Eugenio Zanetti

Eugenio Zanetti (born October 19, 1949) is an Argentine dramatist, painter, film set designer, and theater and opera director. He won an Academy Award for Best Art Direction in 1995, for the film ''Restoration''.

Biography

Zanetti was born in Córdoba. After travelling to Europe in the mid 60's and meeting Pier Paolo Pasolini, he participated in the latter's film version of ''Medea''. After his father died, he returned to his country to help his family. He became involved in the cinema of Argentina, and provided set designs for Mario Sábato's ''The Power of Darkness'' (1979), for which he won a Moscow Film Festival Award for Design, and Alejandro Doria's '' Los Pasajeros del jardín'' (1982).

During the Malvinas/Falklands War he relocated to Los Angeles, and began a career in Hollywood working as the production designer for Wayne Wang in '' Slam Dance'' (1987). Zanetti created set designs for ''Some Girls'' (1988), for which he won a Toronto Festival of Festivals Design Award, ''Flatliners'' (1990), ''Last Action Hero'' (1993), ''Soapdish'' (1991), and ''Restoration'' (1995), for which he earned an Academy Award for Best Art Direction. He also designed set for '' What Dreams May Come'' (1998), '' The Haunting'' (1999), Alfonso Arau's '' Zapata: El sueño de un héroe'' (2004), and Roland Joffé's ''There Be Dragons'' (2011), among others. He returned to Argentine film in 2008, when he joined the production of Jorge Rodríguez's ''Árbol de fuego''.Grupo Payne: Se filmará en la provincia una super producción
Ultimately, ''Árbol de fuego'' was not made into a film.

Zanetti's more than 40 theater and opera productions in Europe and South America include: ''A Masked Ball'' and ''Nabucco'' by Giuseppe Verdi, and ''Madama Butterfly'' and ''Tosca'' by Giacomo Puccini. He also had a successful career as Director of Musicals, receiving the Thalia Award (equivalent to the Tony Award) in Argentina for his local productions of ''They're Playing Our Song'', ''Chicago'' and ''Dracula'' as a director, and the same award for his adaptation of Philippa Gregory's ''The White Queen''. He also earned a Star of the Sea Award for ''The Cherry Orchard'', '' Chapter Two'', ''Company'', and ''Peer Gynt''.

In 2014 he released his first film as writer and director, '' Amapola'', a fantasy drama film starring Camilla Belle, François Arnaud, Geraldine Chaplin, Leonor Benedetto, Lito Cruz and Elena Roger.

Selected filmography

Production designer

* '' Amapola'' (2014)
* '' The Haunting'' (1999)
* '' What Dreams May Come'' (1998)
* ''Restoration'' (1995)
* ''Tall Tale'' (1995)
* ''Last Action Hero'' (1993)
* ''Soapdish'' (1991)
* ''Flatliners'' (1990)
* ''Promised Land'' (1987)
* ''The Power of Darkness'' (1979)

Director/Writer

* '' Amapola'' (2014)

Influences

Zanetti was interviewed by novelist, travel writer and critic, Jason Webster for The Idries Shah Foundation in London, on 29 August 2017. In the filmed interview, Zanetti was asked about the impact that the Sufi mystical tradition and the writer, thinker and Sufi teacher, Idries Shah, whose work he discovered in the 1960s, had had on his life. Zanetti said that for the past fifty years, since the age of nineteen, he had been interested and influenced by Sufism; that the impact of "the Tradition" on him had been immense, and that Idries Shah had put in context an "enormous amount of knowledge", of "incredible depth". He added that the full, cultural impact of the Shah family's work in the tradition, including that of Zanetti's friend, film writer Arif Ali-Shah, will only become recognized and known with the passage of time, in years to come.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Zanetti, Eugenio
1949 births
Living people
People from Córdoba, Argentina
Argentine people of Italian descent
National University of Córdoba alumni
Argentine theatre directors
Argentine art directors
Best Art Direction Academy Award winners