Italian Cinema Today

To mark the beginning of Holy Week, I made a video highlighting the sacred architecture of the Sassi of Matera, the 2019 European Capital of Culture and natural set for numerous films, including the next James Bond film. The video shows the the Sassi of Matera and the Park of the Rupestrian Churches. Below is my script, which I put together as a result of my research on various websites including UNESCO . Most of the pictures were taken by me during my trips to Matera. I grabbed a few extras on Wikipedia to fill the five minute running time of the video. According to UNESCO, the Sassi of Matera and the Park of the Rupestrian Churches is the most outstanding, intact example of a troglodyte settlement in the Mediterranean region. Located in the southern Italian region of Basilicata, The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian Churches of Matera consists of a complex of houses, churches, monasteries and hermitages built into natural caves. The area was first occupied during the Pa...

A fascinating new project is in the works to correspond with the 2019 European Capital of Culture's designated city- Matera. Three regional directors are creating a documentary film, which will be comprised of four vignettes related to Matera and its neighboring towns. Matera 15/19 is a labor of love for these three lucani filmmakers who take pride in their region and would like to show the amazing transformation this newfound culture hub has made since the days of Carlo Levi's 1945 portrait of poverty and desperation in his book Christ Stopped at Eboli . The book was later made into a movie by  Francesco Rosi and although the book and film brought much-needed attention to he plight of the people, it has been tough for the region to shake those images. Even today, leading tourist books often written by authors who never stepped foot in the region refer to Levi's portrayal, calling the region underdeveloped and poor. Basilicata's new generation of fil...