Director Francesco Lama to Present 'I Siciliani' in New York

Born in Sant'Agata di Militello, a comune in Messina, Sicily, documentary filmmaker Francesco Lama started his career as journalist before venturing into directing and screenwriting in the late 1990s. Over the years, he's written numerous short stories, commercial spots, plays and documentaries, often recounting the pride in his Sicilian origins.

In 2012, Lama presented his documentary Un Affettuoso Ricordo at the Alchemist Film Festival of Capo d'Orlando, located near his hometown. The documentary captures a moment in time during the dog days of ordinary life in Capo d'Orlando. The film consists of restored 8mm and super 8 films and testimony by people who lived during this period in time, many of whom contributed the old videos, some of which go back 70 years ago.

Check out the enchanting trailer...

Lama's latest effort, I Siciliani, focuses on Ignazio Bonaventura (Antonio Emanuele) who lives in a little village in Sicily. Struggling to make a living, he sets out to write about about Sicilians, thus setting out on a journey to meet and talk with as many famous and regular people as he could find. Those characters turn out to be renowned actors such as Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Leo Gullotta, Tony Sperandeo, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco and Ninni Bruschetta. During his journey, he also comes face to face with several members of organized crime and politicians alike. He asks each of them, somehow representing different aspects of Sicilians, about several mysteries shrouding the way of thinking of such a complex people. In doing so, he hopes to learn more about himself. The journey takes him through changing landscapes and dialects, revealing the love and pride that Sicilians feel for the bordering sun and sea that surrounds their region. The result is a documentary film about the people and places of Sicily as it represents the Sicilian people and their land in a real, non-fiction way.

Check out the trailer with English subtitles..

The U.S. premiere will take place at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò in New York on April 9. The following day, Francesco Lama will hold a masterclass at Montclair University and on April 11, there will be a meeting with the Federation of Sicilians in New Jersey. Actress Maria Grazia Cucinotta will attend the events along with the director.

Comments

7 Days - 7 Women: Interview with Actress Sabrina Impacciatore

Photo by Rossella Vetrano On Day 6 of our series, 7 Days - 7 Women, in which we are profiling seven strong, talented women working as filmmakers, writers or visual artists, we talk with actress Sabrina Impacciatore about the diversity of her roles. Whether she's playing a devoted mother trying to protect her child, Jesus Christ's "Veronica" in Mel Gibson's controversial film, "Passion of the Christ" or a young woman coming of age, Impacciatore escapes into the life and mind of each character she takes on, sometimes so deeply that she believes she is actually them. It's a fine line between reality and fiction, but she treads it carefully and anyone watching her performance benefits from her emotional connection to the character that she becomes. I spoke with Impacciatore at the 2010 Open Roads: New Italian Film series in New York City. We talked about her lifelong dream of becoming an actress. She also gave me some insight into the diff

A Conversation with Taylor Taglianetti, Founder of NOIAFT

A new platform has recently been launched that promotes the work of Italian Americans in film and television. The brains behind the initiative is a young, passionate woman who is taking the support that she received early on in her journey and paying it forward. With origins in Basilicata and Campania , Taylor Taglianetti is a proud Italian American from Brooklyn, New York. She is currently a senior at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in January 2020. She is majoring in Film and Television and minoring in the Business of Entertainment, Media and Technology. Taglianetti aspires to be a feature film producer and bring great stories to the big screen. In addition to running NOIAFT, she is currently a Development Intern with Silver Pictures, the production company that produced the Lethal Weapon and The Matrix series. Last summer, she was a development intern with Maven Pictures, the Academy-Award winning production company behind Still Alice and The Kids Are All Right .

A Conversation With the Man Who Played Pasolini's Christ

There have been countless cinematic interpretations of the books of the Bible, but few have stood the test of time. One that qualifies as a classic is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1964 “Il Vangolo secondo Matteo” (The Gospel According to St. Matthew). Considered by the Vatican to be among the best film adaptations of one of the Gospels, Pasolini’s 1964 film was shot in the regions of Calabria, Puglia and Basilicata. In an interview with RAI television while on location in Matera, Pasolini talked about the reasons for shooting there. “I chose two or three places in Basilicata. One is Barile, a town of Albanians. I needed a place for Bethlehem. Another location is Matera because it reminded me of Jerusalem,” he explained. Pasolini’s interpretation of St. Matthews’s Gospel is pure, with no added commentary. He said that he followed the Gospel word for word without adding a single syllable. He explained in the interview that his idea to make the film happened by coincidence. “In October of 19

Anna Foglietta: Actress and Activist with Old School Elegance

One look at actress Anna Foglietta in her any of her roles, and the Golden Age of Italian cinema comes to mind. Among Italy’s most sought-after actresses today, Foglietta brings to the table a classic eloquence of yesterday while representing Italy’s modern woman. Born in Rome in 1979, Foglietta began her career in 2005 with a role in the RAI television series La squadra . Her character Agent Anna De Luca had a two-year run on the series as she was transitioning to cinema with Paolo Virzì’s 2006 ensemble project 4-4-2- Il gioco più bello del mondo . Since then, she has become one of Italy’s most diverse actresses, transforming herself into interesting, layered characters for comedies and dramas alike. Aside from a small part in Anton Corbijn’s 2010 film The American starring George Clooney, Foglietta’s work began reaching mainstream American audiences in 2015. As Elisa in Edoardo Leo’s 2015 comedy Noi e la Giulia , Foglietta showed her funny side playing a goofball pregn

Michelangelo Frammartino's "Il buco" — Unearthing our past

When a team of speleologists descended 700 meters into the Bifurto Abyss in Cosenza, Calabria, in 1961, they discovered that the underground caverns were the third deepest in the world and the deepest in Europe. Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino retraces that mission six decades later with a cast of locals and their livestock in his latest documentary, “Il buco” (“The Hole”). Inspiration for the film came while he was on location shooting his 2007 documentary, “Le quattro volte” (“Four Times”). Officials in the Pollino mountains, which stretch between Calabria and Basilicata, showed him what appeared to be just another sinkhole. Frammartino failed to understand their enthusiasm until they tossed a large stone into the void. It disappeared without making a sound. He was so overcome by the experience and the eerie landscape, he was haunted for years, compelling him to make his current film, one of many rooted in nature. “I was born in Milan, but my family is from Calabria. My pa

Italian Cinema Today

Search This Blog