Director Destroys his own film?

Wow. I'm a little shocked by this. Apparently the film Passio was a 6 year labor of love for director Paolo Cherchi Usai. What did he do when he was all done? He burned the negative. Well, not quite, there were a few prints made to be shown at a few festivals, but that's it. It'll be completely gone soon. It is hard to believe that after all the work the director put into the film that he'd just destroy it.

The unfortunate thing is that few people will ever know about this work, and will be forgotten very quickly in the backlog of thousands of other films that have come, and will come in the future.

This is like any play that you've seen. You remember seeing it. The performance was unique to that evening. But for the life of you you only remember bits and peices of it. The biggest difference is that is the medium that it's created in, and unless the show is a complete bomb, there won't be less than 10 shows produced of the play.

It will now be lost forever in the annals of time, so whatever message will only survive in the memories of the few who saw it. Sure, it was "radically different" (as the Director put it), but it'll also be long forgotten by the next Tribeca Film Festival.

ABC News:
No Theaters, No DVD Release for `Passio'