Pietro Marcello's "Lost and beautiful" Named an Official Selection for the Film Society of Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Films Festival

"Lost and Beautiful" (Bella e perduta) caught my attention last year when it was shown at the Toronto Film Festival. Now it's been named in the early selections of the 45th edition of the New Directors/New Films Festival hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which will be held March 16-27 in New York City. This screening will be its American premiere and will be shown on March 23 and 24.

"Pietro Marcello continues his intrepid work along the borderline of fiction and documentary with this beautiful and beguiling film. Shot on expired 16mm film stock and freely incorporating archival footage and folkloric tropes, it begins as a portrait of the shepherd Tommaso, a local hero in the Campania region of southern Italy, who volunteered to look after the abandoned Bourbon palace of Carditello despite the state’s apathy and threats from the Mafia. Tommaso suffers a fatal heart attack in the course of shooting, and Marcello’s bold and generous response is to grant his subject’s dying wish: for a Pulcinella straight out of the commedia dell’arte to appear on the scene and rescue a buffalo calf from the palace. With Lost and Beautiful, a documentary that soars into the realm of myth, Marcello has crafted a uniquely multifaceted and enormously moving work of political cine-poetry. "

Film Society and MoMA members may purchase tickets starting at noon on Monday, February 29. Tickets will be available for purchase by the general public at noon on Friday, March 4. For more information, visit www.filmlinc.org.