CINEGELATO
Thursday, September 18 | 6:30 PM
MIXED BY ERRY
Dir: Sydney Sibilia
Italy, 2023, 110 min
With Luigi D’Oriano, Emanuele Palumbo, Giuseppe Arena, Francesco Di Leva
In Italian with English subtitles
EVENT SOLD OUT
SYNOPSIS
In the magical Naples of the 1980s, where Maradona reigns supreme, Enrico dreams of becoming a DJ. The amateur mixtapes he makes for his friends are in high demand, but it’s not easy for a boy from the slums to showcase his talents. With the help of his brothers, Peppe and Angelo, he manages to set up a small music store selling his compilations under the “Mixed by Erry” label. What begins as a joke in the alleys of Forcella quickly and unexpectedly turns into a legendary and enthralling adventure. “Mixed by Erry,” despite being a byword for counterfeiting, becomes the leading “label” in Italy, with a production that transcends national borders and transforms a small local business into an empire. But their success doesn’t go unnoticed… “Mixed By Erry” recounts the rise and fall of Erry, the first “pirate” in the Italian record industry, and his brothers. A story of passion and dreams, a sensational event that revolutionized the concept of piracy and brought music into everyone’s lives.
DIRECTOR’S NOTE
One of the questions I’m most often asked when I present a film is: “How did you get the idea?” or “Where did you find this story?” In this case, the answer is that I didn’t find this story, but, as far back as I can remember, it’s always been a part of my life.
When I was little, in my neighborhood in Salerno, there was no record store; the only way to buy music (in a distant historical period when music had a physical dimension and was purchased in stores) was to go to Peppe, the manager of a stall who would sell you a Mixed By Erry cassette for five thousand lire, or, if you wanted to save money, a pirated Mixed By Erry cassette for just three thousand lire. The listening quality was decidedly inferior and the packaging wasn’t as refined as the originals, which is why, if he could afford them, Peppe always recommended the original, which in fact wasn’t original. Throughout all this, the Mixed By Erry “label” did everything it could to combat piracy. Each cassette stated, “Cassettes with photocopies are not original Mixed By Erry,” and between songs you could often hear a voice, which today we’d call Watermark, reminding you to be wary of imitations. One hundred percent of the music I listened to as a child came from those cassettes. Songs I still know by heart were on those cassettes. At the end of the cassette, there was something that today is the prerogative of Silicon Valley algorithms. Basically, if you bought the U2 cassette, DJ Erry would include a couple of songs that, in his opinion, someone who bought a cassette of that type might like (in this case, the Red Hot Chili Peppers), a sort of Spotify “you might also like it.” That way, once you heard U2, you’d also buy a Red Hot Chili Peppers cassette. Mixed By Erry had extremely widespread distribution, and in southern Italy, it was practically everywhere.
Then the world changed. I went to high school, CDs arrived, then Napster, MP3s, Walkmans were replaced by iPods, I moved to Rome to become a director. Music was streamed, but in my little room in Salerno, in the drawers, a few Mixed By Erry tapes still lingered, and sometimes, in conversation, we remembered that strange brand so central to our musical culture. One day, while talking about it with my screenwriter friend Armando Festa, we decided to investigate and meet the great DJ Erry. We discovered, first of all, that Enrico “Erry” wasn’t alone; the company was managed by his brothers Peppe and Angelo.
We realize that behind those tapes was an incredible story, epic yet deeply intimate, touching on all the major historical events of an extraordinary decade for the city of Naples. A story that speaks to how difficult it is to have dreams incompatible with the place you were born. But the real impetus that convinced me to make this film was the first thing Enrico said to us before he began telling his story: “I just wanted to be a DJ.”