Pietro Coppolecchia grew up in Pavia, Italy and began working in the industry at a very young age. At the age of 18 he moved to Los Angeles, California and graduated in Cinematography from Chapman University, Dodge College of film and media arts.
He later moved to Mexico City and began directing his own projects in between short film, documentaries and music videos. His latest short film ‘For The Love I Show’ won Best Editing at Holly Shorts Film Festival of Los Angeles and received Special Mention at the Filmmaker festival Milan. He lives in Mexico City working as a director on a variety of projects.

Pietro shared with C41 “Beats, rhymes & life of Amsterdam youth culture”, an unpublished story featuring a film, directed by Pietro himself and starring Mariki.U.N.O. collective, and  some snapshots taken by his brother, Manfredi Coppolecchia. The whole project investigates Amsterdam’s current lifestyle among the youngest generations and underground cultures.

It opens with a simple questions:

How did the life of Amsterdam’s youth culture look like before the explosion of the COVID-19 pandemic in the post Brexit era?

After the announcement of the closure of the English borders back in 2017, Amsterdam rapidly turned into the new capital of the migrating youth becoming day after day the pole of attraction of the ever-moving and migrating generation of millennials.

The Amsterdam calling was boosted by Netherlands’ open door policies with low university taxes for local and foreign students and since a couch can’t be denied to anybody, the high cost of rent was fought by sharing flats with lots and lots of friends. As a consequence the overcrowded, overly expensive Amsterdam living situation had translated into coexistence, cultural and artistic exchange which all inevitably came clashing against COVID-19 safety rules and legislations.

Back in the post-Brexit-Amsterdam: two Turkish friends with pink hair proudly cheered while singing a classic by Muslum Gurses, a young Danish guy praised his broken nose in the middle of a King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard concert, a Chinese art student maneuvered recycled trash sculptures with a ventilator and a Polish kid with a blue wig took his huge crab out for a walk.
The atmosphere of freedom in the Dutch capital generated a youth scene in which everything was possible without any sort of prejudice or restriction shaping new ways of living & being.

Now that the Dutch government is finally easing the county’s lockdown an inevitable question arises:

will life ever be the same for Amsterdam’s youth culture?

Photography by Manfredi Coppolecchia

Credits:

Director: Pietro Coppo
Cinematographer: Manfredi Coppolecchia
Music: Jose Honold
Editor: Pietro Coppo, Giulia Bertuletti
Sound Design: Marco Farina, Marco Ivazzi

Special Thanks to:
Rietveld Académie
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
Muslum Gurses
Tattoo Convention
MARIKI.U.N.O. Collective