Salvatore, Shoemaker of Dreams: Premiere at the Venice International Film Festival
The 77th annual Venice International Film Festival will be held from 2 to 12 September 2020. This means experts with the capital letter "E" will bring themselves and their artworks under the Venetian sun. One of the movies that meant to be seen - an autobiography about Salvatore Ferragamo, an Italian shoemaker known for his iconic handmade shoes.
Salvatore Ferragamo (1898-1960) was an innovator during his long-termed fifty-year career in footwear design. His family name evokes beauty, traditional craftsmanship, and an assurance of quality and comfort. Born in Bonito, Italy, a remote hill town not far from Naples, Ferragamo was the eleventh in an agricultural family of fourteen children. Since poverty limited the resources needed to sustain a family, many Italians made their own shoes. Since his childhood, Salvatore was meant to be a master and an artist whose main goal was creating masterpieces that, in a literal sense, would be close to earth and people.
“That has been my life’s work: striving to learn to make shoes that always fit and the refusal to put my name to any that do not fit. Therefore please look behind the story of the small, barefoot, unlettered boy who became a famous shoemaker and seek the pleasure you will obtain from walking well.”
These are the final words - written by the Ferragamo himself - of the preface to the artist's autobiography, the tale of a pioneer whose creative genius remains as unrivaled as it is timeless still today and who unintentionally bound his story to the world of film.
And now his autobiography brings us full circle back to film, with a feature-length documentary directed by Luca Guadagnino and presented at the Venice Film Festival. A movie, which will remind us that the fashion world is more than fabrics, ruffles, and glitter - it's hard work, a long history behind it, and what most important people's lives.
Video: PR
