Sarah Marder
a farm girl from Kansas who went yuppie, moved to Italy and then, twenty years later, turned green
a farm girl from Kansas who went yuppie, moved to Italy and then, twenty years later, turned green
While I grew up on a farm in Kansas, oddly enough I moved to Italy way back in 1988 and have lived here ever since.
I have known and loved Cortona, the town where we filmed THE GENIUS OF A PLACE, since 1986, when my now husband took me there the first time, hoping to impress me with the place's beauty. It worked. Two years later we married (in Cortona, naturally). Click here to see some of the things I love about Cortona.
In professional terms, I'm a corporate manager turned filmmaker. During the 22 years I worked for a Really Big Bank (aka Citigroup), I did everything from selling bonds to managing the Bank's image and community programs in Italy. On my last gig, I looked after Diversity-related communications for the Europe, Middle East and African region, spanning 55 countries.
Personal life off-ramp
On the side, my husband and I also had four children.
After having my fourth child a little existential crisis set in. While I felt that the bank had been really good to me, I realized that I wanted to dedicate my working hours to projects that felt important and socially useful to me. Otherwise, I didn't feel as though I could detract that time from my family life in good conscience.
At the end of 2008 I left the Bank, intending to use my creativity and harness my skills in sustainability-related consultation and projects. In all honesty, I wasn't really sure what I would end up doing besides no longer working in a big company for a salary. I just figured I'd experiment a bit and throw myself wholeheartedly into whatever came up that really appealed to me.
Exactly as I was leaving the Bank I was a speaker at a conference which was being filmed by OLO creative farm. I got to know OLO's three founding partners (Max De Ponti, Mattia Amadori and Andrea Corti) a little bit and found them not only more-than-competent but also highly agreeable people. On top of that, they also knew how to make films, which I didn't. The little wheels in my brain started whirring...
I had long had this vague idea in my head of wanting to document what worried me about Cortona, a once quiet little town I loved and yet felt was slipping away as modernization crept up on it.
So when I met these three great guys, I popped them a question.
"Hey, any chance you guys might want to explore the idea of doing a documentary together?"
And, to paraphrase Rick in Casablanca, that was the beginning of our beautiful friendship...
Nearly three years later, we've developed the idea, been on seven shoots, finished filming, have seriously begun our editing process, have a group of followers who support us and are cheering us on... and today I can honestly say that we are well on our way to making a feature-length film together.
I still have to pinch myself to believe it's true. I must say to myself 25 times a day: how cool is that?