The 2019 Italian Film Focus screens in Cape Town at Cinema Labia from 28 November to 3 December. This XIXth edition features a selection of recent and acclaimed films, all presented at major international festivals. They range from everyday life stories about comical family conflicts, to mental and physical disability and the inevitable topic of the mafia.
A delegation of filmmakers present their films at Italian Film Focus 2019, and will also engage in activities at local film schools.
More about the films
The city is no longer portrayed as an extreme place of marginalization and violent conflict, but as an opportunity to meet. There, characters float and sometimes drown among existential and economic crises, fears and small satisfactions, family disagreements and great loves (that almost never last), possible dreams and funny manias…
A corollary of “urban experiences” shows us how inadequate, clumsy and therefore amusing we really are. Whether it is the issue of physical and mental disability or the inability to deal with one’s own children, this cinema favors the investigation of daily life.
It takes sensitive and experienced filmmakers, capable of entering lives and homes to reveal what has always existed, with a personal eye/lens that becomes vision and a representation of multifaceted individualities. So this showcase presents Francesca Archibugi, who signs a film on family dynamics, with names of caliber like Paolo Virzì and Francesco Piccolo.
Gabriele Salvatores, who also relies on a top screenwriter such as Umberto Contarello, a former collaborator of Bernardo Bertolucci and faithful pen of Paolo Sorrentino, tell us about the intense relationship between a father and a “different” son.
The theme of diversity is also addressed by a younger director, Federico Bondi, with a delicate touch. Here too, an elderly father and a teenage daughter with down-syndrome start on a search journey, in the end it’s no longer clear who is leading who and who is “following”. The father/teacher-son/pupil relationship is found once more in THE CHAMPION, another promising debut, with Accorsi always playing his part with thoughtful measure and credibility.
We will hear gunfire from the more mature directors. More precisely, the shot of an ancient shotgun, (the “lupara”) closing the plot just as it is meant to do, with the villain’s death, the “mafioso”. This happens in the only movie in costume that will be presented: ASPROMONTE, LAND OF THE FORGOTTEN by Mimmo Calopresti. But it is not enough to kill the Mafia member, or to rebel. The Last Ones leave because there is nothing left to fight for and the only solution left is to run away.
In the intriguing comedy AN ALMOST ORDINARY SUMMER roles are inverted. Fathers reveal to their children what they themselves would not like to hear, all the while looking for a normality that does not exist.
Anna Foglietta is not her reassuring self in PARENTS IN PROGRESS. She plays the role of a generous mother who organizes her child’s party with meticulous mania, a party that is going to deflagrate in front of the shocked children when all the parents give in to their cumulative neurosis.
The list of Italian films cannot be considered complete without a film about the most cinematographically narrated Italian criminal phenomenon, the Mafia. But this time there are no shootings and explosions, we need the eye of an intellectual like the Sicilian director Roberto Andò, weaving different levels of narrative and temporality. He plays with identities, with true and false, in life as well as in art. STOLEN CARAVAGGIO is in fact the story of a very famous painting by Caravaggio stolen by the Mafia and about the alleged blackmail to the government: if you don’t make a deal with me, I will destroy your most beautiful things besides your best servants, your magistrates and policemen. Unfortunately in 1998 this threat was actually carried out for real with the bombings in Via dei Georgofili near the Uffizi museum in Florence, in the two churches of S. Giovanni in Laterano and S.Giorgio in Velabro in Rome, and in the Gallery of Modern Art in Milan.
Another brilliant work, presented at the Venice Film Festival, is THE MAYOR OF THE RIONE SANITA, a filmic re-reading of Edoardo de Filippo’s theatrical text by a prestigious director such as Mario Martone, who as a matter of fact originates from theatre himself.
This year Italy has lost one of its greatest filmmakers, Bernardo Bertolucci. Here he’s remembered with an excerpt of an interview of a few years ago on the subject of cultural diversity that was very dear to him.
The event is organized by CONTROLUCE, an association of film authors, with the mission to promote Italian cinema and cultural and professional exchanges outside Europe. It’s supported by MIBACT (Italian Ministry of Culture), ICC Pretoria (Italian Institute of Culture) and the Italian Consulate in Cape Town.
What: Italian Film Focus screens in Cape Town 2019
When: 28 November to 3 December 2019
Where: Labia Cinema, 68 Orange Street, Cape Town
Web: https://www.facebook.com/italianfilmfocus, https://www.facebook.com/events/542323843220913, www.associazionecontroluce.org
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