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Showing posts from September, 2018

Italian Cinema's Match Made in Heaven

The professional collaboration and friendship between actors Marco Giallini and Valerio Mastandrea goes back decades. The two began working together more than 20 years ago on the television show Infiltrato.   More recently, director Paolo Genovese has paired the actors in his last two feature films, Perfetti Sconosciuti (Perfect Strangers) and The Place , both of which have screened in the United States to great reviews. I caught up with Genovese in June while he was presenting The Place at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual film series Open Roads: New Italian Cinema. I asked him about this most magical collaboration of two immense talents of contemporary Italian cinema. Watch his response (in Italian with English subtitles)... He mentions at the end that he would like to make a movie just with them. Apparently, he is not the only director with that idea. Simone Spada is at work on his second feature film  Domani è un altro giorno (Tomorrow is Another Day) with

The Mystic Cinema of Alice Rohrwacher

Born in Florence in 1981 to an Italian mother and German Father, Rohrwacher attended Torino University, where she graduated with a degree in Classic Literature. Her first jobs after college included writing for theater and playing music.  She entered the film industry as an editor of documentary films before directing her first feature, "Corpo Celeste" (Heavenly Body), the tale of a teenage girl painfully assimilating into the culture of southern Italy and the Roman Catholic Church. The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival's Directors' Fortnight in 2011 and won several international film festivals before being released in the United States.  Rohrwacher's second feature, "Le meraviglie" (The Wonders), follows a family of beekeepers living in isolation in the Tuscan countryside. The dynamic of their overcrowded household is disrupted by the arrival of a  troubled teenage boy taken in as a farmhand. At the same time, a reality TV show (featuring a host

Nanni Moretti's 'Santiago, Italy' Named Closing Film of 2018 Torino Film Festival

Photo by Storyboard Media Nanni Moretti's new film, Santiago, Italia will close the 36th edition of the Torino Film Festival in November. The docufilm, which features interviews and archival footage of the months following the coup of 11 September 1973 that ended the democratic government of Salvador Allende in Chile, focuses on the role played by the Italian embassy in Santiago, which gave shelter to hundreds of opponents of the regime of Pinochet, allowing them to reach Italy. The film will be released in Italy on December 6. Click here for more information on the Torino Film Festival screening. The festival runs November 23 - December 1.

Luigi Comencini: A Master of Commedia all'italiana

He was one of the masters of the popular post-WWII genre of filmmaking, Commedia all’italiana. Now, his daughters are carrying on his legacy. Born in 1916 in Salò, a town located near Lake Garda in northern Italy, Luigi Comencini studied architecture in Milan. He began his shift to filmmaking in the mid-1940s as a photojournalist  documenting the ruins and reconstruction of his native North and the Po Valley. Combining his architectural knowledge with his keen eye, he created telling photographs of the post-war years that chronicled the devastation of poverty on children in particular.  He transitioned to filmmaking in the late 40s with his first feature film,  Guaglio , which follows a young priest after his luggage is stolen in the Naples train station. The film was a hit, paving the way for some major talent to sign up for his second project,  L'imperatore di Capri  (The Emperor of Capri). Released in 1949, the comedy stars the beloved Neapolitan actor Antonio De Curt

Matilde Gioli: Destined to Act

Matilde Gioli and Matteo Martari in a scene from 2Night When she answered a casting call, Matilde Gioli’s just wanted to make a few extra bucks to support her university education. Months later, she was offered a starring role in one of Italy’s most successful contemporary films. Born in Milan in 1989, Gioli studied at Beccaria High School and then graduated in Philosophy at the State University. “I never thought of becoming an actress. When I was at university, I worked various jobs. I was 21 years old. One day my mother found an announcement: they were looking for extras for a film by Paolo Virzì. So I went to audition. I did not expect anything," she explained in a recent interview with Forbes Magazine in Italy. She didn’t hear anything for four months. Then one day, she received word that Virzì wanted to meet her for a another audition. “The following day, he offered me the role of Serena Ossola in the film Human Capital . From there my career started.” Matilde G