Award-winning Italian film editor Roberto Perpignani (Il Postino, The Night of the Shooting Stars) began his career at the top.
Speaking at the Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran, Iran, on April 21, Perpignani, 77, recalled his first cinematic jobs: Assistant editor on Orson Welles’ The Trial and later Nella Tierra de Don Quijote (In the Land of Don Quixote). The first film Perpignani edited was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution) in 1964.
Perpignani worked on The Trial in Welles’ makeshift editing bay in the abandoned Gare d’Orsay in Paris, where Welles was also shooting scenes in another section of the train station.
Asked about the art of film editing by members of the press at the Fajr International Film Festival, Perpignani said, “My overall view on editing is what I learned from my own life experience. It’s difficult to put in summary such a complex issue and technique. But I can tell you how I got into cinema.”
“My dream was to become a painter. Then the great American filmmaker Orson Welles offered me a job and changed my life. I was Orson’s assistant without knowing anything about cinema. But I quickly got the hold of it after just one year of working with him,” he recalled.
Perpignani added, “After a while I went back to Rome and started looking for an assistant job but I could not get any offer. I was told ‘your only experience is that you just worked with Orson Welles.’ However my work experience did fascinate a certain young cinematographer called Bernardo Bertolucci. Although we shared the same taste, Bertolucci wanted me to be more than a simple assistant and more like his creative co-worker.”
Perpignani has worked on more than 100 films and television programs, including Last Tango in Paris, Caesar Must Die and Muhammad: The Messenger of God.
Presided over by writer-director Reza Mirkarimi, the 36th edition of Fajr International Film Festival runs through April 27. Notable guests include Franco Nero and Oliver Stone.
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