G + A = <3 – A CONVERSATION WITH ABEL FERRARA AND GABRIELE TINTI

As I was falling asleep, my brain decided it was time to clock in. Typical. All day, when I needed it most, it felt sluggish, weighed down by the effort of thinking. But the second I surrendered to rest? Suddenly, it was my most poetic hour. Thoughts unspooled like an old film reel; memories, half-baked ideas, messages I forgot to respond to, and the eternal question: Why is it the second I surrender to rest, my mind ignites: like a physicist watches the cosmos arrange, and I see my daily tasks become mundane. When I was younger, I never had time for this kind of reflection. Back then, life was about making it to the next day. Now, I’m lying awake, overanalyzing my own existence. But here’s the thing; if I’m the only one hearing these thoughts, how important can they really be? Maybe meaning itself is just a trick we play on ourselves, a magic act where the ghost of an audience is always in on it. And in that moment of sleepless delirium, I realized how lucky I am. Thinking—truly thinking—the time to think—is a luxury I finally have.

But reading someone else’s thoughts? There’s a relief in seeing emotions laid bare on a page, a quiet connection in knowing someone else has been here too. In poetry, I find the stillness where unspoken thoughts finally take shape: it waits, still and patient, until we meet it. Words on a page only become alive when we decide to read them. But once recited, once spoken aloud, they take on a life of their own. This is what happens in Bleeding, when Gabriele Tinti’s words meet Abel Ferrara’s voice. Ferrara doesn’t just read the poetry; he breathes it. He lets it unravel in real time, transforming ink into voice, voice into something that lingers; something that exists in another dimension entirely. In silence, poetry waits. In voice, it is set free.

Solange Smith: Through writing, wrestling with loss and desire, how has your understanding of love evolved? Or does it still leave you with more questions than answers?

Gabriele Tinti: Omnia vincit amor—love conquers all—it is the driving force behind everything. The moment you stand up (or sit down and bleed, as in my case, as a writer) and set out to create something, to bring an idea to life, if you are not moved by passion, by desire, there is little chance of success. Writing itself, like all art, is an act of faith in life—still, despite everything.

S.S: Is it easier for you to write about tragedy than love? Pain often feels like it demands to be heard, but love, when it’s real, can be elusive. Do you find one easier to grasp, or do they both come with their own risks?

G.T.: Love is tragedy; it is resistance to death, to oblivion. It is the melancholy awareness of the inevitability of the end, of dissolution, of returning to the inorganic. Every act of writing is an act of love, and to write about love is nothing other than to write tragically.

S.S: There’s a rawness in your work—not just in the words, but in how they’re said. Do you think poetry should cut as much as it heals, or does something else emerge when the layers get torn apart?

G.T: I have never seen poetry as a cure, let alone as consolation, but rather as a signal—to stay alert, to try to understand the violent and brutal side of the world, to exorcize it. True poetry, to me, is an attempt at prayer, lament, confession. And a prayer, a lament, a confession always arise from a wound, from the poet’s ‘dark eye,’ as Leonardo wrote.

S.S: They say there’s a moment when you stop imitating and begin speaking your own truth. When did that moment arrive for you, and what did it feel like?

G.T: We are an accumulation of all the words we have read, of all the images we have encountered, of everything we have lived. Ultimately, one never stops imitating, never stops wrestling with one’s ancestors. But it is true that at a certain point, a distinct voice emerges—one that is clearly recognizable and through which each of us is, in some way, freed from the burden of indebtedness to other poets. At that point, the anguish fades because they are all there inside us (there is never true originality), and yet, none of them remain.

S.S: You’ve seen your words come alive in performances. Has hearing them spoken by another ever revealed something about them—or about you—that you hadn’t seen before?

G.T: Every reading is an expansion. I don’t believe it reveals new meanings in the words, but it is certainly a moment in which the words come to life differently from how they were conceived—in silence, in contemplation (if one can use such a term for the violent and solipsistic act of writing), in solitude.

S.S: Your poetry often reaches back to voices of the past, echoing through forgotten time. Have you ever felt one of those voices so close that it felt like they were speaking through you, instead of just to you?

G.T: Eliot wrote that every poem is a living unity of all the poems that have ever been written, a hand-to-hand struggle with the ancestors. My entire writing is a phantasmagoria, a theater of memory, aimed at making the absent present. I am convinced that the voices of the past—the ones I have loved— exist within me, just as they do in anyone who moves through that vast cemetery that is poetry.

S.S: Your poetry often lingers with death—not as an end, but as something that never fully leaves. Is writing about it a way of trying to understand it, or is it more about learning to live with its constant presence?

G.T: Writing is resisting death, defeat time, living in the great, necessary illusion that this is possible.

S.S: Your films often linger in the moral gray areas, where good and evil blur. How do you see redemption—does it feel possible, or is it just another role we play to make sense of our actions?

ABEL FERRARA: Redemption is not a result; it is a process, a moment-to-moment, day-by-day decision to live by the true words of Jesus Christ.

S.S: Self-destruction is a recurring theme in your work, yet there’s often a spiritual thread running through it. Do you believe suffering brings us closer to who we truly are, or is it just another distraction from that truth?

A.F: Suffering caused by external factors—an accident or illness, whether to ourselves or loved ones—is one thing. But self-induced suffering, I feel, is a delusion. We are not on earth to suffer; we are not born in suffering or sin.

S.S: Love in your films isn’t soft or simple; it’s often tangled in chaos, obsession, and survival. Do you think love has an inherent destructive quality, or is that just the way it shows up in your work?

A.F: What I think and what shows up in my work are the same. Love is a complex, natural state that affirms our existence as a community. People who are loved are not born alone, nor do they die alone.

S.S: When making a film, how much of your own inner struggles make their way into the process? Do you ever feel like you’ve exorcised something by the time the project is finished, or is it never fully laid to rest?

A.F: The exorcism is only the beginning of more to come. The more each film reveals, the more the struggle must continue.

S.S: You’ve been called fearless in your filmmaking, but is there a story or truth that still unsettles you? Something you haven’t yet been able to face or express?

A.F: No, but whether I want to dedicate a film to it is something else.

S.S: You and Gabriele both explore raw, uncomfortable truths in your work. Was there a moment in ‘Bleedings’ when you saw something in his poetry that had touched on something you’ve been circling in your films?

A.F: All of it.

S.S: Your work often blurs the line between reality and performance. When was the last time you found yourself unable to separate the two—whether on set, in writing, or even in life itself?

A.F: I don’t try; it’s impossible.

S.S: Your films confront death head-on, but what about filmmaking itself—does it help you come to terms with mortality, or does it pull you even further into it?

A.F: We are all going to die. That’s not something to be pulled away from; it’s the reality that must be accepted.

Gabriele Tinti is an Italian poet, translator, and art critic. He has written inspired by

masterpieces of ancient art, collaborating with institutions such as the Archaeological

Museum of Naples, the Capitoline Museums, the National Roman Museum, the Ara Pacis

Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the British Museum in London, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, LACMA in Los Angeles, the Colosseum

Archaeological Park, and the Glyptothek in Munich. His poems have been read by actors

such as Willem Dafoe, Kevin Spacey, and Abel Ferrara. In 2016, he published Last Words

(Skira Rizzoli) in collaboration with American artist Andres Serrano. In 2020, his poetry

collection was released in collaboration with artist Roger Ballen by Powerhouse Books

(New York). In 2021, 24 Ore Culture published the Rovine project in a volume by Libri

Scheiwiller (Milan), and the English edition was released simultaneously by Eris Press

(London/New York). In 2022, his poetry collection Sanguinamenti – Incipit Tragoedia

was published by La Nave di Teseo (Milan) and, in 2023, by Contra Mundum Press (New

York). In 2023, Confessions (Eris Press, London/New York) was released, a collection of

poems in English with unpublished drawings by Andres Serrano.

Abel Ferrara is one of the most controversial and admired contemporary artists. Born in

the Bronx, New York, on July 19, 1951, Abel Ferrara directed his first Super 8 film as a

teenager before collaborating with screenwriters Nicholas St. John and John McIntyre. In

the late 70s and early 80s, he directed his first films, The Driller Killer (1979) and The

Angel of Vengeance (1981). In the 90s, his international successes included King of New

York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992), Body Snatchers (1993), The Addiction (1995), and

The Funeral (1996). Bad Lieutenant, starring Harvey Keitel, was presented at the Cannes

Film Festival in 1992 in the Un Certain Regard section. The following year, Ferrara

returned to Cannes with Body Snatchers. The Addiction, starring Christopher Walken, was

selected for the Berlinale in 1995, while The Funeral, starring Benicio Del Toro,

Christopher Walken, and Isabella Rossellini, won two awards at the Venice Film Festival in

1996. Mary, with Juliette Binoche, Forest Whitaker, and Heather Graham, won four

awards at Venice in 2005. In 2011, Ferrara received the Pardo d’Onore at Locarno. The

2010s saw Ferrara’s collaboration with Willem Dafoe, who starred in 4:44 Last Day on

Earth (2012), presented at Venice, Pasolini (2014), also presented at Venice, Alive in

France(2017), presented at Cannes at the Quinzaine, Tommaso (2019), and Siberia, shown

at the last Berlinale. Recently, he was awarded the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the

Filmmaker at the 77th Venice International Film Festival, dedicated to a personality who

has particularly influenced contemporary cinema. His recent film Padre Pio, starring Shia

LaBeouf, which revisits Christian themes dear to the artist, went viral.