Sophia Capasso shorts
I had the pleasure the other weekend of taking coffee with local actress-turned filmmaker, Sophia Capasso, local to Ipswich, that is. After a helpful word from a mutual friend, I had contacted Sophia with a view to showing one of her films as a tie-in with one of our features in the current Ipswich Film Society season. She obligingly sent me links to all her shorts to date, and in no time I was wanting to screen all three.
Sophia arrived with unexceptionable punctuality outside the Film Theatre, in spite of a spot of car trouble that left her companion stranded in front of the Corn Exchange and having to fence off the traffic warden. Nevertheless, we settled down to our coffees, and Sophia savoured one of Papaky’s legendary apple tartlets, while I quizzed her on how a Suffolk girl got to be on EastEnders and ended up making her own films.
Fortuitously, however, before I could do that, she immediately began grilling me about the Film Society, allowing me to relax and get my bearings. I could see straight away that this was not going to be one of those conversations with awkward silences: Sophia is wired, effusive and interested in people; she has an engaging smile, a professional’s knowledge of her craft, and we could have talked about movies till teatime.
After a childhood spent in Ipswich (Kesgrave High School), she got her big chance early on, when invited to do an open air Pride and Prejudice in Regent’s Park; bad timing when it fell smack in the middle of her ‘A’ levels! Happily, she was able to fit the bulk of her exams around rehearsals, with the exception of Drama, which, even though her coursework would have got her a ‘B’, she chose to drop rather than appear second rate! (If you want to make it in show business, you’ve got to be uncompromising!) Sophia definitely belongs to the class of people who believe in ‘getting up and doing it’, as opposed to theorising about it… So here she was, 18, with ‘A’ levels in Music and Art, and real-life experience in Drama, and living in London.
We talked about her nonno, who emigrated here after the war, and provided her with inspiration for her first film, L’immigrato, which enshrines his memories of the Second World War as a child in southern Italy. Like all her films, this was made on a shoestring, with the bulk of the budget going on flights to and from the Italian locations; a deceptive factor, since it looks a million dollars. (Indeed, all these films have a professional sheen that belies their humble budgets). She was lucky enough to have family and friends to support her on this ‘crazy venture’, to paraphrase her own words, some of whom act in the film, and she also has a DP, Jan Solberg, who really knows his lenses. Like any short film, it deals with one small event rather than a far-reaching major one, and is anything but documentary or biopic in form, though there are elements of both: three boys scrump around for food in the crystalline light of summer, and one of them shares a corn cob on the mountain side the night the bombers dumped their unused payload on the village. The acting of the children is remarkably good, Sophia bringing her improvisational know-how to bear on the unschooled young actors: as she puts it, she spent her first film working with children, a goat, and in a foreign language! With a five-day shoot, there are serendipitous moments Sophia looks back on with fondness, even if it was a ‘crazy experience’ she - quite unnecessarily - feels acutely self-conscious about screening, as if it were somehow callow, or amateurish.
That was in the summer of 2019. Eighteen months later, she decided to make a film during lockdown, which became Blinkers. She had wanted to do Que sera then, but it was just too impractical to gather a team at that time. Instead she and Jan, her DP, began thinking around the death of the High Street and Sophia eventually came up with this story of two girlfriends living tragically out-of-step lives one New Year’s Eve in London. The screenplay, which is highly intricate and demands a second viewing, was feasible without both actresses being present on set at the same time, and without the need for direct sound recording: consequently it would be Sophia, plus Jan, plus actor - keeping their distance, of course.
Blinkers is a tough call because it dares to treat the theme of young person suicide without a pall of grief thrown over it: the main character ‘frees herself’ from life, and the act becomes an authentic one of self-justification, with just a barely open escape hatch if the cards fall a certain way, and a payload of guilt for the surviving character if they don’t. The beauty of the images, and of the two young actresses, reinforces both the sense of waste and of ecstatic transfiguration at the end.
And now Capasso has made Que sera, which literalises the philosophy expressed by Hamlet in the words: ‘Let be’, and present in the undelivered suicide note of Blinkers. The theme now is that of domestic abuse, and again we have two female characters, one played by LJ Johnson, the surviving girl of Blinkers, who becomes aware that her neighbour is in an abusive relationship and unwittingly provides the soundtrack for her ‘self-liberation’, courtesy of Doris Day. It is another triumph, and it ends on a flourish of euphoria, with just a whiff of transgression.
Bold and humane, Capasso’s films are full of colour, ambition, and stunning close-up imagery. It may be too early to observe that she is drawn to female stories and ‘issues’: she is unapologetically feminist, while the short film format lends itself to unexpected violence (and perhaps it helps to have a recognisable framework for that). Who knows what she will turn to, if and when someone has the good sense to entrust her with a feature project. In the meantime, there is no shortage of energy or resourcefulness in this young film maker, so long as she is happy to work without getting paid!
Incidentally, the release of Que sera is tied in with the Lighthouse Women’s Aid charity for victims of domestic abuse, for which Sophia has already raised several hundred pounds, including running a half-marathon. Look out for the film at the Riverside, Woodbridge this weekend, part of their Eastern Anglia shorts programme.
