Urban tropical

Urban tropical is a multidisciplinary project of participatory filmmaking practices that Kaiya Collective, in collaboration with Odemà, Terzo Paesaggio and 5e6 Film, is carrying out in the Corvetto and Porto di Mare neighborhoods, in the south-eastern outskirts of Milan.
The project is part of a path of filmmaking practices that take shape around the creation of film objects (feature film, short film, documentary, video art installation, video clip) creating a constellation of hybrid and multidisciplinary artistic objects. The entire creative and production process is carried out with a view to actively involving the territory and artistic and cultural redevelopment of spaces and places.
Tropicale Urbano joined the development phase of Suranga D. Katugampala's Still Here, currently in production.

Prasad Hettiarachchi

Scenography lab

The scenography lab took place with artistic direction of Prasad Hettiarachi who guided the participants in the creation of sets for the theater lab and for the public restitution event. The artist, starting from the footages by the director Katugampala and the suggestions of the script of the film, reinterpreted the landscape and the environments of the neighborhoods.
The preliminary study led to the design some simple and non-invasive sets with a view to redeveloping the area and using recycled materials.

Designing of simple and non-invasive sets

Painting by Prasad Hettiarachchi

Sound design lab

The sound design lab held by the musician and composer Shari DeLorian involved the participants in a guide to listening and recording sounds, which took place in the neighborhoods. The sounds collected in heterogeneous environments and situations (courtyards, landings, stairs, construction sites, streets, a football match, a party in the Park) were used by Shari flanked by the percussionist Viraj Dhananjaya to create the soundtrack of the video installation The season of great hunts by Suranga Katugampala.

Shari De Lorian

Theater lab

Performative actions in search of sound

Theater lab

The theater lab tooks place on an itinerant basis in the areas of the neighborhoods, where the film is set. The participants were involved in urban games, urban explorations of courtyards, parks, gardens and landings, sensory exercises and listening to the group.

Urban games in the courtyards of the neighborhoods

Poster in the neighborhood

Theatrical training, group work and the study of some basic acting techniques were experimented in the laboratory for adolescents and adults, which were used for the realization of a theatrical performance presented at Polo Ferrara during the public restitution event of the project. In a bar reproduced on the stage, the monologue Inisnia came to life, a play that tells the life of Snia viscosa and other abandoned industrial areas in the Milanese suburbs. The participants in the workshop interpreted the patrons of a club in the Milanese suburbs, participating with jokes, actions and events that were inserted ad hoc in the dramaturgy and direction of the monologue transformed into a choral show.

The season of the great hunts

Places and stories appeared through this filmmaking practices and they slowly started to live the script.
Thus the video installation The season of the great hunts is born, enriched by Shari DeLorian’s sound design e Prasad Hettiarachchi’s illustrations.
The title refers to a huge and mysterious police operation during the day in late July. A great manhunt with vans besieging the streets and squares of Corvetto, while drones and helicopters flew low.
The metaphor of the hunt, evokes Hands over the city, a movie by Francesco Rosi that denounces the urban speculation and the housing emergency. Another movie has slipped under the track: Idiot by Mani Kaul, that through a game of overlapping seems to creep into the memory and desires of the african and asian diasporas that inhabit the neighborhood.
History overwhelmingly repeats itself, while the main characters change their faces.
A neighborhood on the edge of a large city. In the shadow of the alleys, the inhabitants lightly touch each other. The slowly passing time is beaten by the deep and thunderous sound of a helicopter, icon of a repressive and dark power. The houses crumble, the walls scream, they spy on the world with wide eyes, while the bodies slowly slip into the dark, swollen by a psychedelic and hallucinating night. The narration is fragmented, the images overlap, the sound fabric is distorted and creates connections, giving back to the cinema all its anarchic and subversive power.

Play the installation

Cast Hemanthi Wicramasinghe, Aram Ghasemy, Bandu Sirilal, Brian Ngugi, Cathrine Ngendo, Nandana Panagoda, Perera, Zied, Ibrahim, Druido, Madeleine, Sofia Aicha, Othman, Feade Kristo, Tency Kannangara, Anjali Fernando, Sanju Perera Uyanage, Nilanthi Thissera, Yashodya Wellawattage.
Ideation Suranga Katugampala, Jasmine Khan Assistant camera Federico Allocca Assistant director and assistant editor Simona Cella Light Lamin Diop, Chatura Madusanka Illustration Prasad Hettiarachchi Actor coach Davide Gorla Scenography Gaia Zani, Chathura Madusanka Audio editing e sound mixing Shari DeLorian Direction, sound, editing and finalization Suranga Katugampala.
Thanks to The inhabitants of the courtyards, Daniela Farioli, Nadia Zoller, Sara Sacchetto, Andrea Perini, Marta Bertani, Graziano Chiscuzzu, Chiara Budano, Janith Neluwa, Adolfo Bellini, Claudia Ciaccio, Edoardo Pontecorvi, Sherith Arasakulasuriya, Judith Happuarachchi, Aman Katugampala, Nadia Levato, Elisa Serangeli, Mirko Zenati, Gianluca Ceresoli, Viraj Owattamudalige, Lab Mazzini, MadeinCorvetto, Terzo Paesaggio, Brigata Abd Elsalam, Polo Ferrara, Fondazione Pianoterra, Laboratorio autogestito Paratodos.
Special thanks to the authors of the writings and drawings on the walls of the Corvetto (Milan)