Italian Cinema Today

The 2019 Venice Film Festival is officially underway.  One highly anticipated film is  Scherza con i fanti by Gianfranco Pannone and Ambrogio Sparagna.  The documentary covers over a hundred years from the Unification of Italy to the present to illustrate the varied relationship Italians have had with the military and power in general. The film combines rare stock footage with traditional folk songs and four diaries kept by a soldier for the Kingdom of Italy in the 1800s, a fighter in Ethiopia in 1935, a female resistance fighter during World War II and a sergeant in the Italian Navy in the Kosovo.  The film will be shown in the Sala Perla on August 31 as a Special Event in the program, Giornate degli Autori.    Click here for details on the screening.  Check out the trailer... 

A documentary film that premiered to a standing ovation at the 2016 Festa del Cinema of Rome is gaining momentum as it's being shown all over Italy. Gianfranco Pannone's "Lascia stare i santi" (Leave the Saints Alone) is a mesmerizing portrait of catholic tradition in Italy. From the southern region of Basilicata all the way up to isolated communities in the mountains of the North, Pannone's documentary takes us on a cultural tour along with some of Italy's most ancient traditions. Through music, processions, worship and firsthand accounts, Pannone creatively explores faith and the deeply sentimental rituals used to express it.  Watch the trailer.. Narrated by two of Italy's most esteemed actors, Fabrizio Gifuni and Sonia Bergamasco, who remind us that we are watching actual events because at times, the ceremonies seem so surreal, it feels like you're watching a fictional movie. Composer Ambrogio Sparagna wrote the powerful music score, wh...