Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Antonia Scarpa is a filmmaker and musician born and raised in New York City. Her family emigrated to Brooklyn from the small Sicilian town of Polizzi Generosa, the same town from which Martin Scorsese’s family came. Scarpa founded the alternative rock / performance art / circus act “Naked Sun” directly out of high school. Moving to Los Angeles, Scarpa played with several of the bands that created the original “Silver Lake” scene including “Don Knotts Overdrive", and Interscope recording artists “Lifter” with Mike Coulter and Jeffrey Sebelia. Scarpa and Moni Ritchie founded the multimedia rock group “The Drummed” (which also featured Rob Campanella of The Quarter After and The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Christian Hejnal of Scarling.) Scarpa played drums, and synthesizers as well as creating a visual projection show for the bands performances.
Scarpa’s five years in the making, documentary on Los Angeles band “Betty Blowtorch” titled “Betty Blowtorch And Her Amazing True Life Adventures” set attendance records at the American Film Institute's music documentary festival and won the coveted “Audience Award” at the “Silver Lake Film Festival”. Los Angeles’ leading alternative film fest. The film caught the attention of Philippe Diaz at Cinema Libre Studio who eventually released the film
Scarpa was also a founding member of the Los Angeles based, post punk band “The Art of Safecracking” with Lance Webber of “Man Will Surrender” Melanie Makaiwi of “The Penny Dreadfuls” and Carlos Gutierrez of “Turndown”. Scarpa played drums and synthesizers and also created the bands live visual projections.
Scarpa’s dramatic feature “Grace”, the story of a young woman’s battle with terminal illness, premiered at the Cinequest film festival.
The Drummed was the creative brainchild of guitarist/songwriter Moni Ritchie. Formed in 1997 when Ritchie left the band This Trip and began to collaborate with Scarpa. Originally beginning as a duo, Scarpa, who was a member of Interscope recording artists Lifter at the time, played drums and synthesizers while Ritchie sang and played guitar. Eventually the band morphed into a trio when the couple met Chris Van Wagner AKA Van. In 1997, Ritchie and Scarpa recorded and mixed the bands debut EP in Lifter's rehearsal space and the band began to perform live. After auditioning many, many guitarists, Ritchie and Scarpa settled on Rob Campanella, future member of The Brian Jonestown Massacre and founder of Los Angeles' The Quarter After. After recording began on the Band's second EP, Van Wagner left the band to relocate to Kansas City. The band continued recording and performing live with various fill in bass players until settling on Christian Hejnal who had auditioned for the band the prior year as a guitarist.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Antonia Scarpa,licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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