Cinematic Italy

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Italian Journal volume 20. number VII. 2012

Cinematic Italy

Giacamo Puccini. Courtesy Puccini Foundation.

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on the cover film still from Caesar must die.

Story on page 25.

New York University Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò and Italian Academy Foundation, Inc. present

Italian Futurists:

Concepts and Imaginings April - June, 2012 New York University Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò An exhibit of thirty-eight works in various media of Italian futurist artists. These works, largely from the 2nd wave of futurist artists, illustrate their thinking on energy, color and multimedia possibilities.

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Italian Journal

IN THIS ISSUE

Editor’s journal contributors NOTABLE

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Cinematic Italy Claudia Palmira Acunto Editor Laura Giacalone Contributing Editor Mauro benedetti Photography Gianluca Marziani barbara zorzoli Columnists logan metzer Editorial Assistant vito catalano Social Journal Photography

Printed in the United States.

Stefano ACUNTO Chairman

Directors Rising Focus on Davide Manuli Cinecittà Filmic Victory Universal Impact Italy: Location as Protagonist The State and Status of Film A Certain Age Italian Film Festivals of Note

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Columns: CONTEMPORARY ART: Video FASHION: Dressing the Part Literature: Scorsese on Scorsese Photography: Light on cinecittà Social journal Face file: Roberto benigni

36 40 42 46 48 54

The Italian Academy Foundation, Inc. (IAF), established in 1947, is a non-for profit 501©(3), tax-exempt corporation that pursues a unique form of cultural diplomacy, presenting Italian realities to U.S. audiences. The Italian Academy Foundation, Inc. produces concerts, symposia and special events year-round in the United States and Italy.

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EDITOR’S journal

together again.

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n the thrilling occasion of the premiere of Woody Allen’s To Rome wtih Love, the words Italy and film have been seen together once again like lovers reunited.

While Italian Americans have taken centerstage on the screen most recently (often in a less than flattering light), films about and from Italy bring to mind a different era of cinema. Even dear Mr. Allen recalls the Italian classics – in a recent interview article, he said, “Italian movies were a great staple of our cultural diet.”1 Like so many aspects of Italian culture, its glorious past is ever-present. From neo-realistic masterpieces to Fellini’s originals to outlandish comedies, Italian film history has had some unforgettable gems that are intertwined in international and American cultural consciousness.

The contemporary scene is an open book. I like what the Taviani brothers had to say about their award-winning film Caesar Must Die (“Filmic Victory,” page 25).

“With all due respect for Shakespeare...we have taken over his Julius Caesar, dismembered and rebuilt it.

We have certainly kept the spirit of the original tragedy as well as the narrative, but at the same time we simplified it taking it a bit far from the traditional stage tempo. The result is a degenerate son that Shakespeare would have certainly loved!”

This encapsulates the humor, humility and ingenius re-imagining that fills the air of Italian contemporary filmmaking.

The pages of this number present the “degenerate” and the beautiful creations of new auteurs and video artists and show off Italy as a set, subject and destination in film.

venice film festival.

1. Dave Itzkoff. “That’s Amore: Italy as Muse Interview”. The New York Times, June 15, 2012.

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contributors

Contributors Enrico Azzano

Laureato in Storia e Critica del Cinema, collabora con diverse riviste cartacee e online. Nel 2008 ha fondato la rivista CineClandestino.it, di cui è direttore editoriale.

Membro dell’Asian Film Festival dal 2006 al 2008. Ha curato le rassegne e i volumi Nihon Eiga – Storia del Cinema Giapponese dal 1970 al 2010 e Nihon Eiga – Storia del Cinema Giapponese dal 1945 al 1969. Ha pubblicato anche Satoshi Kon – Il cinema attraverso lo specchio.

Francesco DEL GROSSO

Born in Rome in 1982, he graduated from the Faculty of Performing Arts at Roma Tre University, with a dissertation on David Fincher. He works as a writer and film critic for a number of magazines. He has written, directed and edited commercials, short films and documentary films, which were selected for numerous international film festivals and received many awards, such as Gli invisibili, Stretti al vento and Negli occhi. The last one won the “Special Mention - Controcampo Italiano Prize” and the “Biografilm Lancia Award” at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, the “Nastro D’Argento for the Best Documentary” and the “Special Globo d’Oro Speciale”. In 2011 he directed 11 metri, a documentary on the life of the late football player Agostino Di Bartolomei, which was presented as a special event at the 2011 Rome International Film Festival.

Pierpaolo Festa

Born in Palermo in 1981, he moved to Rome to become a movie journalist. He has worked for print magazines and online outlets. To this day he is a reporter and correspondant for the Italian website Film.it. Among his passions Steven Spielberg’s cinematic dreams and Kenneth Branagh’s Shakespearian take.

William Hope

William Hope lectures in Italian language and cinema at the University of Salford, G.B. He has published the monographs Curzio Malaparte - The Narrative Contract Strained and Giuseppe Tornatore: Emotion, Cognition, Cinema, and edited the volume Italian Film Directors in the New Millennium in 2010. He is a member of the editorial board of Studies in European Cinema and is currently co-ordinating a research project entitled “A New Italian Political Cinema?”. http://italianpoliticalcinema.wordpress.com/

Roberto SILVESTRI

Roberto Silvestri (Lecce, 1950) giornalista e operatore culturale, è critico cinematografico del quotidiano il manifesto e responsabile del suo settimanale culturale Alias.

Conduce un programma radiofonico della rete pubblica, Hollywood Party e dirige attualmente due festival, Sulmonacinema e Ca’Foscari Short Film Festival, dopo avere collaborato in qualità di esperto con la Mostra del cinema di Venezia (per 4 anni), il Torino Film Festival e le Giornate del cinema africano di Perugia. Tra i festival diretti in passato Riminicinema, Bellaria, Lecce e Aversa. ha pubblicato saggi su riviste nazionali e internazionali e in volumi collettivi. Tra i suoi libri “Macchine da presa” (Minimum Fax), “Da Hollywood a Cartoonia” (Manifestolibri) e “Cinema Attack!” (Einaudi). Sta scrivendo a sei mani con Mariuccia Ciotta e Rossana Rossanda una conversazione sul cinema per Bompiani. Membro di giurie in numerosi festival italiani e stranieri.

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contributors

columnists Laura GIACALONE

Laura Giacalone is a journalist and editor-in-chief of the Italian quarterly Filmaker’s Magazine, and works as a contributing editor and editorial consultant for a number of bilingual art magazines and publishing houses. In London she has worked as a writer and editorial assistant for Phaidon Press, contributing to the three-volume book Phaidon Design Classics (2006). She has translated into Italian the American novels Paper Fish (Pesci di carta, 2006) by Tina De Rosa and Shattered (La finestra sul bosco, 2010) by Karen Robards, and a variety of academic papers, screenplays and feature articles for international publications. Her world is made of words, and she loves it.

Gianluca MARZIANI

Critic and curator based in Rome, Italy, Marziani focuses on the visual arts. He is the artistic director of the Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive in Spoleto and the artistic driector of the Rocco Guglielmo foundation. He is the curator of the Terna award and participates in the Rai5 television program “Personal Shopper.” For the IED Roma, he runs a visual arts program. He has curated many shows in both galleries and museums, is the author of two theoretical books and numerous catalogs. He writes about art for all media imaginable. His website is www.gianlucamarziani.com.

Barbara Zorzoli

Barbara Zorzoli is a journalist and movie critic, radio and TV host, writer... and an actress for fun. She says she lives ‘up in the air’ between Genoa (her birthplace) and London (where she interviews actors/actresses and directors, attends premieres and visits movie sets). She is a contributing editor for Vogue Italia, the Italian Vanity Fair, Film doc and many others cinema magazines. She is a correspondent from the world’s most important international film festivals. She also writes about soundtracks for www.colonnesonore.net. Thanks to her passion for musicals she wrote the booklets for the entire DVD collection dedicated to Fred Astaire (Fred Astaire Collection, Edizioni Master, 2007). As movie critic she gives cinema lessons (in Genoa at Palazzo Ducale and The Space Cinema Porto Antico). This year, she is a member of the Genova Film Festival jury (from 2th to 8th July).

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10 notable

All photo by Dave Yoder/National Geographic Society

Notable

Hidden Leonardo Mural Revealed in Florence Municipal Building I

n the Hall of 500 in Florence sits Giorgio Vasari’s Battle of Marciano. One of the most celebrated frescoes in the city, the mural has been on the wall since 1563 when Vasari painted over what scientists claim might be Leonardo Da Vinci’s greatest lost work, the Battle of Anghiari.

Although admiring artists reproduced the original piece before its disappearance, the reproductions almost certainly leave out details lost by shrinking a wall-size mural onto a canvas. As a result, researchers such as Maurizio Seracini, have combed the world searching for the original’s whereabouts. Two words, “Cerca trova,” led Seracini to the Hall of 500. Found inscribed in a flag in Vasari’s piece, Seracini took “seek and you shall find” (translation) as a cryptic clue from the artist and postulated that as a great admirer of da Vinci, Vasari might have attempted to somehow preserve the work.

Using radically new technology, like a high-frequency surfacepenetrating radar, Seracini’s scanning revealed a hollow space behind the section of Vasari’s mural with the inscription. Furthermore, he believes that black pigments found in this hollow space are similar in chemical makeup to those found in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and St. John the Baptist.

Since the project began in late 2011, more than 300 scholars have signed a petition to Florence’s mayor and the city’s top art

authority in an effort to stop the project, with many dismissing the search as a publicity stunt rather than a scientific endeavor.

However, according to Florentine mayor Matteo Renzi, “Only a crazy person would stop now. I think Florence has the right to solve one of the greatest mysteries of the history of art.”

Although frustrated with the public outcry, his inability to conduct relevant tests in a timely manner or at all, and lack of consensus or indisputable evidence that the uncovered painting is the Battle of Anghiari, Seracini truly believes he has found the lost masterpiece; “I am convinced it’s there…Leonardo painted the Mona Lisa in Florence at the same time,” said Seracini. “It appears to be a pigment used by [him] and not by other artists.”

If he is right, it would be one of the most famous discoveries of the century. n

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Notable Ludovica Purini Receives Venere Award for Music O

Ludovica Rossi Purini photographed in her rome home, where she hosts weekly concerts.

n International Women’s Day 2012, the City of Rome bestowed the Venere Award on 20 leading women whose contributions across social, artistic and political spheres improve the City’s culture, health and wellness. Among them, Ludovica Rossi Purini, President of Compagnia per la Musica and frequent collaborator with the Italian Academy Foundation, received recognition for her dedication to music.

“I have always loved art in all forms, and believe that education and culture are the most important engines of social and economic progress.” Her preferred form of art, music, she said, “is a universal language capable of speaking simultaneously and with equal intensity to the intellect and the emotions.”

Well-known for her weekly evening salon concerts in Rome, Purini considers music an important mode of communication on all levels. Her foundation concentrates on using music to address issues such as peace, poverty and racism through organizing musical performances and community participation to “suffering and needy” places where music rarely reaches, such as prisons. n

Chef Bottura and Modena Restaurant Earn International Recognition Q

uality of ingredients, skill in preparing them and in combining flavors, level of creativity, consistency of culinary standards and value for money. Those are the five criteria for Western Europe’s most prominent restaurant rating system, the Michelin Red Guide, which awards a maximum of three stars. Earning his third Michelin star this year, Massimo Bottura is now Italy’s finest chef, ranking his restaurant Osteria Francescana in Modena as fourth in the world, the highest of any Italian restaurant.

While he takes much pride in his Italian heritage, the skillful chef has the inclination to experiment with the flavors of international cuisines as he prepares each dish with passion, technique and delicacy. One of his dishes, coppa di testa (head soup), is made from the head of a pig to create a broth rich in flavor, with other added vegetables. Another one of his delectable and aesthetic dishes

is saba-lacquered eel plated with a saba (a wine extract), a sauce derived from apples, and sardines. Each dish expresses location, culture, the past, and the future.

In a 2010 documentary, Il Ritorno (The Return), the distinguished chef combines his undeniable mastery in culinary arts with film-making. The film discusses the origin of his products in Emilia Romagna and reveals the technique and special care that goes into some of his acclaimed dishes. Il Ritorno was presented at the MAD FoodCamp, a food festival and conference in Copenhagen that represents the world’s finest chefs and showcases the products of local farmers.

Bottura is also known for his book Balsamic Vinegar, offering readers insight to the ingredient’s traditional qualities for a more modern-day use.

In addition to this year’s winners, over 30 restaurants in Italy earned their first Michelin star while four earned their second. Italy now has more than 300 restaurants with at least one Michelin star. n

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Photograph by Horst. Horst / Vogue; © Condé Nast

Photograph by © Toby McFarlan Pond

Notable

Met Costume Institute Reveres Two Italian Fashion Greats F

rom May 10 – August 19 2012 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is presenting Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, an encounter between Elsa (“Schiap”) Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, two of the most celebrated Italian designers of the 20th century. Although coming from very different backgrounds, these women redefined and revolutionized fashion, forever entrenching their names in the industry and immortalizing their products.

The exhibit, inspired by Miguel Covarrubias’ “Impossible Interviews” for Vanity Fair in the 1930s, consists of the highly original concept to blend the many recorded words and commentaries by Schiap, including her own book, with questions posed to Ms. Prada by the movie director Baz Luhrmann, in order to create a fictive digital dialogue between the two women.

“Given the role Surrealism and other art movements play in the designs of both Schiaparelli and Prada, it seems only fitting that their inventive creations be explored here at the Met,” said Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Schiaparelli’s collaborations with Dalí and Cocteau as well as Prada’s Fondazione Prada push art and fashion ever closer, in a direct, synergistic, and culturally redefining relationship.”

Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations showcases approximately ninety designs and thirty accessories by Schiaparelli (1890–1973) from the late 1920s to the early 1950s and by Prada from the late 1980s to the present. A line of costumes from the two designers include baroque curlicues from Prada last year, side-by-side with almost identical adornment on a dress that Schiap created in 1937 for Wallis Simpson, the future Duchess of Windsor. n

Miuccia prada 20014 and elsa schiaperelli (Vogue, june 1, 1935). courtesy the metropolitan museum of art.

Virtual Valentino: The 3D Museum

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alentino’s most recent contribution to the fashion community, an eponymous Virtual Museum, commemorates over 40 years of the designer’s illustrious career in an online, 3-D interactive tour.

The first of its kind, the museum displays 5,000 dresses separated into “rooms” organized by color or print.

300 of his most seminal works, such as Jackie Kennedy’s wedding dress, Julia Roberts’ 2001 Oscars dress, a dress worn

by Princess Soraya of Iran are all on display, along with dozens of video fashion shows. The user has access to 360-degree views, the ability to zoom in on fabrics and links to original sketches and photographs of celebrities wearing the clothes.

Though Valentino has been exploring the creation of a physical museum, the design icon said that despite his distant relationship with technology (he once called a professional over to help him put a DVD into the machine), he believes the online medium can be a universal resource offering an inside glimpse into the exclusive world of fashion.

“I wanted to give a complete vision of my work, not just the dresses, but the world in which they were born. I don’t need a museum to remember my collections, but sometimes it is good to look back and remember every dress and every stitch.” n

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Notable

he Italian Academy Foundation announced that Kim Brizzolara has joined its board of directors.

Ms. Brizzolara is a feature and documentary film producer and serves as an advisor to several non-profit organizations. She is executive vice chair of the Hamptons International Film Festival, serves on the Board of the We are Family Foundation, and Creative Visions, and is a member of the Women’s Leadership Board at the School of Government at Harvard. Previously, she worked as a grantsmaker for the Threshold Foundation, as acting director of the Coexistence Center at Baruch College School of Public Affairs, as conference coordinator for Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, and at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center.

Ms. Brizzolara’s lifelong commitment to the arts and culture corresponds with IAF’s mission cultural diplomacy.

“I am thrilled to be part of IAF and work with the other members of the board,” she said.

Ms. Brizzolara, a former reporter with The Philadelphia Inquirer, has a M.S. in Journalism from Boston University and a BA from American University. n

art crime by Noah charney

Heisted Artworks Found in Rome B

ack in 1971 a team of thieves stole 42 paintings from the home of a construction magnate in Rome’s Parioli neighborhood. Little is known about the thieves, other than that they are not members of Cosa Nostra (the Sicilian Mafia responsible for countless other art thefts in Italy, including Caravaggio’s Nativity and Bronzino’s Deposition).

The paintings included works by Rua Carabinieri TPC officer stands bens, Poussin and Van Dyck and are near the 37 paintings, displayed estimated to have been worth at least after their recovery.

7.5 million Euros. The Carabinieri TPC (Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage) recoved 37 of the 42 stolen paintings in early March, 2012. They were found in the possession of a woman living in Rome. She had purchased them from the thieves more than 20 years ago, almost certainly aware that they were stolen. The Carabinieri noted four of the paintings when they appeared in a recent auction catalogue, offered for sale.

The Carabinieri TPC operates the world’s largest stolen art database, nicknamed Leonardo, which contains over 3 million stolen artworks. By contrast the FBI stolen art database contains a few thousand works, and the privately-run Art Loss Register database includes around 400,000. Checks are regularly run on works up for sale, and this time, the Carabinieri scored a hit. They arrested the woman who had put the paintings up for sale, in order, she said, to raise money after her husband passed away. She possibly thought that, after 20 years, the world would have forgotten that these works had been stolen – or perhaps she never knew, and it was her husband who had been aware of their background.

It is important to note that art theft is often the realm of organized crime groups, be they large international syndicates like Cosa Nostra (see Peter Watson’s The Caravaggio Conspiracy), or smaller localized, but still organized gangs of thieves or tomb raiders. Most stolen art is considered to have a black market value of around 7-10% of its estimated market value, and there are indeed those who knowingly buy stolen art, as this case attests.

The 1971 Rome crime does not appear as sinister as some past heists, whose profits have been discovered to fund even terrorist activity, but the original theft seems the result of an organized crime group’s efforts. Because of the involvement of organized crime in the illicit art market, stolen art like the paintings recovered in Rome are used in barter or collateral deals for other illicit goods, like drugs and arms.

The US Department of Justice ranks art crime as the third highest-grossing criminal trade worldwide, behind only the drug and arms trades: It is not just art that is at stake! n

Photographs courtesy Italian Carabinieri

IAF Names Kim Brizzolara to Board of Directors T

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Notable Max Mara Hometown Now Art Destination R

Naples Adds Next “Art Station” to the Line N

aples recently broke ground on a new underground train line and five new stations in order to resolve urban mobility problems in the city. However, unlike many of drab, uninspiring stations around the world, Metropolitana di Napoli, the group responsible for the construction of the Naples Underground Line 1, has elected to turn five stops into an “art stations.” Employing visionaries from around the world, among them New York artist Karim Rashid who designed the University of Naples stop (Italian Journal.Volume 20, Number VI), artists and architects alike are transforming the terminals into an art gallery of sorts, one that both pays homage to the city and its surroundings as well as the personal history of the artists.

South African William Kentridge is one of three artists (including Robert Wilson and Achille Cevoli) decorating Stazione Toledo, one of the busiest stops in Naples. In order to create a comprehensive and meaningful piece, Kentridge wove together his personal experiences with apartheid, the friezes of Greek temples, mosaics of ancient Pompeii, porcelain engravings from the late 1800s and the work of Lamont Young, a 19th century Neapolitan architect who envisioned a mammoth rebuilding of the city of Naples. The result is not only a visually rich creation, but also one with social and civil significance.

Kentridge said, “The mosaic (for me sort of a “projection” in stone on a large scale) is perfect for a public work, lasting and enduring. It’s not like a painting that can be removed from an exhibition” (“Porto Pompei e Il Vesuio in Metro,” Sette Magazine.

April 12, 2012).

Kentridge’s mural and others may give pause to moseying and hurrying passengers alike during their commute–or at least make the wait for the train a kind of cultural repose. n top: mural by artist william kentridge in the stazione toledo, naples. Right: Second Floor of the Collezione Maramotti, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy

eggio Emilia, a small city about two hours north of Florence, is far from the bustling capital of Rome and the more glamorous global fashion centers of Milan and Paris. Yet, this is where the $1.7 billion Max Mara House has established their operations.

Consisting of a hotel (Albergo delle Notarie), a restaurant (Caffe Arti e Mestieri), a stake in the local bank (Credito Emiliano), and the company headquarters, Reggio Emilia has been transformed by the Maramotti family into an amalgamation of business and culture. Perhaps the greatest source of pride is the Collezione Maramotti, the art museum opened in 2007 in a chic, modernized industrial building once used for the company’s main offices.

In the renovation of the building by English architect Andrew Hapgood, the original simplicity of the structure was kept intact while simultaneously being opened up to streams of sunlight and views of the beautiful surrounding natural landscape.

The late Achille Maramotti, family patriarch and founder of Max Mara who wished to bring Parisian fashion to Italian ladies in 1951, yearned to transform Reggio Emilia into a haven not only for fashionistas, but for art connoisseurs as well. He launched a program inviting artists to create public works around the region and, soon after, pieces by Sol LeWitt, Luciano Fabro and Eliseo Mattiacci began to dot the buildings, courtyards and Emilia-Romagnan countryside. Yet, the real treasures lie within the Collezione Maramotti itself, a collection of contemporary works by hundreds of artists accumulated by Achille’s for over 30 years.

The museum dedicates its first floor to Italian and European art from the 1940s to the 1980s, with works by Lucio Fontana, Vito Acconci and Francis Beacon. The second floor showcases contemporary pieces by Europeans and Americans such as Peter Halley, Mike Kelley and Tom Sachs.

“Families don’t make projects for five years, they make projects for generations,” Achille Maramotti once remarked. This idea helped transform Reggio Emilia into an art and fashion destination for people from around the world. Recent exhibitions at the museum include artwork by Huma Bhabha and Kaarina Kaaikonen (2012), and Andrea Büttner (2011 winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women), Alessandro Pessoli and Shen Wei (2011). n

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Notable Three Young Tenors to Tour with Streisand

Minister of Foreign Affairs Appoints Federica Olivares Cultural Advisor A

C

harming audiences in Italy since they first sang together in 2009 on the RaiDue talent show program Ti lascio una canzone (I leave you a song), Italy’s teenage tenor trio Il Volo has announced that they will be touring with Barbara Streisand this fall in the USA. After their recent rise to fame, the award-winning American singer and actress (Streisand is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy and Tony Awards) invited the group to become an integral part of her show, singing duets with her and performing on their own.

The three young tenors, Ignazio Boschetto, Piero Barone and Gianluca Ginoble, are returning to the U.S. for the second time in as many years. Last fall, the trio promoted the release of their debut album, which sold 600,000 copies in four months and hit number one on the Billboard American Classical Album chart, by performing on American Idol and featuring a mix of classical, traditional and new songs on a 17-city tour of the United States.

Although the group is best known for their rendition of the classic Neapolitan song “O Sole Mio”, group member Gianluca Ginoble insists “[We’re] not the three young tenors that go to America to sing Neapolitan songs…we are closer to Il Divo and Josh Groban, we are all about Il Bel Canto (Beautiful Song).” n

politically and socially active career, Federica Olivares has made an influential figure in the American and Italian cultural spheres. Olivares was most recently appointed as a cultural advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Giulio Terzi.

Ms. Olivares is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the New York University Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò in New York. She has additionally been a member of the Board of Directors of the Italian American Chamber of Commerce in Italy since 1993.

An avid proponent of Italian culture, Olivares has initiated collaboration with various arts and culture programs in the United States in order to make Italy’s cultural presence further known overseas. These collaborations resulted in multicultural events that encouraged networking and mutuality between international markets, companies, and institutions, including productions of performing arts and cinema. An advocate for equality, Olivares has headed the Foundation EuropEenne des Femmes, a project that unites women from international government positions and employs the leadership of the former President of the Irish Republic and the former High Commissioner of the United States for Civil Rights. Olivares also founded Edizioni Olivares, a publishing company that specifically published books on management by international authors. Olivares began her higher education at Milan State University, graduating with a degree in monetary policy. She thereafter sought a specialization in international economics at the Institute of World Affairs in New York, and specialized in comparative international politics and economics at the Cini Foundation in Venice. n

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18 Strapline

Cinematic To Rome With Love (2012) by Woody Allen.

Cinematic italy

19

Directors Rising

by William HOPE page 20

Focus on Davide Manuli by

Laura GIACALONE page 23

CinecittĂ

by Laura GIACALONE page 24

Filmic Victory

by Laura GIACALONE page 25

Universal Impact

by Francesco DEL GROSSO page 26

Italy: Location as Protagonist

by Pierpaolo FESTA page 28

The State and Status of Film

by Roberto SILVESTRI page 30

A Certain Age

Italy

auteur Protagonist subject set muse

by Enrico AZZANO page 32

Italian Film Festivals of Note

by Laura GIACALONE page 34

Italian Video Art Review

by Gianluca MARZIANI page 36

Dressing the Part

by Barbara ZORZOLI page 40

Scorsese on Scorsese

by Laura GIACALONE * Italian Language article page 42

20 Cinematic italy

Directors

Rising

A look at some of the new, notable filmmakers out of Italy

by William HOPE

I

talian cinema experienced several golden eras during the course of the 20th century, periods during which the artistic vision and expertise of Ital-

ian film-makers and technicians were unparalleled. The opulent mise-en-scène of early works such as Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914), the stark stylistic originality of the neorealist era from the mid-1940s onwards, and the lavish cinematography of Oscar-winning works such as Giuseppe Tornatore’s Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1989) and Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo (1991) – these latter films revisiting, sometimes nostalgically, the community life and interpersonal solidarity of former generations –consolidated Italy’s position as an epicentre of cinematic innovation. While Italian cinema no longer boasts auteurs of the status of Fellini, Rossellini and Antonioni, an overview of its evolution during the first decade of the 21st century reveals a myriad of styles and themes whose relevance transcends their Italian contexts to strike a chord with viewers across the developed world. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith’s distinction between the central position of cinematic auteurs during earlier eras of Italian cinema and the “authorial voices” that periodically make themselves heard from the margins of new millennium cinematic culture,1 summarizes perfectly the position of certain contemporary Italian directors whose work will be explored in this article, film-makers such as Silvio Soldini and Carlo Mazzacurati who rose to prominence in the 1990s, and whose discernible authorial style has continued into the new millennium.

The films of Soldini and Mazzacurati are often linked by the narrative mechanism of a journey through which the screen protagonists, who experience some degree of socio-economic alienation or marginalization from their social contexts, attain a greater degree of self-awareness and/or self-realization. Mazzacurati’s 21st century films are visually evocative in their depictions of provincial life, frequently that of the Veneto region in north-east Italy, but are often severe in their evaluations of the narrow-minded values of the provinces where circumstances precipitate two non-conformist characters into each other’s company – the petty criminals in La lingua del santo (Holy Tongue, 2000) and in A cavallo della tigre (Riding the Tiger, 2002), the ill-fated couple Giovanni and Maria in the period piece L’amore ritrovato (An Italian Romance, 2004) and the young teacher Mara and Hassan, a north African migrant, in La giusta distanza (The Right Distance (2007).

The wistful nostalgia for former modes of existence that often permeates the mindsets of the outsiders portrayed by Maz-

zacurati contrasts with the emotional highs and lows and slightly higher social strata of Soldini’s protagonists. Soldini portrays a generation restless with its socio-economic and existential destiny, composed of individuals who invariably nurture a talent, passion, quirky ambition or cultural heritage that is incompatible with the exigencies of routine within the developed world’s capitalist societies. In Pane e tulipani (Bread and Tulips, 2000), Rosalba, a housewife, reactivates her passion for accordion music and for more rewarding social relations after befriending an Icelandic waiter in Venice. In Brucio nel vento (Burning in the Wind, 2002), the Eastern European cultural identity and former life of Tobias, an alienated migrant worker in Switzerland, is articulated through close viewer alignment with the character and by folkloric musical refrains. The Almodòvar-influenced Agata e la tempesta (Agata and the Storm, 2004) with its vibrant, polychromatic mise-en-scène, flawed but sensuous middle-aged female protagonist, choral cast to generate storylines of attraction and confusion between the sexes, Mediterranean ambience and melodramatic plot twists, depicts characters such as Romeo with his idiosyncratic desire to possess a trout farm, while young Benedetto learns knife-throwing skills, a family tradition, from a grandfather he never knew he had. In the darker Giorni e nuvole (Days and Clouds, 2007), which charts a bourgeois couple’s descent into an inferno of poverty and unemployment, it is Elsa’s passion for medieval art and fresco restoration that is depicted as the key to a future rapprochement with her husband Michele.

Among Italy’s promising younger directors, Daniele Vicari has emerged as a film-maker with markedly creative approaches to characterization, genre and aesthetics. In an intelligent reworking of the Western, Velocità massima (Maximum Velocity, 2002) portrays the rapport between Stefano, a mechanic, and young Claudio whose technical skills and computer expertise give Stefano an advantage in the illegal high-speed nocturnal car races in which he participates, before they fall out over the same girl. In Vicari’s words, L’orizzonte degli eventi (The Horizon of Events, 2005) re-articulates the science fiction genre, partly because the protagonist, Max, is a researcher conducting experiments within a bunker inside a mountain in the Abruzzo region of eastern Italy, but mainly through the narrative mechanism of depositing him, via a car crash, into a seemingly extraterrestrial world, that of the Albanian shepherds who live a feudal existence in the same region.

The opening sequence of L’orizzonte degli eventi is a flashforward to its ending, with viewers being pitched into the subjectivity of Bajram, a shepherd, who knifes a Albanian mafioso after the latter sets fire to Bajram’s passport. A disorienting point-of view shot from the shepherd’s perspective as he runs away in ter-

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ror through the bleak landscape immediately plunges the viewer into a parallel world with which no contact is normally made. By casting Valerio Mastandrea – rather than one of his peers such as Riccardo Scamarcio, who would unwittingly bring the unwanted baggage of his media heart-throb role with him – in both leading roles, an actor with an understated but broodingly powerful screen presence, Vicari is able to explore the ways in which 21st century masculinity is besieged and effectively evirated by socioeconomic constraints that threaten to drive characters like Stefano out of business and which compel Max to falsify results for fear of losing research funding.

Of the many filmic portraits of opportunistic male ambition in modern Italy that have emerged over the past decade, a theme reflecting the ascent of various amoral individuals within Italy’s politico-economic élite, perhaps the most chilling representation is found in Vincenzo Marra’s L’ora di punta (The Trial Begins, 2007) as a corrupt policeman turns property developer, wreaking emotional and economic havoc in his wake. However, there is a further strand to Marra’s work, notably his stark and perceptive depictions of life in the Naples area, and this reflects the enduring appeal of Italy’s regions for contemporary directors. With their depictions of the cultural transformation of specific areas, film-makers are able to draw attention to the often imperceptible socio-economic changes affecting the country as a whole, and the following sections of this article examine filmic depictions of the southern Italian regions of Campania and Apulia as examples of this.

Although Italy’s network of regional film commissions provides logistical assistance primarily to directors who hail from other areas of the peninsula, some of the most striking films of the new millennium have been made by directors with an intimate knowledge of their home regions. Vincenzo Marra’s drama Vento di terra (Land Wind, 2004) immediately pitches viewers into the alternative reality of the Neapolitan hinterland of Secondigliano, with a slow 360° camera pan taking in the encroaching tower blocks and the reverberations of amplified music emanating across housing estates; significantly though, the narrative “portrays the events in the life of a socially marginalized individual without the slightest hint of rhetoric or melodrama”.2 This understated, aphoristic approach, a form of realism eschewing the emotional thrall within which other contemporary narratives are often mired, reemerges in Marra’s documentary L’udienza è aperta (The Session is Open, 2006). Its lingering interior shots highlight the dilapidated, underequipped buildings in which magistrates and judges of all political persuasions initiate Mafia trials, the film exploding, en passant, the media myth that they work to left-wing agendas.

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Film director Daniele Vicari on the set of Diaz – Don’t Clean Up This Blood (2012).

Agata e la tempesta (2004) by Silvio Soldini.

Antonio Albanese and Margherita Buy in Giorni e nuvole (Days and Clouds, 2007) by Silvio Soldini.

The region of Apulia in south-east Italy has been innovatively depicted by directors such as Sergio Rubini and Edoardo Winspeare, although there is a stylistic demarcation between their techniques. The work of Rubini, an actor/director, is character driven and typified by a self-conscious, performative style that often lurches into the comic grotesque. Tutto l’amore che c’è (All the Love There Is, 2000) revisits provincial Apulia in the 1970s to outline the impact of the arrival of a Milanese engineer and his three emancipated daughters upon a local community; L’anima gemella (Soul Mate, 2002), a fable evoking the mysticism of folklore in

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Michele lastella and fanny ardant in l’ora di punta (the trial begins, 2007) by vincenzo marra.

Valeria Golino and Sergio Rubini in L’uomo nero (2009) by Sergio Rubini.

Riccardo Scamarcio in L’uomo nero.

Valentina Lodovini in La giusta distanza (The Right Distance, 2007)

by Carlo Mazzacurati.

which a jealous woman uses a spell to transform her physiognomy into that of her rival, is an ingenious meditation on appearance forms and the modern propensity to remodel one’s external features rather than confront one’s inner demons. Rubini’s reworking of Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamasov, La terra (Our Land, 2006), depicts the insidiousness of provincial life in drawing émigrés back into its seething passions and rivalries during their rare visits home, while L’uomo nero (The Black Man, 2009), a semi-autobiographical period piece set in Apulia in the late 1960s and featuring local actor Riccardo Scamarcio, relates how a station master’s artistic aspirations are met by local prejudice.

With regard to the function of landscapes in cinema, Sandro Bernardi conceives of them as having symbolic functions through

which culture can be expressed; he links his research to branches of philosophy that focus on art’s anthropological significance and ability to elicit reflection on humanity’s rapport with its surroundings. This notion recurs in Edoardo Winspeare’s depictions of the Apulia region, notably in Sangue vivo (Life Blood, 2000) with its tracking shots of arid olive groves and Stefano Accorsi crumbling trulli – traditional coniand Maya sansa in cal huts – interspersed with images L’amore ritrovato of the construction of opulent villas. This encapsulates the visual juxtapositions – often also found in Rubini’s films – of a brash, modern materialism supplanting Apulia’s local socio-economic and cultural traditions, a concept elaborated in the film’s narrative when, during a social evening, the protagonist Pino and his band of traditional musicians are humiliatingly told to stop playing because the guests “want to dance to something else”.

This sensation of individuals being at the centre of oppressively converging social, economic and political forces, and having diminishing opportunities and space for self-realization, typifies the ambiences of many new millennium films. Italian directors are increasingly using their screen protagonists to highlight the sense of alienation and estrangement experienced by individuals as the certainties of the past and its traditions, such as community solidarity and stability, are eroded by phenomena such as the precarization of labour and social fragmentation. With the Italian film industry also facing a problematic future as a consequence of increasingly limited funding and distribution opportunities, the challenge for Italy’s many talented directors in the 21st century is arguably that of continuing to make their voices heard. n

Notes 1. G. Nowell-Smith, Foreword, Italian Film Directors in the New Millennium ed. by W. Hope (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), x.

2. R. Nepoti, “Stile, stili”, in La meglio gioventù–Nuovo Cinema Italiano 2000-2006, ed. by V. Zagarrio (Venice: Marsiglio, 2006), 75-82 (80).

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focus on Davide manuli His vibrant film showcased in Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema

by Laura GIACALONE

E

stablished auteurs and emerging filmmakers alike offer their own perspectives on contemporary Italy at “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema”, the leading North American showcase for contemporary Italian cinema, organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center together with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà and Filmitalia. This year’s edition (June 8-14, 2012) brought together directors1 from different backgrounds and ages, who embody different ideas of cinema and contribute to piecing together a multi-faceted, complex picture of today’s Italy.

Among the directors selected for screening, Davide Manuli, a former assistant to Al Pacino trained at the Actors Studios in New York, is definitely the most original, ingenious and audacious one. His latest work, The Legend of Kaspar Hauser, premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January 2012 and went on to screen at a number of prestigious international film festivals. A one-of-a-kind postapocalyptic western, The Legend of Kaspar Hauser is Manuli’s third feature film, following Girotondo, giro attorno al mondo (1998), a film of harsh elegance with which Manuli broke into the art-house film scene, and Beket (2008), a multiawarded “electro-anarchic” reworking of Waiting for Godot, the famous absurdist play by Samuel Beckett.

The Legend of Kaspar Hauser is the ideal extension of the aesthetic and poetic discourse of Beket, with an even more radical and nihilist take on it. Comfortable with an expressionist B/W, which has become the trademark of Manuli’s cinematography, he sets the scene in the primordial, or post-apocalyptic, desolation

of a nowhere land (the island of Sardinia), a Méliès-like moonscape populated by a handful of grotesque characters, all survivors in the Heideggerian tragedy of “being-there”.

The first vibrant frames of the movie show some futuristic flying saucers soaring above the head of a white-dressed, iconic Vincent Gallo, introducing the viewer to the rarefied, timeless dimension where Manuli sets the obscure story of the so-called “Europe’s Child”.

The history of Kaspar Hauser, the mysterious teenage boy who appeared in the streets of Nuremberg, Germany, in 1828, unable to say anything but his name, has inspired thousands of books and great movies, from The Wild Child (1970) by Truffaut to The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) by Herzog. Over the decades, this story has been loaded with a number of philosophical, religious and esoteric interpretations.

In the film, divided into chapters, Kaspar (superbly played by stage actress Silvia Calderoni) washes up on the beach of a nearly deserted Mediterranean island and is taken into the custody of the Sheriff, an irresistible Vincent Gallo (here in a double, bilingual role): muttering cowboy words, he will take care of boy’s “education”, training him into the art of DJing.

Adidas jacket and large headphones on his ears, Kaspar moves jerkily, following the beat of an inner music, which bends his androgynous body and possesses it like a demon. “My name is Kaspar Hauser” therefore becomes the refrain of a breathtaking electronic symphony bound to explode, to cover the noises of

the world, to turn Paradise into a Dionysian rave.

Over his short stay in the island, Kaspar meets a series of surreal characters, variously arranged along the line of “good” and “evil”: the Pusher (the “other” Vincent Gallo, a “reality” dealer); the Duchess (Claudia Gerini); the Lynchian freak Drago (Marco Lampis); the Clairvoyant (top model Elisa Sednaoui); and the Priest (Fabrizio Gifuni), who is entrusted with the most beautiful and poetic monologues of the film.

As the legend unfolds, the hypnotic vibes of Vitalic’s electronic music merge with the natural sounds of the island, punctuating the rhythm of the story and leaving it to its mystery. Whether Kaspar is the heir to the throne of the island or a Messiah shipwrecked on the shore, it doesn’t matter. What matters, the movie seems to say, is the here and now, the liberating ecstasy of a no-tomorrow dance.

Notes 1 Pippo Mezzapesa (Annalisa), Antonio and Marco Manetti (The Arrival of Wang), Ermanno Olmi (The Cardboard Village), Carlo Verdone (A Flat for Three), Michele Rho (Horses), Ivan Cotroneo (Kryptonite!), Ferzan Ozpetek (Magnificent Presence), Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio (Seven Acts of Mercy), Emanuele Crialese (Terraferma), Gianfranco Giagni (Dante Ferretti: Italian Production Designer), Daniele Vicari (Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood), Francesco Bruni (Easy!), Massimiliano Bruno (Escort in Love), Guido Lombardi (Là-bas: A Criminal Education), Davide Manuli (The Legend of Kaspar Hauser), Marina Spada (My Tomorrow), Andrea Segre (Shun Li and the Poet).

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“ Cinecittà: set, story and social scene

by Laura GIACALONE

L

ocated 10 miles from the center of Rome in a parkland estate extending over 99 acres, Cinecittà is the hub of Italian Cinema as well as the largest filmmaking facility in Europe. Since its foundation in 1937, it has hosted more than 3,000 films, which have made the history of cinema – from classics like Quo Vadis?

(1951), Ben Hur (1959), Cleopatra (1963) and La dolce vita (1960) to more recent productions, such as The Name of the Rose (1986), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), The Godfather Part III (1990), The English Patient (1996), Gangs of New York (2002), Ocean’s Twelve (2004), The Passion of the Christ (2004) and the BBC/HBO series Rome (2004-2007). Created by Benito Mussolini for propaganda purposes (“Cinema is the strongest weapon”, proclaimed the Italian Fascist dictator rephrasing Lenin’s dictum “Cinema is the most important of the arts”), the studios were bombed by the Western Allies during World War II and were later used as a displaced persons’ camp. Many Neorealist works were shot there in the years after the war, including Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City (1945). During the 1950s, many American filmmakers chose Cinecittà as their favorite filming location, due to the studio’s facilities, its reputation for creative talent and its relatively low production costs, which earned the studio the name of “Hollywood on the Tiber”. The name of Cinecittà has however mostly been associated with Federico Fellini, who shot nearly all of his films in the famous Studio 5, inside of which he even had an apartment where he lived during the shootings.

Today Cinecittà has four production centers, one of which is in Morocco, and continues to be a vital working centre for production, pre-production and post-production, also thanks to the state-of-the-art Cinecittà Digital Factory created in 2009. The studio is currently mostly used for the production of TV mini series, advertising and special events. For its unique combination of traditional craftsmanship (of which the De Angelis’ sculpture workshop is one of the most breathtaking examples) and leading-edge technology, it remains one of the most evocative and historically significant places in Italy.n

Every morning I enter Cinecittà with the same bizarre happiness of the time when I hid behind curtains to sneak into movie theaters without paying. With the same emotion, the same risky greediness. As soon as I walk along the avenues of Cinecittà, after a stop at the bar and a quit chat with a few sleepy voices of electricians, sound engineers and grips, I enter my natural dimension, the most childish and promising. I turn a key in the key-hole and there I am, in the middle of New York, Calcutta, Ostia, Paris, Rimini but also, if I want, mars, the Salt Lakes, the Sahara. For me, every journey starts and ends at the studios of Cinecittà. […] It’s my ideal world, the cosmic space before the Big Bang.”

“ “ “ “ “

Director Federico Fellini

Cinecittà is a symbolic and beautiful fortress: outside is Hell, while inside its walls fairy tales are told, sometimes sour, sometimes sweet, sometimes funny.”

- Actor Marcello Mastroianni

I consider Cinecittà as one of the studios I know better. It immediately attracted me because like in Hollywood or Pinewood, it’s a place where everything and anything can be done, and done well.

As the major studios, it offers numerable possibilities, all nourished by enthusiasm and a culture of cinema that adds a touch of soul in all filmmaking phases. These studios have great potentialities and it’s really nice to relate to a professionalism that lives its own work with emotion. ”

- Director Francis Ford Coppola

Cinecittà has a special magic because of all the great films that have been made there. For the many years that I had been thinking about Gangs of New York, I always imagined it would be created with the Italian artistry that I saw and experienced in Italian films when I was growing up.”

- Director Martin Scorsese

There is no place I would rather be shooting a film than in Rome.

There is no studio I would rather be shooting a movie than at Cinecittà. The quality of the work and the quality of the crews and the entirely unearned sense of being part of the great Italian cinema makes Cinecittà irresistible.”

- Director Anthony Minghella

With these great sets of the past, it was a very stirring experience.

The sets were so moving that you really felt in a 19th century New York. Living in Rome for the past five months... what impressed me most of all is the overwhelming pride that we Italians take in who we are. And that is shown to me everyday by the Italian professionals I work with at Cinecittà.”

- Actor Leonardo DiCaprio

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filmic victory The Taviani brothers surprised themselves and others with the impact of their film

by Laura GIACALONE

T

he Berlinale’s Golden Bear to Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, two masters of Italian cinema (respectively 80 and 82), for Caesar Must Die, sheds a new light on the contemporary Italian film scene, and perhaps on Italy as a whole. In a moment when Italy seems to struggle to live up to its glorious past, this prestigious international recognition is felt not only as a well-deserved appreciation of the Taviani brothers’ outstanding work, but as a sign of encouragement to a whole country.

“Many people, after the award ceremony, thanked us on behalf of Italy, as if this prize were a prize to Italy” – says Paolo Taviani. “One even called us on the phone and said: ‘Thanks! I’ve hung the Italian flag out of my window!’ This is a tricky moment for our country. People believe it’s time for a change, they hope for a turning point. So this film, which is quite anomalous, somehow complies with these wishes.”

Besides sparking off a new wave of expectations and national pride, the film is in itself a valuable and original project able to provide an insight into our contemporary reality through an unprecedented combination of anti-naturalistic choices, literary references and neorealist sensitivity. The film was shot at Rome’s Rebibbia maximum-security prison, where the inmates, under the supervision of their “intern” director Fabio Cavalli, take on the challenge to stage Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. The film follows the development of the project, from the casting to the inmates-actors’ personal exploration of the text, to their rehearsals and final performance on the prison’s stage.

A universal story of friendship, betrayal, power, freedom and murder, Shakespeare’s play intertwines with the convicts’ personal histories, made up of

misdeeds, faults, offences, crimes and broken relationships. Several of these inmates-actors once were actually ‘men of honor’, affiliates to different kinds of mobs – mafia, Camorra, ndrangheta – and sentenced in most of the cases to life imprisonment. The continuous references to the ‘men of honor’ in Mark Antony’s speech at Caesar’s funeral therefore take on a whole different and deeper meaning. Such is the adherence of Shakespeare’s play to the prisoners’ life experiences that reality and fiction seem to bleed into each other, with great dramatic and even cathartic effects. “On the day we shot the sequence of the killing of Caesar – recall the directors – we asked our dagger-armed actors to find the same killer urge within them. A second later we realized what we had just said and we wished we could withdraw our words. But that wasn’t necessary because they were the first ones to reckon the necessity to face reality.”

A further powerful element of reality into the fictional setting of Shakespeare’s drama is the choice of having the characters talk in the different dialects of the inmates. So we see them squabble in Neapolitan, whisper and shout in Sicilian or Apulian, while acting between wards, stairs, cubicles, yard and cells. Far from belittling the high tone of the tragedy, the dialectal mispronunciation of the lines provides them with a new truth, allowing a deeper connection between characters and actors. “With all due respect for Shakespeare (who has always been a father, a brother and then – as we

grew older – a son for us), we have taken over his Julius Caesar, dismembered and rebuilt it. We have certainly kept the spirit of the original tragedy as well as the narrative, but at the same time we simplified it taking it a bit far from the traditional stage work tempos. The result is a degenerate son that Shakespeare would have certainly loved!”

Passing from color to a high-contrast black and white, the authors recreate Shakespeare’s atmosphere in the unusual set of the Rebibbia prison, while avoiding the risk of falling into an affected naturalism. This aesthetic choice is in fact an ethical one: because, it is only stressing out the fictional nature of the performance, the intrusion of the camera into the confined spaces of the prison, that the physical and human reality of the convicts can only emerge. It is only through Brutus’ longing for freedom that we are allowed to hear other voices that normally have no right to speak.

The Taviani brothers’ film however goes beyond that: having Caesar killed not against the backdrop of ancient Rome but in the tiny cubicles where the inmates spend their time in the open air not only brings reality into the film, thus making it visible, but brings the film into the reality of the convicts, changing it forever. “Since I have known art, this cell has turned into a prison”, says the actor playing Cassius at the end of the film. In this sense, Caesar Must Die is a hymn to the liberating power of culture and art, a timeless and timely story of redemption and salvation.n

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Global appeal Italian filmmakers whose work transcends nationality

by Francesco DEL GROSSO

I

taly boasts an extremely rich film tradition, which over the years has also become a burden difficult to bear and almost impossible to get rid of. In the last few decades, Italian filmmakers have made every effort to prove that Italian cinema has moved beyond the glories of the past, beyond the “Peplum” epics that dominated the Italian film industry from the first decade of the 20th century to the 1960s, beyond Neorealism and the Italian-style Comedy, beyond the Spaghetti Western and the Dolce Vita.

Although the most recent productions “made in Italy” have not been able to live up to this glorious past, there is a variegated number of authors from different backgrounds, styles and ages whose work is particularly noteworthy: they are actually “mavericks” moving within an absent film industry that is neither financially sound nor effective in terms of regulations able to support technical and creative professionals.

Most of their films have successfully crossed the national borders and become famous abroad, especially in the United States. Some of these authors – like Gabriele Salvatores, Giuseppe Tornatore and Roberto Benigni – have become popular at Hollywood thanks to their Academy Award-winning motion pictures: respectively, Mediterraneo (1991), Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988) and La vita è bella (Life is Beautiful, 1997).

Others – Gianni Amelio, Daniele Luchetti, Marco Tullio Giordana, Nanni Moretti – have gained an international reputation thanks to the cultural value of their works: their movies come from a background of economic recession, political instability and cultural aridity and deal with social and political issues, which are intertwined with more emotional and intimate themes.

Gianni Amelio’s films are celluloid

paintings depicting novel-like scenes of misery and nobility. Among his most well-known movies are Il ladro di bambini (Stolen Children, 1992), a journey of initiation into contemporary Italy, Special Prize of Jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and Lamerica (1994), an intense portrait of the Albanian immigration in Italy, which explores one of his recurrent themes: the search for roots. His last movie, Il primo uomo (The First Man, 2011), is an adaptation of the homonymous novel

by Albert Camus and was premiered at the last Toronto Film Festival.

Daniele Luchetti’s career spans from the successful political movie Il portaborse (The Yes Man, 1991), a hard-hitting drama film about the corruption and arrogance of Power, to the grotesque feature film La scuola (School, 1995), up to his most intense movie Mio fratello è figlio unico (My Brother is an Only Child 2007), which explores the ideological and political extremisms of the 1960s and 1970s through the relationship of two workingclass brothers. His last film, La nostra vita (Our Life), competed for the Palme d’Or at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and its leading actor, Elio Germano, won the Best Actor Award.

Family sagas and history are also the main themes of Marco Tullio Giordana’s films, from I cento passi (One Hundred Steps, 2000), a passionate account of the story of Peppino Impastato, who paid for his antiMafia activism with his life, to La meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth, 2003), a six-hour film that chronicles the Italian history from 1960s to 2003, and won the prestigious Un Certain Regard Award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. His last work, Romanzo di una strage (A Novel about a Massacre, 2012), is dedicated to the Piazza Fontana bombing, a terrorist attack occurred on December 12, 1969, at the headquarters of the National Agrarian Bank in Milan.

The prestigious French film festival has been a showcase for many talented Italian filmmakers, starting with Nanni Moretti, who has recently been selected as the President of the Jury for the 2012 edition.

He won the Palm d’Or in 2001 with his internationally-acclaimed La stanza del figlio (The Son’s Room), a dramatic depiction of family crisis and grief where the director shifts the narrative emphasis from the emotional to the rational side of pain.

All Moretti’s films reflect a “moral”, consciousness-raising idea of cinema and contain an in-depth and sarcastic critique of the Italian society. His last film, Habemus Papam (We Have a Pope, 2011), screened in competition at Cannes, stars a wonderful Michel Piccoli as a Pope undergoing a spiritual crisis.

In 2008 the Jury of Cannes, chaired

by Sean Pean, awarded a double prize, respectively the Grand Prix and the Jury Prize, to two Italian internationally acclaimed films: Gomorra (Gomorrah, 2008)

by Matteo Garrone and Il Divo (2008)

by Paolo Sorrentino. Based on Roberto Saviano’s bestseller, Gomorra was shot, as usual for the Roman director, with a very small troupe, in real-life locations, with handheld cameras, direct sound recording, and non-actors. Garrone is the only Italian filmmaker selected for competition at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival with his long-awaited Reality.

Neapolitan film director Paolo Sorrentino instead prefers to alter and distort reality and subject it to narrative time dilations. Losers or winners, perpetrators or victims of Power, his borderline characters are the insane, “ill” offspring of contemporary society. The surreal and the grotesque are recurring elements of his cinema. His filmmaking style is characterized by surgically precise camera movements, as magnificently shown

by Il Divo, a biopic of former Italian

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27

top: Baarìa (2009) by Giuseppe Tornatore.

Below: Gomorrah (2008) by Matteo Garrone; Sean Penn in This Must Be The Place (2011) by Paolo Sorrentino; Will Smith and Jaden Smith in The Pursuit of Happiness (2006) by Gabriele Muccino.

Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, brilliantly played by Toni Servillo. Such was the international success of Il Divo that three years later Sorrentino was given the chance to direct his first English-language feature, the tragicomic road movie This Must Be the Place, starring Sean Penn as a bizarre 50-year-old-former rock star.

We end this journey into the internationally acclaimed contemporary Italian filmmakers with two film directors who, for better or for worse, have tasted the “American Dream”: Emanuele Crialese and Gabriele Muccino. After studying filmmaking at the New York University and directing a series of short films, Crialese made his feature-film debut with Once We Were Strangers (1997), an

Italian-American co-production where his visionary and sensuous talent was already evident. After the international success of Respiro (Grazia’s Island, 2002) and Nuovomondo (Golden Door, 2006), both set in Sicily, his fourth feature film, Terraferma (“Dry Land”, 2011), deals with the thorny subject of African immigration into Sicily, and received a standing ovation at the 2011 Venice Film Festival, where he won the Special Jury Prize.

As for Gabriele Muccino, he seems to have no intention to leave Hollywood.

After The Pursuit of Happiness (2007) and Seven Pounds (2009), in 2011 he directed his third “American” film, a romantic comedy about football, Playing the Field (2012), starring actors of the caliber of Ge-

rard Butler, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman and Dennis Quaid.

Most well known for his sentimental pictures, which combine drama, comedy and old-style melodrama, he achieved success with L’ultimo bacio (“One Last Kiss”, 2001), a cynical and disenchanted reflection on the difficulties of sentimental relationships, which won the Audience Award for World Cinema at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and brought him to the attention of the American film industry. The film, ranked by “Entertainment Weekly” among the top ten movies of the year, was later remade into The Last Kiss (2006) by Tony Goldwyn, which was however deemed by the critics as inferior to the Italian original. n

28 Cinematic italy

italy: location as protagonist Recent films use the setting of the Bel Paese to evoke emotion

by Pierpaolo FESTA

W

oody Allen calls it “an osmosis,” something that is not done on purpose. Something that little by little penetrates the subconscious. It can be about art or history. Of course, it is also about landscape – just like walking among the stones of Via Appia, sipping Chianti while enjoying the Tuscany countryside or swimming in the magnificent blue sea of Sicily. This dive into the Italian culture is like an epiphany, a big emotion that nowadays American cinema wants to find more and more.

To this day it is possible to visit Cinecittà Studios and walk through the set of Gangs of New York, a location still opened to public. The 1800s New York City lives again in polyester thanks to the master Dante Ferretti who designed it in 2002 for the epic movie directed by his friend Martin Scorsese. That sealed the 21st century perfect marriage between Hollywood and the boot-shaped peninsula. A dream that comes true thanks to the forty acres of Cinecittà Studios.

Two years after Scorsese’s colossal, George Clooney and his “ratpack” tried to score big robbing a museum in the heart of Rome in Ocean’s Twelve (2004).

For many days Brad Pitt was running away from police, winking at every single take to his movie girlfriend Catherine Zeta-Jones in front of the Pantheon.

While not shooting, he was having fun pranking his friend George, telling the crew they would have just referred to him as “Danny” or “Mr. Ocean” since he is a “true method actor”. A spirit of real fun has marked that movie, it was like those stars took the viewer into their holidays in Europe.

By then it has become a non-stop series of American shootings in Italy. A few meters from the set of Gangs of New York, there still lies a big Roman temple (always

in polyester) and a Forum (the ancient Roman Square), used for the series Rome (2005), one of the most interesting TV productions of the last ten years. Nowadays that set is constantly reused for TV, movies or just commercials.

Literature adaptations: from Shakespeare to the vampires It is not just about Rome, “The Boot” has been taken over by Hollywood from North to South. Sometimes it is about the umpteenth adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays – from Kenneth Branagh’s epic Much Ado About Nothing shot in Tuscany, to the new version of Romeo and Juliet shot in Verona and coming out by the end of 2012 – some other times it is about vampire romances, as the Twilight Saga (2009). Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon included some parts set in Volterra, Tuscany, where a dynasty of vampires (called The Volturi) tries to rain on the parade of Edward and Bella. On screen the location was slightly changed and the crew moved one hundred and fifty kilometers away to double it with Montepulciano, near the wonderful town of Siena.

The Vatican Mission Adapting a novel to the screen can require unthinkable efforts. This is what happened to Ron Howard while shooting Angels and Demons (2009), the sequel of The Da Vinci Code based on the best seller by Dan Brown. Many of the sets were a combination of physical set pieces and green screens with the backgrounds to be digitally added later. The crew also built a replica on scale of Saint Peter’s Square in studio. Other exteriors were shot on locations: prior to filming, many crew members visited Vatican City as tourists and extensively photographed the city to capture as much detail as possible, knowing they were unlikely to be

allowed to film there, so that they could recreate the sets as faithfully as possible.

Vatican is often doubled with another beautiful location, the Royal Palace of Caserta. A magnificent structure built in 1700s and recently used for blockbusters such as Mission: Impossible III (2006), as Tom Cruise tries to kidnap a VIP villain attending some Cardinal’s event. He can save the world, yet he cannot have the permission to film in the Vatican. Moreover Pope’s reign is usually targeted by horror directors which inevitably come to Rome to “steal” some shots for their exorcism movies such as The Rite (2011) or The Devil Inside (2012).

Jesus Christ and World War Two Matera, a town in Basilicata (southern Italy), has become a stomping ground for filmmakers searching for a biblical landscape, and finding it in the abandoned Sassi, the ancient part of the town that still looks like a city of two thousand years ago. That location has been used in order to film the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The most recent version is, of course, The Passion of the Christ (2004)

by Mel Gibson, who blooded the Matera ancient roads representing the last days of Christ tortured by the Romans.

Italy served also as landscape for war movies as Spike Lee showed in Miracle at St. Anna (2008), bringing to the silver screen the story of a group of Afro-American soldiers rescuing the Italians from Hitler’s army in Tuscany. When this happens, a director always risks to be questioned by local people. Lee himself was accused of altering history for the way he portrayed the massacre of Sant’Anna di Stazzema, romancing it with the plot.

It’s all about love Of course it is also about love for the Italian cinema as it was showed in Nine

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This dive into the Italian culture is like an epiphany.

(2009), the musical by Rob Marshall. An adaptation of Otto e mezzo by Federico Fellini. During filming, Rome was once again “conquered” by stars as Daniel Day-Lewis was flirting with his women Marion Cotillard (the wife) Penelope Cruz (the lover) and Nicole Kidman (the muse) around the Eternal City.

But when it is about love, it is easy to be predictable. The perfect examples are the rom-coms such as Under The Tuscan Sun (2003), When in Rome (2010) and Letters to Juliet (2010). Movies that exploit just Italian landscapes and stereotypes, to balance a weak plot.

Waiting for Woody Allen It was once titled The Bop Decameron.

Then it became Nero Fiddled. Now it is called To Rome With Love (2012). The new movie directed and acted by Woody Allen, entirely shot in Rome, changed its titles at least three times, preferring in the end an audience-friendly title. After Paris, Allen returned to Italy, where he already partly shot Mighty Aphrodite and Everyone Says I Love You. He has chosen the most beautiful locations of the Eternal City and surrounded himself with a stellar cast that includes Penélope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, rising stars Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page and Roberto Benigni, Italy’s favorite clown and genius that returns to movies, thanks to Allen, after a break of six years.n

clockwise from left: Kenneth Branagh and Robert Sean Leonard in Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

by Kenneth Branagh.

Katherine Zeta-Jones in Rome’s Pantheon in Ocean’s Twelve (2004)

by Steven Soderbergh.

Angels and Demons (2009) by Ron Howard.

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30 Cinematic italy

the state and status of film A study of the effect of politics on Italian filmmaking

by Roberto SILVESTRI The state of Italian film making comprises not only stalwarts like Nanni Moretti, Matteo Garrone, Francesco Rosi, Sabina Guzzanti, Paolo Sorrentino, Marco Tullio Giordana, but also names like Michelangelo Frammartino, Pietro Marcello, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Del Bono, Daniele Ciprì, Roberta Torre, Franco Maresco, and Stefano Savona; making the industry multi-faceted. The neo-realism of 1945-1948 saw a resurgence of a country in ruins and split by the European Recovery Program, which preferred American corporations taking advantage of low wages in a country beholden to the Western superpower.

Today, that same country is still in ruin, spiritually and morally.

The importance of cinematographic and literary neo-realism has been expressed in various ways: 1. To live and struggle as a popular political-ethical movement around the rise and fall of Fascism. While never being populist, after the somewhat fraudulent electoral loss of ’48, it passed on, having emerged from the ruins, to other more complex experimentations in reality, without becoming too codified in dogma or traditionalist aesthetic ideologies. Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Roberto Rossellini were, in this sense, “consistent” neorealists, because those who simplify reality are always “subrealists”.

2. To return Italy to the living flow of international culture after 20 years of racist obscurantist autocracy and colonization. As the French critic André Bazin wrote, its greatness was reworking the social realism of photo-essay and cinematography of the Roosevelt New Deal with new

emotional and visual elements.

2. To significantly reduce production costs using new filming technologies and the industrial high-tech craftsmanship emerging from Cinecittà, thereby regenerating the film star system and associated politics.

And so was born the auteur (Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, Luchino Visconti, Alberto Lattuada, Giuseppe De Santis, Luigi Zampa, Pietro Germi, Mario Monicelli…). It was the film director, no longer the studio system, who became the productive focal point of the cinema – and consequently the target of frenzied state censors. For the first time Italian cinema became art, and the cinematographer became an artist on a par with authors, musicians and painters. Rossellini was the first of this new wave. Today the most socially conscious Italian cinematographers cannot take advantage of the “inattention” of public or private post-war powers. The cinematic world, a crumbling industry enslaved by television and the viewing public, is rigorously controlled by the State; that is to say, those who play private games with public money. It was the public, the civil society, who until the mid 1970s allowed cinema to exist in the “North American” style; therefore, this system was mixed and while marketing operations were still possible and ongoing in selling our films abroad in the Series A market, this no longer holds any true power. The gap between experimental filmmaking and filmmaking of a commercial quality became greatly enlarged, and those using public funding sorely needed a “foreign cover-up” and co-production (such as Michelangelo Frammartino, Carlo Hintermann, Alba Rorhwacher, Pietro Marcello, Matteo Garrone); or those forced into

self-production (Ciprì, Torre, Maresco, Gianikian-Ricci Lucchi); or even those whose option was to escape abroad. The neo-neo-realists have, for the most part, escaped and fled to other shores.

Certainly there is no such fractured gap between commitment and “fun”.

From Shakespeare to Hawks, popular success is the result of ongoing permanent experimentation. But the same Straub who is selling his films all over the (civil) world, and continues to sell them for several decades, always profits more than film director Fausto Brizzi, making far-superior escapist films because, in a society that imprisons good people but frees the criminals, the problem lies in allowing the good to escape. In recognizing this, the minor-quality commercial “comedy” nevertheless holds a special place in the hearts of the general public (the comedies of the Vanzina brothers are studied in North American universities, but not here at “home” in Italy); even though films of commercial quality (from Sabina Guzzanti, Nanni Moretti, Carlo Verdone, Roberto Benigni, Claudio Bisio, the Manetti brothers and many other caustic young filmmaking warriors) have a greater international appeal. Sure, we have been investing everything in “fake, false comedies” for a long time! Rai and Mediaset, the oligopolies that control everything, the two commanders who control our imaginations, have ordered the filmmakers to keep everything as status quo, to put everything else on the back burner.

Despite all this, despite the atrocious law currently regulating the film market, and even despite a system of points for financing films which oblige the filmmaker to star the same actors playing the same parts again and again, ad nauseum; these same stars win the same awards in the same tired festivals (and possibly

Cinematic italy 31

Actress Sophia Loren and film director Vittorio De Sica.

even fictitious festivals) . . . the same screenwriters, cinematographers, editors, costume designers and musicians, everything is status quo. The “fake comedy” remains and is adored. It fills a hole and has its place in the grand scheme of the cinematic world where even the big screen fills us with the bodies and faces of television stars. No longer do we see our old friends Ugo Tognazzi, Vittorio Gassman, Nino Manfredi, Alberto Sordi or even Paolo Villaggio. But if we analyze this “bath of stupidity”, which is at the core of the non-exportable Italian cinematic product, we cannot blame any one person in particular. Everyone has their own degree of responsibility, from Walter Veltroni to Francesco Rutelli (former Mayors of Rome), Sandro Bondi to Giancarlo Galan (former Cultural Ministers). Those who have and ignore a conflict of interest, and those who allow this to happen and complicit in its continuance. Apparently, the world’s (political) center-right and center-left are attracted to such an irresistible and fatal idiocy.

Meanwhile, the film critics (including theater and musical critics) no longer exist. Only reviews are written, chauvinistic and obsessive apologies, while all those who would be useful to filmmakers working to better express themselves, and who deal with films and artists appreciated anywhere in the world but here, are subjected to a lynching. When will the works of Thai independent film director Weerasethakul Apichatpong arrive to primetime Rai stations? Italy’s expenditure for

francesco rosi leone

federico fellini

Alberto Lattuada

Roberto Rossellini

culture in all aspects is very low, not exceeding one percent (1%), which is worse than Burkina Faso in Africa. Culture is not the end, but the means for development and growth. All of us need to invest not in films, but in good film schools, in facilities, laboratories, production and post-production technologies, and in the field of experimental films, documentary and short films and cartoons. At that point, as has happened in France, Germany and England, the state could be responsible for targeted and mixed public-private funding and partnerships and in coproducing specific connected projects. n

Mario Monicelli.

32 Cinematic italy

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3 1 5

A Certain Age 4

The golden era of Italian cinema in 10 exemplars

by Enrico AZZANO

T

here is an old saying which says that we must look to the past to reconstruct the future. The golden years of cinema seem so far away: the years of neorealism, peplum (sword-and-sandals), spaghetti-westerns, thriller and horror, comedies, melodramas, politics; and of the Oscar winners, Cannes Film Festival winners, CinecittĂ stars, and the many other internationally known and recognized awards.

The Italian film industry, which has seen and lived through highs (too few) and lows (too many) in the last three decades, must now look to the golden years of the industry during the economic boom: the Second World War, the 1960s and 1970s, the films and styles of writers from Antonioni to Rossellini, Fellini to Visconti, of craftsmen from Bava to Margheriti; an industry capable of producing refined masterpieces and luscious films of pure entertainment, a cinematic world rich in ideas and ambition. To imagine this better future, let us look to the past at ten memorable Italian and world films.

01. La Dolce Vita (1960) directed by Federico Fellini

02. Il Gattopardo (1963) directed by Luchino Visconti

03. Germania anno zero (1948) directed by Roberto Rossellini

When Hollywood came to the banks of the Tiber River, all eyes turned to Rome as the Oscar Awards crossed the Atlantic and spectators around the world anxiously awaited the works of Rossellini, DeSica, Visconti and Fellini. Those were the years in which Italian cinema seemed to shine with an eternally bright light, much like Trevi Fountain in Federico Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960): Anita Ekberg, the Scandinavian blonde, perfectly paired with the sly charm of Marcello Mastroianni in one of the most famous and seductive storylines in the history of film.

Adeptly taken from the romantic novel given us by Giuseppe Tomasi, of Lampedusa, Luchino Visconti skillfully combined the elegance of Visconti, the charisma of Burt Lancaster (as the Prince of Salina), and the freshness of Claudia Cardinale (as Angelica Sedara), in depicting the historical political inaction of Italy. Wonderfully embellished by the music of Nino Rota, this film won the Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1963. The film also starred Alain Delon (as Tancredi Falconeri), at the time a budding young French star.

The most inspiring works of neorealism recorded, in real time, the drama and aftermath of war, and the laborious reconstruction of the years following. In his Trilogy of War, Roberto Rossellini photographed the misery and hope of a new generation, bringing it to life in Germania Anno Zero (Germany, Year Zero) (1948) and focusing on the tragic story of 13-year-old Edmund Meschke in a semidestroyed, ghastly and distressed Berlin.

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04. La Ciociara (1960) directed by Vittorio De Sica As Vittorio De Sica takes to the big screen with La Ciociara (Two Women) (1960), a novel by Alberto Moravia and adapted by screenwriter and neorealism theorist Cesare Zavattini, it is not the story that is unforgettable; rather, it is the outstanding performance by the diva Sophia Loren which remains impressed in the heart of the general public. Loren, for her role as the courageous Cesira, received both an award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Actor in 1962, six years after Anna Magnani. The film also starred Jean-Paul Belmondo.

05. Accattone (1961) directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini Situating himself for the first time behind the camera, Pier Paolo Pasolini, a poet and writer, masterfully gives us an extraordinary portrait of the suburbs of Rome known as the ghetto, the poorest and most disadvantaged in the Italian capital city. Far from poetic neorealism and the dynamics of industrialized cinema, Pasolini manages to make a distinct impression on the viewer of the everyday life in this area. A stunning performance by a young Franco Citti (as Vittorio “Accattone” Cataldi), manages to show both sides of this dynamic vision, with his portrayal of sincerity shining through a worn and lined face.

06. Io la conoscevo bene (1965) directed by Antonio Pietrangeli Too often underestimated by critics and film history tomes, Antonio Pietrangeli was one of the most talented of the Bel

Paese (Beautiful Country). Before his unfortunate premature death, he gave us Io la Conoscevo Bene (I Knew Her Well) (1965), a story the young and beautiful Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli) who struggles, and succeeds, in keeping hope alive while surrounded by cynical exploiters during Italy’s economic boom. A bittersweet, but bright, cinematic masterpiece, the film also stars Nino Manfredi, Ugo Tognazzi and Enrico Maria Salerno.

07. C’era una volta il West (1968) directed by Sergio Leone Sergio Leone, of Rome, tells the epic story of the twilight of the American West, pushing to the forefront Monument Valley as used in many films of John Ford: we know it as the happy season of the spaghetti-western, twirling among the miracle of Italian creativeness and production. C’era una Volta al West (Once Upon a Time in the West) (1968) is an ambitious, flowing and monumental film with a cast of the greatest magnitude: Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale and Jason Robards. Cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli combines with a memorable soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

08. La classe operaia va in Paradiso (1971) directed by Elio Petri The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971) is a superb masterpiece involving the years of protest, of labor struggles, of class conflicts. Director Elio Petri, along with screenwriters Ugo Pirro and Gian Maria Volonte, deftly crosses the lines by dragging the viewer inside the factory and in front of the assembly line, allowing us to feel its strange and alien rhythms. Petri has won numerous international awards from Cannes and the Oscars, including

10

one the year prior for Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto (Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion).

09. Profondo rosso (1975) directed by Dario Argento Long after the time of the westerns of Leone, Sollima and Corbucci, films of a new genre began to find a life and place in Italy. With the thriller/horror film Profondo Rosso (Deep Red) (1975), Dario Argento succeeded in pushing the boundaries and getting closer and closer to horrific influences and suggestions.

Through the use of a skillfully-designed sound track from the progressive rock group Goblin, we follow the descent of the film’s hero, a musician named Marcus Daly (David Hemmings). Not until long after do we realize both the film and music have become etched into the nightmares of generations of viewers.

10. Amici miei (1975) directed by Mario Monicelli A film which manages to be lighthearted and fun, Mario Monicelli has taken the ideas of Pietro Germi, poured in a healthy dose of jokes and tricks, sprinkled it on top with laughter and nostalgia, and presented us with one of the most significant Italian comedies that we will be hard-pressed to see again. Set in Florence during the 1960s and 1970s, Amici Miei (My Friends) (1975), this story of a group of friends in their fifties is masterfully brought to life by a generation of extraordinarily talented actors such as Ugo Tognazzi, Philippe Noiret and Adolfo Celi. Also in the cast are Moschin Gaston, Duilio Del Prete, Milena Vukotic and Bernard Blier. n

34 Cinematic italy

italian film festivals of note compiled by Laura GIACALONE

Bellaria Igea Marina Bellaria Film Festival Founded in 1983 in Bellaria Igea Marina (Rimini), the festival is a showcase for independent filmmakers. Over the years, the BFF has paid homage to the greatest Italian film directors, such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Marco Bellocchio, Dario Argento, Pupi Avati, Gillo Pontecorvo, Mario Monicelli, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Ermanno Olmi and Nanni Moretti. The festival features the following contests: “Anteprima Doc”, with previews of new Italian documentaries; “Casa Rossa Doc”, which awards a prize to the best documentary produced during the year; “Corto Doc”, open to short documentaries; and “Crossmedia”, dedicated to the new ways of filmmaking and storytelling, online and offline, between digital media and documentary. www.bellariafilmfestival.org

Bologna Biografilm Festival Biografilm Festival is the first international event completely devoted to biographies and life stories. The festival showcases a selection of feature and short films, both fiction and documentaries, and promotes meetings with directors and artists who have significantly contributed to the biographic genre, featuring their most representative works.

Besides, Biografilm schedules important national and international premieres of new movies, along with related special events and thematic retrospectives. www.biografilm.it

Future Film Festival The Future Film Festival is the most important Italian event dedicated to animation and special effects. Every year, the best film directors, art directors and creative producers come to Bo-

logna to present their films, backstage videos and exclusive pictures of new productions. The festival not only provides a preview of the future, but also includes retrospectives dedicated to the history of animated cinema and sci-fi, as well as meetings and events focused on new technological applications to other fields, from the web to video games. www.futurefilmfestival.org

Il Cinema Ritrovato Founded in 1986, Il Cinema Ritrovato (Cinema Rediscovered) brings rare and little-known films to the attention of critics and public alike, focusing on the origins of cinema and silent movies. The festival is organized every summer by Cineteca di Bologna, and is one of the world’s major cultural events dedicated to film restoration. www.cinetecadibologna.it/cinemaritrovato2012

Courmayeur

Courmayeur Noir in Festival Since 1993, the best of cinema and literature in the field of thriller, mystery, spy story, horror and noir is on show in one of the most fascinating ski resorts in the Italian Alps: Courmayeur. The 12 films in competition are all premières of the year. The festival also features a documentary section, retrospectives exploring the history of the genre, discovering cult authors and setting new trends, a TV Noir section, and a Mini Noir festival for young audience. Besides, the festival promotes meetings with the best Italian and international crime novelists, and awards the prestigious Raymond Chandler Lifetime Achievement Award to international renowned writers and the Giorgio Scerbanenco Award to the best Italian crime novel. www.noirfest.com

Florence

Festival dei Popoli Founded in 1959 by a group of scholars in the humanities, anthropology, sociology, ethnology and mass-media studies,

the Festival dei Popoli, a non-profit organization, has been active for over fifty years in the promotion and study of social documentary cinema. From 2008 to 2010, an edition of the festival was also held in New York (NYDFF - New York Documentary Film Festival). The Institute has created a vast network of collaborations for the diffusion of documentary culture in Italy and abroad. The festival also offers training courses and workshops for documentary filmmakers. www.festivaldeipopoli.org

Pesaro Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema di Pesaro Created in 1965 by Bruno Torri and Lino Miccichè, with the collaboration of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Bernardo Bertolucci, the festival is one of the most important international showcases for avant-garde films. More recently, the festival has focused on the discovery of emerging filmmakers from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Iran, always keeping an eye on new expressive forms and languages. www. pesarofilmfest.it

Rome International Film Festival of Rome The International Rome Film Festival takes place every year at Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica, the spectacular arts complex designed by world-famous architect Renzo Piano. The festival’s most important award is a silver statuette shaped after the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius statue, placed in Michelangelo’s Campidoglio Square, arguably one of the most recognizable symbols of Rome. Created by Bulgari, the prize is awarded to the Best Film, the Best Actor and the Best Actress. Over the past six editions, the festival has welcomed many international stars, such as Martin Scorsese, Leonardo Di Caprio, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise and Bruce Springsteen, and has given the Acting Award for their

Cinematic italy 35

lifetime achievements to Al Pacino, Sophia Loren, Meryl Streep, Richard Gere, Sean Connery and Julianne Moore. www.romacinemafest.it

Rome Independent Film Festival Created in 2001, the Rome Independent Film Festival (RIFF) is a non-profit cultural organization whose members include both cinema enthusiasts and industry professionals. The association’s mission is to create better international distribution opportunities for independent films excluded from the major distributors; to create a lively and mutually beneficial point of contact between new or underrepresented European filmmakers and established industry professionals; to provide a platform for young people with a passion for filmmaking; and to stimulate discussion among audience members and fellow filmmakers alike. www.riff.it

Salerno

Giffoni Film Festival The Giffoni International Film Festival is the largest children’s film festival in Europe. It takes place in the little Italian town of Giffoni Valle Piana in Southern Italy, close to Salerno. Over 2,000 children attend the festival from 39 countries around the world. During the festival, children and teenagers watch the films, learn about the filmmaking process, and are called to judge them and award the best ones with prizes. The festival has been brought to many different countries around the world, with Poland, Argentina, Australia, Albania, China, Korea, India, and the United States having all hosted their own versions of the Giffoni Film Festival. The Giffoni Hollywood Film Festival in the United States has proven to be the biggest so far. www. giffonifilmfestival.it

Taormina Taormina Film Festival Italy’s principal summer film event, the

Taormina Film Fest takes place every year against the stunning backdrop of the Ancient Theater of Taormina, one of Sicily’s most important and well-preserved monuments. The festival is a major showcase for film premières from Hollywood and around the world. Each year the festival presents a selection of 21 new features, chosen from the most significant recent production. A number of films first screened in Taormina have been subsequently chosen to represent their countries as candidates for Academy Awards; others have gone on to win Emmys, Golden Globes and other major awards.

Festival prizes include the Golden Tauro for best film and the renowned Taormina Arte Awards, presented to outstanding members of the film community. www. taorminafilmfest.it

Torino

Torino Film Festival The Turin Film Festival is the second largest film festival in Italy, following the Venice Film Festival. Created in 1982 with the aim of exploring young people’s cinematography, the festival has progressively widened its scope, bringing together art house films, experimental works and great forgotten classics. Over the years, the festival has gained a solid and acknowledged international reputation. In the last few years, under the direction of Nanni Moretti (2007-2008) and Gianni Amelio (2009-2010), the Turin Film Festival has hosted filmmakers of the caliber of Francis Ford Coppola, Wim Wenders, Roman Polanski, Oliver Stone, Emir Kusturica and John Boorman. www.torinofilmfest.org

Udine Far East Film Festival Now at its 14th edition, it is the largest festival in Europe entirely dedicated to Asian cinema. Listed by Variety as one of the world’s 50 events “not to be missed”, it aims to encourage and develop the understanding and apprecia-

tion of East Asian filmmaking amongst European and Italian audiences; to contribute to the commercial distribution of Asian films across European and Italian markets; to create a mutually beneficial exchange between Asian and European filmmaking companies; and to establish links between European and Asian film producers, through their participation in the symposium “Ties That Bind”, held during the festival. www.fareastfilm.com

Venice Ca’ Foscari Short Film Festival Directed by film critic Roberto Silvestri, the Ca’s Foscari Short Film Festival is the first festival in Europe entirely conceived, organized and managed by a university.

Since its first edition in 2011, it has established itself as a sort of “world championship of students’ films”, screening the best short films directed by students coming from the most prestigious schools of cinema in the world. Along with the international competition, the program of the festival also includes retrospectives and workshops. The festival is a unique opportunity to get to know the so-called 2.0 Generation of filmmakers. www.cafoscarishort.unive.it

Venice Cinematic Art Biennale The Venice Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world.

Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932, the festival takes place every year on the island of the Venice Lido, and is part of the Venice Biennale. The Film Festival’s principal awards are the Leone d’Oro (Golden Lion), which is awarded to the best film screened in competition at the festival, the Leone d’Argento (Silver Lion) for the Best Director, and the Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup), which is awarded to the best actor and actress. Among the Golden Lion winners: Wim Wenders, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, Ermanno Olmi, Jafar Panahi, Mike Leigh, Ang Lee, Darren Aronofsky, Sofia Coppola and Alexander Sokurov. www.labiennale.org n

36 contemporary art

Italian video ARt, A review The curator of the exhibit Electronic Body reports

by Gianluca MARZIANI

T

he topic of which I write arrives in the nick of time (perhaps I should say in the “flick” of time in honor of the filmatic subject). What follows is a general exploration of Italian video art, the subject of a fortunate concomitance with the exhibition I have just curated for the Rocco Guglielmo Foundation. Entitled Electronic Body, the show gathers together 16 artists using the video medium exclusively to express a range of issues, approaches and visions.

In the catalogue for the exhibition, I have written that “Fluency guides the rules of engagement of video art. Ideally, if we were to divide artistic mediums into three stages of matter, we would have a general formula: solid for traditional media (drawing, painting and sculpture), gaseous for digital and liquidity for film.

In fact, the video art of the last thirty years has forced the three stages to create a continuous hybridization (installations, video installations, multimedia and combined systems) that create a fourth stage containing many internal variables. The same video, by its general fluid nature, encounters solid and gaseous elements that lead to a greater spatial and object awareness….”

In an age where access to technology is easy and affordable, the art of video/film (combining the widespread use of digital and, in a few cases, film) becomes experimental and opens new paths. In fact, I think video art (being harmonious in its approach and methodology between filming or drawing, projector or monitor, basic set up or installation) has only just begun to show a little of its true potential. The very freedom of the web makes it easier to liberally blend ambitious and popular media mixing technologies, ex-

Marco Agostinelli. Wars / Solitudes / Resurrections and Other Epiphanies (2011). Biennale di Venezia 2011.

pensive productions and ‘low budget shorts.’ It is impossible to limit individual trends to such a non-conforming context; at best, we can recognize certain general commonalities within the environments and cultures where artists grow their craft. As a good example of this, Salvo Cuccia, De Serio and Zimmerfrei have few similarities, but all three investigate the real world, the deadlocked societies and challenging and difficult lives that the artistic eye then transforms into archetypes of a broken humanity.

In general I would say that the following Italian authors approach these extreme elements with ease: the masters of cinema (Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Jean Rouch, Roberto Rossellini, Derek Jarman, are those who come to mind), figures of radical theater (first and foremost Carmelo Bene), philosophical and literary works, documentaries,

musical trends, the world of television – these and others become reasons to reflect and rethink, without worrying about semantic bases, combining the differences in a conscious and well thoughtout manner. It is not because “the Blob” was born here (a heterogeneous example of imagery that gave new meaning to editing); nor is it because Italy has great cinematographers and editors, two roles that shape and give form to words and images.

To describe what the essence of being a liquid language means, is to flow from all sides, creating a system which circulates among all forms of art. The results can be grouped in this way: creative video (multiple forms of realistic works), reworked video (revised and re-formed from previous works) and interpretive video (multiple works of a narrative matter). The strength of video art lies in its

37 Photo by Ela Bialkowska

contemporary art

Bianco-Valente. Tempo universale (2007).

compulsive core, without homogenous stereotyping, and to an imagination where each individual project becomes a unified style and open resource, one world to unify all other worlds (all other creative languages) and finally creates that significant fourth level of creativity.

Now, the most important question would be: Is Italy a competitive country in this field of video art? I would answer yes, even if we are limited to producing low-budget films which others can produce on a grander scale through support from foundations, museums and forward-thinking companies. While on the one hand the result is a lack of solid realism, it also goes to show what Italian talent can do with a limited budget to bring success to the market. It is sufficient to note some well-known names as evidence of this success: for example, profoundly meaningful iconography, typically tied in a cultural context to memories, histories, antiquities and treasures. We can look at the example of Studio Azzurro in their video installations, from where theater, cinema, music and literature flow. Their projects involve immersion and complexity; we use all five senses as if the film was in a metalanguage between the past and the future, on the edge of metaphysics of a high philosophical value. From Canecapovolto to Antonello Matarazzo and Alterazioni Video, one can see the multiplicity of elements that mark the destiny of forward-thinking imagination in film.

The film transforms into an open world, similar to the chaos of daily life where contrasts and differences create open dialogue and communication.

The ability to create flowing imagery with high-impact painting is connected

Grazia Toderi. Babel Red (2006)

to deep iconography. From here the flowing icon: a process of aesthetic synthesis that transforms images into an actual work, giving it a universal and metaphysical aspect. With the strength and ideological spirit of each individual frame, expression and compression combine naturally and organically into a powerful vision. The film, therefore, becomes a significant development with respect to the nature of filmmaking. Masbedo, for example, is one of a duo who worked on the quality of grand cinematography, creating narrative films in which images and sounds meld to become incredibly dynamic films. Even more cinematographic are the approaches of Alessandro Bavari and Matteo Basile’, artists with a prophetic eye who invented a surreal

world which transformed the human body and natural landscape into a radical vision.

Within the confines of the abstract mental imagery of Theo Eshetu, a visionary who has an ability to sense and feel the beauty of a project, lies the confirmation of the value of a mental vision and the means to transform the documentary reality of a geometric prism, visual effects and inescapable palindromes. Visible abstraction and internal journeys burst to life in the work of BIANCO-VALENTE, a duo who visualized the cerebral and synaptic processes weaving throughout the human body, the environment and the universe. Another example of this approach is GRAZIA TODERI, a hypnotic visionary who has the ability to film a stadium

38 Strapline

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top: Marco Agostinelli.

Wars / Solitudes / Resurrections and Other Epiphanies (2011). Biennale di Venezia 2011.

Left: ZimmerFrei, LKN Confidential - Ataturk, 2010. courtesy Monitor.

39 contemporary art

or city as if looking at a painting in the darkness of the infinite cosmos. Through the metabolic pattern methods of Marco Agostinelli, we are able to filter the videographic flow with a personal system of semantics, a type of interpretive language which overlaps the original fragments of filmmaking, creating a psycho-emotive flow around the real world.

We are given the opportunity to delve deeply into a wide range of artistic visionaries throughout a multitude of websites.

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While there are obviously many film- and video-production visionaries (although few use video means exclusively), some of the more outstanding solo artists are listed below. The general video scenario is full of many variables, resulting in a rich variety open to all tastes, and the discoveries and insights of every person, no matter how strange one’s taste or curiosity may seem to be. However, one thing is absolutely certain: the future of Italian video is sure to hold some beautiful surprises. n

clockwise from top: ZimmerFrei. Dreamhouse (2010).

Masbedo. Until The End (2011).

Courtesy Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, RomE. Grazia Toderi. Atlante, 2010. two video projections, loop, DVD. various dimensions, color, sound. installation view Fundaçao de Serralves, Porto, 2010.

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40 Strapline

Dressing the

oni

Prada

Alberta Ferretti

Missoni

by Barbara ZORZOLI

W

hen movies first began to be mass-marketed, right after the turn of the century, actors and actresses usually looked to their own closets for contemporary stories. For period pieces, of course, a wardrobe department was necessary, but it was not until 1916 that the first costume designer was credited on film, a certain Frenchman Louis J. Gasnier. Designed for American serial heroine Pearl White, his creation, a black suit with white blouse accompanied with a black beret, immediately caught on among young women of the day. The era of the Hollywood designer had begun! 50 years later, the costumes designed by great artists and costume designers of the Italian ateliers, like Sartoria Farani (established in 1962) and Sartoria Tirelli (1964), two of the most notable Italian costume houses, have enriched the films that marked the history of our cinema. The value of this work is inter-

nationally recognized. These designers have dressed the dreams of great directors giving life to their characters and images. Great costumes define film legends; remember the oversized coat worn

by Totò in The Hawks and the Sparrows (Pasolini 1966), Donald Sutherland’s eighteenth-century tails in Fellini’s Casanova (1976) or the blue tailcoat worn by Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini’s Intervista (1987)? Costume designers like Oscar winners Danilo Donati (1976, Fellini’s Casanova), Gabriella Pescucci (1992, for Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence), Milena Canonero (twicewon: 1981, Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire, 2005, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette), have all left their mark. Not forgetting Piero Tosi, known for his thoroughness and acute aesthetic sense (think about Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers, 1960; Ludwig, 1972; The Leopard, 1963). It is said that Terence Stamp praised

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Part

41

The 2012-2013 Italian collections have a vintage filmic quality

prada

dolce & gabbana

Tosi’s designs in the surreal ‘Toby Dammit’ sequence in Fellini’s Histoires extraordinaires (1968) as vital in helping him play the part.

The costume designer’s primary relationship, in fact, is with actor, who often feels in character once in costume but also expects the designer to exalt good features. And here’s why costume designers (like those mentioned above) contributed to the creation of unforgettable movie characters that became fashion icons.

It was at this point that fashion designers started to translate the style of the most fashionable movie characters of all time into real life: fashion meets cinema and vice versa.

For spring summer 2012, in fact, several Italian designers drew their inspiration from movies, like Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’avventura. Definitely one of the hottest trends for this summer is the strong Fifties appeal, a golden

gucci

age on which fashion has focused on. Embracing their Italian roots, Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni and Pucci, were all about fiery Latin women, like the tempestuous Sophia Loren in Stanley Kramer’s The Pride and the Passion or the wild and beautiful Julia Migenes in Francesco Rosi’s Carmen; instead Miuccia Prada preferred a collection inspired by Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday. Who can forget Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim’s And God Created Woman? The ensemble featuring printed top and hot pants by Dolce & Gabbana and the low-necked pleated dress by Prada, recreate B.B.’s look.

The Twenties are a strong presence this season too: Alberta Ferretti’s collection reminds the 1920s ‘flapper girl’ dresses, like the ones worn by Mia Farrow in Jack Clayton’s The Great Gatsby. Also dancing the Charleston are Gucci’s models, stunning like Bérénice Bejo in The Artist, best-picture Oscar at the 84th Academy Awards. n

42 literature

director’s backstory, dark and light

by Laura GIACALONE Scorsese on scorsese

by Michael Henry Wilson (2012, Cahiers du Cinema)

I

f a maverick is, by his own admission, “a filmmaker who finds a way with the system of making the films he has chosen to make”, Martin Scorsese is certainly one. From his early works, directly emanating from the ethnic melting pot of New York’s Lower East Side where he grew up, to his latest Oscar-winning celebration of the dream factory, Hugo (2011), Scorsese has worked his way up in the film industry within and outside the system, “above ground” and “underground”, in and out of Hollywood, putting onto film his deepest obsessions.

Spanning his 50-year career, the 320page volume Scorsese on Scorsese encompasses the director’s entire oeuvre, from his short films of the early 60s to his present-day projects, providing a unique insight into the creative processes of the man whom British film director Michael Powell described as “the Goya of 10th Street”. The book, published by Cahiers du Cinema, is a work of art in itself, collects the interviews that Scorsese gave throughout his career – from 1974 to 2011 – to his friend Michael Henry Wilson and includes a stunning documentation taken from his personal archives: family photographs, photographs taken on set, original scripts, sketches, notes and storyboards, as well as a biography and a complete filmography.

What emerges from this beautiful book is the portrait of a “tormented poet” able to display the drama of human life in all its complexity, through larger-than-life characters torn between genius and madness, always dangerously on the verge of insane obsession.

All his films are indeed “opere mondo” – literally “world works” or “modern ep-

ics”, as Italian literary scholar Franco Moretti would put it – drawing their imagery from “the violence of the streets and the frenzy of rock music, the mysteries of religion and the spell of show business”.

The grandson of Sicilian immigrants, Scorsese has always thought of himself as an “American Italian” rather than an “Italian American” like his parents.

From his family background he inherited a strong sense of religion, which permeates his entire oeuvre. After all, as he once said, “when you grow up in Little Italy what are you going to be other than a gangster or a priest?”

If the outbreak of rock’n’roll pulled him away from the Church, a career as a gangster was not an option either, as he was the guy who got always beaten up.

So filmmaking was the route he had to take in order to survive. (“You make art because you have to, because you have no choice” – says the painter in Life Lessons, 1989).

His debut as a filmmaker in the 1960s was like “the arrival of an alien from outer space.” He burst upon the scene with Mean Street (1973), his “Italian-American Graffiti”, and three years later, he was awarded the Palme d’Or in Cannes for Taxi Driver (1976), which marked the start of a series of fruitful collaborations between Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader and sealed his symbiotic relationship with his actor of choice, Robert De Niro.

With New York, New York (1977), his first big Hollywood production, he subverted the conventions of the musical biopic, creating a “Pirandellian exercise on the perils of show business”. His reflection about the self-destructive impulses hidden behind the lavish spectacle continued with The Last Waltz (1978), a concert documentary paying homage to the rock revolution.

What fuels Scorsese’s creativity ? “...an inextinguishable flame, as strong as the one that consumes his saints and sinners.”

The 1980s were the years of unforgotten masterpieces, such as: Raging Bull (1980), another proof of the alchemical synergy between the director and his actor Robert De Niro; The Color of Money (1986), where the confrontation between Paul Newman and Tom Cruise is one between two Hollywood generations; and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), the spiritual odyssey of a “human all too human” Christ, different from the saintly figure of the hagiographies.

The following decade opened up with the gangster epic Goodfellas (1990) and the Hitchcockian thriller Cape Fear (1991), followed by the period drama The Age of Innocence (1993) and Casino (1995),

literature

43

sketches for Kundun from Scorsese on scorsese, page 215. top: the main street of lhasa.

Bottom: the throne room.

Over the last 20 years, Scorsese has hit the mark again, with such works as the historical epic Gangs of New York (2002), entirely filmed at Rome’s famous Cinecittà film studios; The Aviator (2004), the compelling story of a modern Icarus doomed to fall; the Oscar-winning crime thriller The Departed (2006); the Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light (2008); the labyrinthine psychological

thriller Shutter Island (2010) and the television series Boardwalk Empire (2010).

The five Oscars for his 3D adventure film Hugo (2011) are nothing but the umpteenth confirmation of the talent of this extraordinarily prolific auteur, whose creativity continues to be fueled by “an inextinguishable flame, as strong as the one that consumes his saints and sinners”, as the author concludes in the epilogue of the book. His addiction to filmmaking couldn’t be expressed better than by Frank Capra’s words: “Film is a disease.

When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote for film is more film.” That being the case, we can’t help but wait for what comes next. n

Michael Henry Wilson Collection, Columbia Pictures

a story of crime and punishment which gained a reputation as the most violent American gangster film ever made. Kundun (1997), an account of the early life of the 14th Dalai Lama, was his second attempt to profile the life of a great religious leader, carrying out a reflection on the power of compassion which would be further explored by Bringing Out The Dead (1999).

Scorsese and Robert De Niro at work on Taxi Driver (1976).

44 advertisement

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46 photography

light on ... Cinecittà

Emerging from the eponymous metro stop, Ancient Rome lies ahead only after passing through 19th century Downtown New York City – it’s Cinecittà. A Parisian alleyway is tucked behind an American street, a modern warehouse sign appears behind an Egyptian aedifice, a Franciscan Church adjacent the final hideaway for Romeo and Juliet. Bricks and mortar are actually wood and plastic. Painted sculptures defy dimension...but the videocamera obscures all that is incongruent.

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photography by Mauro Benedetti

48 Social journal

Social Journal Pisa Delegation fĂŞted by IAF at Hudson Cliff House Recently, a delegation from the city of Pisa led by the Honorable Vice Mayor Paulo Ghezzi and Mrs. Ghezzi together with eminent teacher and author Dott. Giovanni Padroni and Mrs. Padroni were received by the Italian Academy Foundation at the Hudson Cliff House residence of Mr. & Mrs. Stefano Acunto. The evening was marked by discussion of new initiatives that the city will undertake in the United States to present its famous tower, its development potential, and investment opportunities for American businesses, together with a cultural outreach. Many distinguished guests were present for the evening, some of whose photos appear in the following pictures.

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Sabin Howard, renowned sculptor, positions the head of Apollo which was admired by the guests in attendance.

(Left to Right) Dr. RiccardoViale, Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, H.E. Archbishop Chullikatt, Vice Mayor Ghezzi, Consul General Quintavalle, Dr. Michelassi, Mr. Acunto, Dr. Padroni.

His Excellency Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, Papal Nuncia to the U.N., discusses the restoration of the Duomo of Pisa with Consul General Natalia Quintavalle.

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(Left to Right) Mrs. Riccardo Viale, Mr. Acunto, Mrs. Ghezzi, Mr. & Mrs. Gaetano Sallorenzo

Minister Alberto Cutillo, Mrs. Acunto, Mrs. Viale, Dr. Viale, Mr. Acunto

Vice Mayor Ghezzi presents to Mr. Acunto and Consul General Quintavalle memorial medals from Pisa.

Dr. Fabrizio Michelassi whose relationship with the Italian Academy Foundation was the spur for the relationship with Pisa, Mrs. Acunto 4 and Dott. Ghezzi.

Social journal

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Social Journal John Cabot University honors Minister Giulio Terzi, Rome Following the 2012 JCU Graduation in Rome, the Board and President of the University honor the former Italian Ambassador to the U.S. Sabin Howard, novelist Tracy Slatton, and Mr. & Mrs. Barrymore Scherer

Dott. Viale receives a memorial medal from Dott. Padroni and Vice Mayor Ghezzi.

Minister Giulio Terzi and Dott.sa Antonella Cinque Mrs. Ghezzi, Mr. Acunto, and Dr. Caren Michelassi

The John Cabot University board.

Minister Terzi and Cultural Advisor Federica Olivares

Beautiful Krista Adams, soprano, entertained the guests with arias from French and Italian opera.

Stefano Acunto, Alberto Moncada di Paternò and Min. Terzi.

JCU President Franco Pavoncello presents diploma to Minister Terzi.

50 Social journal

Social Journal IAF Sponsors Stefano Miceli’s “The Italian Sonata” The Italian Academy Foundation welcomed Maestro Stefano Miceli to New York to mark its collaboration with him on the production of a DVD entitled “The Italian Sonata” a homage to the great inventors and exponents of this form. The album which is produced on site at the Musei Mazzuchelli in Brescia was performed on a piano that was owned and used exclusively by the great Arturo Benedetti Michealangeli.

Present for the event held in May at the Hudson Cliff House residence of Mr. & Mrs. Stefano Acunto were:

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1 Maestro Miceli (second from right) greeting guests.

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2 Mr. David Walsh, President of the International Insurance Law Society, Maestro Miceli, Lara Alberti, Assistant Director of the Museum, Stefano Acunto Chairman of the IAF. 3 Tracy Slatton, best-selling author, Mr. and Mrs. Kaili, and Mrs. Maria Rosa DeCastro of Greenwich Connecticut.

4 Mr. Acunto, Letizia Airos of i-Italy.org, Simonetta Magnan of the ICI, Mrs. Acunto, Gelsomina Martella, Dott. Marco Martella

Social journal

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Social Journal

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5 Tom and Angelina Pecora, Dr. Ernest Molmenti, Mrs. Molmenti, H.E. Archbishop Chullikatt 6 Renowned actor and artist Federico Castelluccio flanked Mr. Acunto and sculptor Sabin Howard.

7 Mr. Acunto with Prof. and Mrs. Nicholas Fargnoli.

8 Dr. David Gamrasni and Mr. & Mrs Pei and Diane Fisher.

9 Mrs. Acunto, actress Yvonne Castelluccio, Federico Castelluccio, Sabin Howard, Tracy Slatton, and Andreas Kailich.

10 Karen Burke, Deloss Brown, Mr. & Mrs. Molmenti and Mrs. Acunto.

11 Barrymore Scherer, Wall Street Journal music critic and Herbert DeCastro.

12 Mr. Tom Pecora, Assistant Director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Simonetta Magnani, Mr. Acunto.

13 Letizia Airos with Maestro Miceli.

14 Maestro Miceli discusses his performance before playing works by Scarlatti.

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15 H.E. Archbishop Chullikatt with Maestro Miceli (center) and Stefano Acunto who present to the maestro the Italian Academy Foundation’s Bravo! award.

16 Author and Broadway Director Deloss Brown with Diane Fisher.

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17 Kim Brizzolara IAF Board Member and director of the Hamptons Film Festival with novelist Traci Slatton and Mrs. Acunto.

18 David and Alice Walsh and Maestro Miceli. Mrs. Walsh is the producer of the upcoming Broadway play “Sense and Sensibility” which premiered in Denver, Colorado last month.

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52 Social journal

Social Journal IAF Salutes Amb. Giorgio Radicati at Carnegie Hall Ambassador Giorgio Radicati was fêted at Carnegie Hall by the Italian Academy Foundation.

Joining in the presentation, U.S. Supreme Court Judge William Martini, Honorable Dominic Massaro, Chairman of the American Society of Italian Legions of Merit, Ambassador Radicati, Mr. Acunto, Chairman of the IAF, Dr. Bilha Chesner Fish, IAF Board Member, Deputy Consul Lucia Pasqualini, Honorable Daniel Nigro, hero of 9/11.

At a reception held later on at the New York Athletic Club we see several guests from Rome, including (third from left) Ludovica Rossi Purini, Dott. Carlo Maccallini, Ambassador Radicati, Mrs. Acunto, renowned soprano Yana Eminova, Dr. Judith Goldstein, author of “24 Karat Kids”.

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Social journal

Social Journal IAF and the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art Feature Torino-Born Sculptor Sabin Howard Works of Sabin Howard, sculptor, were featured at the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art in Manhattan. A panel was held and an exhibit of the works of the Torino-born artist was co-sponsored by the Italian Academy Foundation, Inc. and featured several of his masterpieces, such as Hermes and the bust of Apollo.

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1 Hermes, 9’ tall.

2 Panel included Peter Trippi, editor of Fine Arts Connoisseur, Mr. Howard and Jim Cooper, editor of Fine Arts Quarterly.

3 Bust of Apollo.

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54 face file

face file

Roberto Benigni

by Logan METZER

A

mong plebians and film-connoisseurs alike, Roberto Benigni is oft remembered for his flamboyant celebration at the 1998 Academy Awards. Clambering over chairs, reciting Dante’s Divina Commedia, and appearing in the sequel to Woody Allen’s acclaimed Midnight in Paris just tell a part of Benigni’s story and the extraordinary impact he has had on the Italian arts.

Benigni was born in Arezzo, Tuscany on October 27, 1952 to Isolina Papini and Remigio Benigni. His father, a prisoner at Bergen-Belsen during WWII, was the inspiration behind Benigni’s most famous work, Life Is Beautiful (1998). The movie - which he wrote, directed, and acted in - established Benigni as an international star and won him the Academy Award for best foreign film and best actor, making him only the second performer in a foreign-language film ever to win the latter award.

Despite his cinematic success, Benigni has spent much of his time since 2006 touring and performing his one-man show, TuttoDante. The cult masterpiece, which combines current events and memoirs of Benigni’s past with his recitation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, has been seen by an estimated one million live spectators and over 45% of Italian households through televised recordings.

Although neither of his parents had a background in the arts, their lives and stories unquestionably influenced Roberto. One of his fondest and inspirational childhood memories

on occasion: in October 2005 he led a crowd of thousands in Rome to protest the government’s decision to cut state arts funding by 35 percent, and he recently wrote and performed

“i remember learning that the clown was the high prince.”

- Roberto Benigni was going to the circus with them.

“I remember…learning that the clown was the high prince.

I always thought that the high prince was the lion or the magician, but the clown is the most important.”

Inspired by the clown, and Charlie Chaplin, Benigni mastered the exacting art of improvisational humor early and after moving to Rome gained national fame with his own must-see TV series, Onda Libera (1976), until it, and Benigni’s antics, were deemed too inappropriate to be broadcast any longer.

However, by this point Roberto had gained a vast and supportive following. One of his best-known monologues, “Cioni Mario,” was expanded into the feature film Berlinguer Ti Voglio Bene (I Love you Berlinguer) (1977) and in 1983 he directed his first movie, Tu mi turbi (You upset me).

Benigni’s charisma and notoriety has had an impact that extends far beyond cinema, although he undoubtedly uses film as his muse. Consumed with an enthusiastic interest in politics, Benigni has been known to publicly voice his opinion

a passionate historical reconstruction about the liberation of Italy with some irony on the news sprinkled in. In other cases, however, Benigni uses movies.

Johnny Stecchino (1991), a Mafia farce, set box-office records in Italy in the midst of the most intense crime crackdown in the country’s history, and in Night on Earth (1991), Benigni plays a cabbie in Rome who causes his passenger, a priest, great discomfort and a fatal heart attack by confessing his extraordinarily bizarre sexual experiences.

Benigni appears most recently in To Rome With Love, directed by Woody Allen, similarly beloved for his comic genius.

“Apart from Penelope Cruze and Ellen Page, I am sure Mr. Allen chose me because of my beauty,” Benigni joked in a recent interview with the Times Colonist.” Allen, on the other hand, acknowledged with unabashed admiration his “great thrill to work with the “icon.”

In the case of Benigni, the clown truly is the high prince. n

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Italian Journal email: subscribe@italianjournal.it mail: Italian Journal

P.O. Box 9001 Mount Vernon, NY 10552 or online at

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56 Strapline