage of Luciano's film, Dario Fo unexpectedly won the Nobel Prize for Literature,[7][8] as the first theater playwright and actor to earn it in the history of the Swedish Academy.[9] Luciano's film on Dario Fo premiered at the Venice Film Festival and was distributed internationally.[5][10] It also won the Finalist Award at the Houston Film Festival and was acquired by universities worldwide.[11]

Luciano's second film, Urbanscapes, was released theatrically in New York City in 2006 and received positive reviews from major publications in the US and Europe.[12][13] Its theatrical screenings were extended by popular demand.

Variety highlighted the "stark, stripped-to-essentials splendor of the film" with scenes that remain in the mind "long after the closing credits".[14]

The New York Times wrote: "Urbanscapes plants a camera in neighborhoods gone to seed, cultivating a bittersweet portrait of American ruin", with "an emphasis sticking on those poetically entropic facades".[15]

Luciano's third film, Coal Rush,[16] captures, over a span of 5 years, a story of water contamination unfolding in the coalfields of West Virginia. The film documents a small forgotten community of coal miners in Mingo County, West Virginia allegedly poisoned by a major coal company, Massey Energy,[17] injecting billions of gallons of coal slurry underground.[18] The film was screened in competition at the 2012 Atlanta Film Festival,[19][20][21] selected at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival,[22] and bestowed the Social Justice Award by Amy Goodman in 2013 at the Quad Cinema in New York City.[23][24] Internationally, Coal Rush won the Audience award at the Milan Film Festival (MIFF),[25] the Best Documentary Award at the San Marino Film Festival,[26] the Sustainable Award at Florida's Cinema Verde,[27] and it was presented at Cannes Doc,[28] Fife Ile de France in Paris, Cine Eco Seia in Portugal, and Vatavaran in India. The documentary was picked up for distribution by The Orchard, a film distributor now called 1091.[16] It aired on several streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime Video,[29] Starz, Apple TV,[30] Tubi, and Hulu. The subject of Coal Rush is also the topic of Desperate,[31] a non-fiction book written by The Wall Street Journal reporter Kris Maher in 2021.[32]

Other documentary films documenting the US coal mining communities include Harlan County, USA, Burning the Future: Coal in America, and The Last Mountain.

While presenting Coal Rush at film festivals, Luciano worked on the feature-length documentary It Will Be Chaos (formerly known as In the Middle), focusing on the European refugee crisis. The documentary was awarded grants from the MacArthur Foundation, multiple grants from Chicken and Egg Pictures, an artist grant from NYSCA, and it was selected for the IFP Market and the IDFA Forum.

In 2019, It Will Be Chaos won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Current Affairs documentary[33] at the 40th News & Documentary Emmy Awards.

It Will Be Chaos also won the Best Directing Award at the 2018 Taormina International Film Festival[34] and the Humanitarian Award at the Socially Relevant Film Festival New York.[35] It has been shortlisted for the 2019 David di Donatello Awards[36] and screened, beyond dozen of film festivals, at venues such as the European Parliament, a refugee compound in Yemen, the World Bank in DC, the National Film Institute in Barcelona, Spain, and it was programmed at the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

Luciano is a frequent film festival juror and international speaker, and serves as a National Emmy Judge.

As of 2022, Luciano is presently directing a Sundance Institute-supported documentary on the Me Too movement within the Roman Catholic Church, titled #nunstoo.[37]

Style[edit]

For her documentaries, Lorena Luciano adopts a cinéma vérité style, avoiding voice-over narration, that mixes observational footage, on-camera interviews, stylized footage, and archive.

Personal life[edit]

Luciano lives in Brooklyn with her husband Filippo Piscopo and their two sons. She divides her work between projects for hire and independent feature films.

Filmography[edit]

Awards and nominations[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b Alcinii, Daniele (2019-09-25). ""It Will Be Chaos", "Crime + Punishment" among News & Doc Emmy winners". Realscreen. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  2. ^ "Taormina Film Fest | 26 Giugno - 2 Luglio". Taormina Film Fest | 26 June - 2 July 2022. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  3. ^ ""In the Middle" Documentary Film - MacArthur Foundation". www.macfound.org. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  4. ^ "NYSCA : New York State Council on the Arts". www.nysca.org. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  5. ^ a b "Dario Fo and Franca Rame: a Nobel for Two - Cinema Guild Non-Theatrical". store.cinemaguild.com. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  6. ^ "Dario Fo and Franca Rame: A Nobel for Two (1998) - IMDb". www.imdb.com. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  7. ^ Bohlen, Celestine (October 10, 1997). "Italy's Barbed Political Jester, Dario Fo, Wins Nobel Prize". The New York Times. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  8. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1997". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  9. ^ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1997". NobelPrize.org. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  10. ^ "Dario Fo and Franca Rame: a Nobel for Two". www.artfilms-digital.com. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  11. ^ "Dario Fo and Franca Rame: A Nobel for Two". IMDb. September 6, 1998. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  12. ^ Gonzalez, Ed (June 28, 2006). "Review: Urbanscapes". Slant Magazine. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  13. ^ Voice, Village (June 27, 2006). "'Urbanscapes'". The Village Voice. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  14. ^ Leydon, Joe (July 11, 2006). "Urbanscapes". Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  15. ^ Lee, Nathan (July 5, 2006). "'Urbanscapes,' a Documentary on the Decaying of Neighborhoods". The New York Times. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  16. ^ a b "Coal Rush". IMDb. March 29, 2012. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  17. ^ "#08-031: 01-17-08 Massey Energy to Pay Largest Civil Penalty Ever for Water Permit Violations". www.justice.gov. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  18. ^ "Coal mining's long legacy of water pollution in West Virginia". america.aljazeera.com. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  19. ^ "New Documentary Exposes America's 'Other BP' Disaster". HuffPost. 2012-03-22. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
  20. ^ "Atlanta Film Festival Alumni 1976 to the Present". Atlanta Film Festival. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  21. ^ Goldberg, Matt (March 1, 2012). "2012 Atlanta Film Festival Line-Up Announced; Includes THE CABIN IN THE WOODS and Season Premiere Screening of GAME OF THRONES". Collider. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  22. ^ "Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival". Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  23. ^ "Amy Goodman to Deliver Keynote Address". Socially Relevant FF. March 1, 2014. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  24. ^ "Rated Sr : Socially Relevant Film Festival New York Competition Slate Announced". IMDb. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  25. ^ "MIFF Film Festival Awards 2014 - Milano". www.miff.it. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  26. ^ "Coal Rush Movie Review". February 7, 2015. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  27. ^ "Cinema Verde | Search Results". www.cinemaverde.org. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  28. ^ "Rated SR Socially Relevant Film Fest bring winning films to Cannes Doc Corner | Filmfestivals.com". www.filmfestivals.com. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  29. ^ "Watch Coal Rush | Prime Video". www.amazon.com. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  30. ^ Luciano, Lorena; Piscopo, Filippo (April 21, 2015). "Coal Rush | Apple TV". Apple TV. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  31. ^ Williams, John (December 20, 2021). "In 'Desperate,' a Reporter Dives Deep Into Dirty Water". The New York Times. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  32. ^ "Kris Maher — Reporter at The Wall Street Journal". WSJ. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  33. ^ staff, T. H. R. (September 24, 2019). "News & Documentary Emmys: 2019 Winners". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  34. ^ Anderson, Ariston (July 23, 2018). "Taormina Film Fest Awards: Polish Drama, Refugee Doc Among Winners". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  35. ^ NY, SR Socially Relevant Film Festival. "Award Winners Announced by SR Socially Relevant Film Festival NY 2019 International Jury". PRLog. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  36. ^ "Accademia del Cinema Italiano - Premi David di Donatello". www.daviddidonatello.it. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  37. ^ "Sundance Institute Announces Latest Documentary Fund Grantees - sundance.org". May 20, 2020. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
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