Glamour, elegance and unconventionality not only describe the legendary Isabella Rossellini but also the tone of the closing gala of this year’s ICFF. Set inside the now popular film site the Hearn, from the outside it seems like a peculiar place to host such an event but once inside its potential becomes obvious. One could quickly become lost were it not for the lighting and red carpet to show the way. One of the clever creatives behind the event is Cristiano de Florentiis, Artistic Director and Co-Founder of ICFF who recounted that he’s been putting festivals on since the age of eleven. After a buzzing cocktail hour, Isabella Rossellini gave her exclusive one hour workshop about her career as the crowd fell silent in awe and admiration.
Ms Rossellini was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the festival that evening and is known to many as a famous actress and model but to fewer as a filmmaker and animal behaviour expert. As the audience sat in the blow-up love seats that those who attended the screenings in the distillery district know so well, Ms Rossellini took to the stage with grace, humour and an open heart.
“Film can mirror our society and be instrumental to our knowledge” she began. For Ms. Rossellini, it was working with director Guy Madden in the film ‘The Saddest Music in the World’ which inspired her to also become a director, something that she hadn’t given herself the permission to do before. Raised by film royalty with Ingrid Bergman as her mother and Roberto Rossellini as her father, Ms. Rossellini felt too much pressure to direct at first and so it wasn’t until much later in life that she followed in her father’s footsteps.
“I loved clothes and I loved fashion and I thought I would become a costume designer…my father gave me the first jobs.” Yet, it was only while working as a translator and journalist in New York for RAI-Italian Television when Ms. Rossellini was convinced by photographer Richard Avedon to start to model and act. He told her that “Modeling is a little bit like being a silent movie star, you don’t have words, you don’t have dialogue but I’m not photographing your beautiful nose, your beautiful face, I’m photographing your emotion and there is no beauty without emotions.” They went on to collaborate on many Vogue covers where Ms. Rossellini was able to convey a depth and versatility that made her a household name.
Ms. Rossellini, who garnered a reputation for being known as ‘The most beautiful woman in the world’, only started modelling at age 28 and acting at 31, which seems to have set a precedent for her defying expectations with her career. Recounting how Lancôme passed on renewing her contract at 42 after being told that “A woman in her late 40s could not represent [the] dream because women dream to stay young” it became clear to Ms. Rossellini that in that climate her steady work as model and actress was coming to an end.
“I did get a little depressed but not for too long because I have a secret about not getting depressed which is to follow my curiosity.” She went on to explain that the engine of her life is “curiosity and it is fueled by laughter.” This led her in her fifties on a seven-year journey in earning a master’s degree in Animal Behaviour and Conservation from Hunter College (City University of New York).
“Since I was a little girl I’ve loved animals,” Ms. Rossellini reminisced. When she was a teenager, her father gave her the book ‘King Solomon’s Ring’ by Konrad Lorenz, the founder of the science of animal behaviour. “When I read the book, it was as if a little light bulb went off in my head and I said ‘this is what I’m going to do when I’m a grown up… I’m going to make films about animals’ – but of course I didn’t do it [until I] became old.”
Recounting how intimidation of new technology partly prevented her from becoming a director, Ms. Rossellini was inspired by a new discovery. “Looking at my parents’ films being restored in different archives I looked at silent films and [found] something amazing. Georges Méliès was one of the first filmmakers, he made films at the beginning of the 1900s and the camera was as big as where I’m sitting, so they couldn’t move… yet his films were beautiful and full of fantasy. So when I decided to become a director, I said I’m going to work just like Georges Méliès.” After sharing a clip from Méliès’s ‘A Trip to the Moon’, Ms. Rossellini also showed how Buster Keaton has been an inspiration for her own comedy and filmmaking.
Isabella Rossellini encourages us to not limit ourselves to one passion or feel restricted by our age. One gets the feeling by listening to her speak that it is never too late to start and there is no excuse to stop dreaming. Many might not know that Ms. Rossellini struggled since childhood with scoliosis, and she actually showed her scar in David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’. She’s a testament to resilience and strength, a strong and empowered woman whose beauty also shines from within.
In 2016, Lancôme hired Ms. Rossellini back in 2016 as a brand ambassador to promote inclusivity in a fight against ageism. The style icon shared that she chose to not have her face retouched for her 2023 Vogue cover, deliberately showing the lines that have aged her so gracefully. At 72 and now not only a mother of two but a grandmother, Ms Rossellini seems to show no signs of slowing down. She’ll be featured on her fortieth Vogue cover this September.
Article by Sonia Suvagau
