Last night at the 84th Academy Awards ceremony, Dante Ferretti and Francesca Loschiavo won the Oscar for Art Direction for Hugo by Martin Scorsese. This is the third Academy Award for Dante Ferretti and his wife Francesca Loschiavo, who dedicated the award to Italy.
In his career, Ferretti received seven nominations to the Academy Awards; in 2005 and 2008 he won the Oscar for The Aviator by Martin Scorsese and Sweeney Todd by Tim Burton. He has also been awarded with three BAFTA Awards for The Adventures of BaronMünchausen by Terry Gilliam, Interview with the Vampire by Neil Jordan and The Aviator by Martin Scorsese.
Ferretti has worked with many great directors, both American and Italian, such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Bellocchio, Luigi Comencini, Federico Fellini, Terry Gilliam, Franco Zeffirelli, Francis Ford Coppola, Anthony Minghella, and Tim Burton. Over the years he developed a very close professional relationship with Martin Scorsese, designing seven of his last eight movies.
In the video below he talks about his work for Hugo:
No Oscar for the other Italian who was nominated this year, Enrico Casarosa, writer and director of the Pixar short, La Luna. Inspired by Italo Calvino's story about building a ladder to the moon (The Distance of the Moon) and Casarosa's childhood, "La Luna" is a story about a young boy who rows out to sea in an old wooden boat with his bickering Papa and Grandpa, unaware that they are about to embark on an exciting lunar adventure. La Luna will play in wide release alongside next year's Brave. And all we can say to Casarosa is Bravo!
