A personal film study from a trip to a familiar island.

Context

I had visited Ischia a number of times before; each time I left with the same feeling. Something about this place was extremely special. I couldn’t describe it beyond being one-of-a-kind, so this time I brought my camera to see if it could help explain what I couldn’t.

For those not familiar, Ischia is an island in the Campania region of Italy, tucked along Capri, Amalfi Coast, Sorrento, and other more common tourist destinations. It’s the island Neapolitans escape to when they want to vacation away from the dense and high-octane city. The inhabitants of the island are referred to as “Iskians.”

There’s no lines for dinner or photo ops; no crowds chasing the same view. It’s a place that moves at its own pace of life, and where English is seldom heard in the street.

We arrived on a holiday weekend in late May (Festa della Repubblica), just before tourist season takes over. The island felt like it was just waking up after winter, many places just opening for the first time for the year.

The landscape is incredible. Volcanic cliffs, the vineyards ledges climbing steep hillsides, the mix of cacti and wildflowers that shouldn’t grow together but somehow do.

The food is exceptional too. The local rabbit stew cooked in the steep mountain towns, the wines with that carry a distinct salty flavor from the winds coming off the ocean.

The more I filmed, the more I realized it wasn’t the scenery or the food I was trying to tell a story about.

It was the people.

What I Saw

The island is made up of small businesses and people who hold it together: the couple running the game room above the Porto, the young guy working the café on the Ponte, the elderly man at the Tabacchi who knows everyone passing through, the restaurant owner on the rocks feeding stray cats between serving plates of seafood. Everyone as a role, and is welcoming, unhurried, and open to conversing in broken translations from an app. This is all met with the incredible ability for the island to stay green almost year round. For this, it’s been coined unofficially by Neapolitans to “L’Isola Verde,” which translates to “The Green Island".”

Filming became less about capturing beauty and more about paying attention to the people and their voices. Letting the island speak for itself through small moments, interactions, gestures, routines.

I bought the Sony ZV‑E1 with a 24mm 1.4, nothing particularly large or “fancy.” Just what I could carry that didn’t feel like bringing Fort Knox up the mountain or to the beach.

What Came Of It

The project came together the way Ischia moves: slowly, between meals, rests mid-day at the AirB&B, between glasses of wine, between late nights on balconies overlooking quiet roads into the hills.

L’Isola Verde became a photograph of a place that feels somewhat untouched by outside influence. Iskians just live how they live, and that’s sorta it.

Coming back from this trip, it was a reminder that sometimes the thing you keep returning to isn’t a location, but it’s a feeling you only find in ways of living, and around certain types of people.

Role

Filmmaker, visitor, and someone trying to understand what kept pulling me back to this island.