The Lost City of Z in F Magazine (Italy)

  

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Five Questions with James Gray

Turning this movie was adventurous?

A hell from the viewpoint of physical: 4 months in the forest at 40 degrees, between snakes, spiders, crocodiles and malaria. We’re back Exhausted and many members of the Troupe got sick.”

Where did you shoot?

“In Colombia along the course of the Rio Don Diego. Shooting in the jungle was inspired by the originals shots of the explorer Fawcett and light for paintings by Henri Rousseau.

He is not the first to be inspired by Percy Fawcett.

“Yes, about him, Conan Doyle, He modeled the professor George Challenger in novel The Lost World, which in turn inspired Michael Crichton’s world with Jurassic Park and Lost. “ 

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The Jungle Obsession That Devours Everything

We are from the parts of Apocalypse Now of Coppola or Aguirre, Herzog goddess. That is: the jungle is a heart of Darkness and the hero of the turn is prey to an obsession that it places it in the dimension of myth and at the same time it damns. Only this time behind the camera is James Gray, More controlled director, less extreme than a Coppola or Herzog. The result is a classic film, in which, drawing from David Grann’s book Looking for Z The Lost City (Corbaccio), Gray tells us the true story of the English explorer Percy Fawcett who, sent by the Crown to trace the borders between Brazil and Bolivia, thought he had found the remains of a lost civilization, much older than the European white one. To accompany him between malaria fevers, ambushes, indios traitors and fatigues, a small one Group of guides and carriers. Twice Percy came back in Amazonia, sacrificing to her obsession wife, children and all that Which had then disappeared swallowed from nothing. Presented at the festival Of Berlin with success, the film tackles intelligently a very present theme: the white man’s racism that has always been to consider other inferior civilizations. “All they deserve to have dignity, whether it be Indigenous or women, “said the director.

Thanks Posh.