Italian Cinema Today

Each Sunday during the winter, we will be putting the spotlight on films with a culinary twist, whether it be an article, interview or just a post on one of our social media platforms. The focus for this series will be on the southern part of the Italian peninsula- in particular, the regions of Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria and Sicily. During the summer, I traveled through central and southern Italy and spoke with a number of contemporary filmmakers of lucano origin about why Basilicata is emerging as a land of cinema. I asked these filmmakers what motivates them to stay in Basilicata when so many of their young counterparts have fled to northern regions in search of work. While in Rome, I met up with the accomplished, award-winning artist and filmmaker Gaetano Russo, who we will be visiting often in this series. He is from Bernalda and is very active in the filmmaking and artistic communities throughout the region. He is a cousin of Francis Ford Coppola and that is apparent b...

She was born into a family of filmmakers, grew up in the paradise of the Mediterranean and could have been a movie star. Instead, she chose to make meaningful documentaries on social issues, human rights and the legacy of cinema. If that wasn’t enough, she started a film festival in that paradise to give voice to other filmmakers, journalists and activists who share her vision. Giovanna Taviani is the daughter of the legendary director, Vittorio Taviani and niece of Paolo Taviani, who are known as the filmmaking duo, the Taviani Brothers. Born in 1969, she had an early interest in literature and cinema, and today is considered a scholar of those subjects, having authored several essays. Among the topics of those essays were novelist Luigi Pirandello, the films of neorealism and the cinema of Luchino Visconti. When she was a teenager, she had a role in her father's 1984 film, Kaos but instead of pursuing acting as a career, opted for a life behind the camera as a director. ...