Armando Manni, the artist with a passion for olive

Movie director and producer of oil, he divides his time between the olive trees at Amiata and the cities of Rome and New York, where he lives. He is the author of the cult movie Elvjs & Merilijn

by L. C.

Armando Manni

Why do you decide to make business in farming?
I was a filmmaker, and to make the oil for my son, Lorenzo, ten years ago I started farming for pleasure and then… Well you know what life is like. Today it’s a full time job that takes me all over the world with my oils and has given me the opportunity to become friends with the best chefs in the world.

Do you feel more a peasant, a farmer, or a business man?
I’m a businessman in the sense that you can’t make a great product if you don’t know how to make it, how to deliver it, and how to create interest around it.

A definition of farming.
Something that has its roots in the past and should have its head in the future.

An adjective for defining the world of farming.
Adventurous.

A keyword for the future of farming.
Always remember that we are not leaving the earth to our children but that they have lent it to us and one day it will be theirs again.

A model men.
Angelo Gaja, wine-maker in Piedmont

Someone to… go to the hell.
I don’t believe in hell, sorry.

A book concerning the rural world you’d suggest to read.
I believe the rural world is the world of the heart and of the sense of life. I would advise reading Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse. If you know how to open your heart and your mind, you will be a man who knows happiness and how to give it.

Your favorite book.
La Divina Commedia.

Your favorite song or composition.
I have more than one. Impossible to answer.

Your unforgettable movie.
"Apocalypse Now"

What would you like to find after you die?
I believe in quantum physics, meaning I don’t believe in death as it is conventionally described. We are a concentrate of tiny matter that is measured by its capacity to vibrate (as they are doing at Cern to discover the smallest particles and the origin of the universe). The particles that make up my body are 20 billion years old and will end up somewhere together with the energy they have. Therefore I believe that death does not exist except as the end of rational perception of the world we know and that surrounds us, but I don’t exactly believe that we “finish”.