With Italy’s entry for the Oscars being Marco Bellocchio’s story of a Sicilian mafia informant, I thought I’d do a few posts about the genre of mafia films. Have you ever thought about what started the craze for mafia-themed movies in America? That was one of the questions I explored in my 2018 documentary, Return to Lucania .. When I sat down with actor/director Pif on two occasions, he told me so much about the differences in how the Sicilian mafia (Cosa Nostra) is portrayed in American films versus how it was in real life. Chatting with Pif at Lincoln Center's annual film series, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema In this clip from my documentary, Pif talks about how so many mafiosi ended up in America. I was initially asking him about the organized crime group Black Hand, which had a pretty strong presence here in Rochester, New York from 1910-ish through the '50s. They were known to level houses with bombs if they didn’t get their “protection money” and in on...
100+ YEARS OF THE GREAT ITALIAN MOVIEMAKERS