Italian Cinema Today

Photo by Domenico Notarangelo I recently found a rare interview with Pier Paolo Pasolini  on location in Basilicata while he was shooting “Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo” (The Gospel According to St. Matthew). The interview was posted by Rai Teche. The journalist also interviews Alfonso Gatto, a poet who was cast as St. Andrew.  Pasolini shot in Basilicata (Barile and Matera) because of the structures and landscapes that he says reminded him of Bethlehem and Jerusalem and because of the simplicity of the people. He mentions here that the Albanian presence, which probably accounts for the closeups and casting of locals, was a factor in choosing the location of Barile. He also explains that he made the film simply because St. Matthew’s writings moved him. He left the text unchanged, deciding not to add his own interpretation or spin.  What a gift this journalist gave us. I just took a few soundbites and added subtitles to them. Click here to watch my subtitled, e...

Andrea De Sica is the grandson of neorealist legend Vittorio De Sica and the son of famed movie composer Manuel De Sica. He may have been handed a golden ticket at birth, but the 39-year-old has paid his dues while charting his own cinematic course. He attended film school at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, was an assistant to Bernardo Bertolucci and made numerous short films before his feature directorial debut in 2016. It should come as no surprise that growing up in such a creative family had a profound impact on him. In our 2017 interview , De Sica credited his upbringing with laying his filmmaking foundation. “I come from a family of cinema. I had my first experience on set when I was 10 years old. I don’t have a single memory that is not attached to cinema,” he explained.   De Sica pursued a decidedly dark path early in his career. Made in 2007, his first short, “L’inferno sono gli altri,” opens on a student as he is studying. After responding to a knock at the...

Singer/Songwriter Rosmy performs at the Giornate del Cinema Lucano in Maratea My editor at  Fra Noi Magazine recently asked me to write an article about my experience traveling through Basilicata and researching my origins there. If you've followed this blog for a while, then you know that I am always happy to offer my insight into contemporary Basilicata. New School Basilicata It has been 20 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. I was living in New York City at the time and working at ABC News as a video editor. Seeing all that heartbreaking footage of people jumping to their deaths from the Twin Towers and then walking through the eeriness of Manhattan made me realize how precious life is and how we can literally be here one moment and gone the next. That realization led me to do something I had been putting off for years — perform a genealogical search of my maternal great-grandmother’s family in Basilicata. Of all my great-grandparents who emigrated from Italy, I ...

Sergio Ragone in Matera "In the ancient heart of Basilicata, there is the future of Italy after Covid 19" - By Sergio Ragone Cinecittà Studios announced today that a new chapter of the infamous Rome film school, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, will open in the ancient stone city of Matera, located in the region of Basilicata. So I thought this would be a good time to share a thoughtful commentary by journalist and author Sergio Ragone whose work we have featured often throughout the years. He writes about the coronavirus pandemic and how it impacted his region and what must be done to continue the progress the Lucani have made in the past decade to build and promote Basilicata. There is an Italy that the narrative of this pandemic has cut out, useless to deny it. It is the Italy of small villages, of provincial cities, far from the red areas and from Milan that has lived, lives and suffers because of the Coronavirus. It is the Italy of small communities, o...

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...

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...

(Andate sotto per leggere la nostra intervista in Italiano) In Part Two of our series on the release of Francesco's Rosi's complete uncut version of Christ Stopped at Eboli, we are looking into a key scene in which Carlo Levi talks with Gagliano's mayor about the briganti freedom fighters and the peasants' never-ending struggles with red tape and government. He referenced the Siege of Melfi where he believes it all began, because up to that point, the region of Basilicata or the South for that matter had its own wealth. He went on to explain that the battle had a far-reaching effect on Lucania because not only were the riches taken and the city of Melfi destroyed, but the people were also killed. How does a culture recover when much of the population is wiped out? Today, when we speak of poverty in the South of Italy, it is worth noting that even though it was a few hundred years ago, the Siege of Melfi forever changed the region of Basilicata and impacted the...