| ITALY |
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| A HEART ELSEWHERE |
Pupi Avati |
Winner of Italy’s David di Donatello
Award (Oscar) for Best Director, Avati’s nostalgic romantic
comedy recounts the adventures of Nello (Italian comedian
Neri Marcorè) an awkward, 30-something son sent from
Rome to Bologna to find love. Still a virgin, Nello’s
womanizing father (Giancarlo Giannini) fears he will never
have an heir unless action is taken. Packing him off to the
more liberal Bologna under the guise of a teacher, the bookish
Nello, after not much luck, falls hard for the most beautiful
woman in the city, the charismatic Angela (Vanessa Incontrada),
who happens to be blind. Her blindness is somewhat of a mystery;
his, of another kind, is understandable, but no match for
someone possessing a very clear vision of what she wants.
Perfectly capturing the tone of 1920s Italian society with
a classically romantic mix of pathos and humor, Avati’s
winning film charms. (106 mins.) Print courtesy of Northern
Arts Enter-tain-ment. Sponsored by the Portland-Bologna Sister
City Program.
Selected Filmography: Blood Relations
(68), Story of Boys and Girls (89), Bix (90), Brothers and
Sisters (91), Declaration of Love (94), The Mysterious Enchanter
(95), Festival (96), The Best Man (97), A Midsummer Night’s
Dance (99).
SHOWTIMES:
2/14, 6:30pm GU and 2/18, 7pm WH. |
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| THE BEST OF YOUTH |
Marco Tullio
Giordana |
Produced for Italian television, The Best of
Youth was a major box-office hit in Italy after receiving
great acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival. Marco Tullio Giordana’s
extraordinary, Godfather-like, family chronicle offers a revealing
and deeply touching look at 40 years (1960s-’90s) of
social and political change that transformed a nation. Tracing
the lives, loves and experiences of the middle-class Carati
family in Rome—sons Nicola and Matteo, daughters Francesca
and Giovanna—the film moves from labor strife in Turin
to the flooding of Florence; from terrorist cells to mafia
trials; from the economic boom to the revolution in mental
health care. With a cast featuring many of Italy’s finest
young actors, The Best of Youth powerfully reveals the personal
human dramas behind the ebb and flow of history, “with
consummate skill, wit and emotion… epic, not because
of its length (which flies by in a way that many two hour
movies fail to do) but because of the depth and breadth of
its subject matter and the scale of its achievement.”—Sight
and Sound. (360 mins.) Presented in two, 3-hour parts with
a 1-hour intermission. Print courtesy of Miramax Films. Sponsored
by the Italian Film Commission, Los Angeles.
Selected
Filmography: To Love the Damned (80), Pasolini, An Italian
Crime (95), The Hundred Steps (00).
SHOWTIMES: Part I
– 2/15, 2pm and 2/16, 3pm B1. Part II – 2/15,
6 pm and 2/16, 7pm B1.
Note: Single admission if both parts
are viewed on the same day. |
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| THE DREAMERS |
Bernardo
Bertolucci |
Paris, 1968. The streets are alive with the
naïve promise of revolution. Isabelle (Eva Green) and
her brother Theo (Louis Garrel), alone in Paris while their
parents are away, invite a young American boy Matthew (Michael
Pitt), who they have met at a protest over the dismissal of
the head of the Cinemathèque Française, to their
apartment. The three close themselves in the apartment, establish
conduct rules and set about experimenting with each others
emotions and sexuality in an ever-increasing series of mind
games that reach the extreme. Adapted from Gilbert Adair’s
novel, a meditation on sex, politics, cinema, Paris, art and
decadence. “In some ways The Dreamers is a reminder,
like a piece of music or a sudden ray of sunlight. It’s
a reminder of a period when an entire generation woke up in
the mornings with incredible expectations”—Bernardo
Bertolucci. (130 mins.) Print courtesy of Fox Searchlight
Pictures. Sponsored by the Italian Film Commission, Los Angeles.
Selected Filmography: The Conformist (70), Last Tango
In Paris (72), 1900 (76), The Last Emperor (87), Little Buddha
(93), Besieged (98).
SHOWTIMES:
2/13, 7pm WH and 2/14, 3:30pm GU. |
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| GOOD MORNING, NIGHT |
Marco Bellocchio |
Inspired by one of the most notorious episodes
in contemporary Italian political history, Good Morning, Night
restages the 1978 kidnapping of Christian Democrat president
Aldo Moro (Roberto Herlitzka) by the Red Brigade terrorist
group. Told through the eyes of Anna (Maya Sansa), whose non-descript
apartment hides the tiny cell in which their captive is held,
Bellocchio chronicles her gradual pattern of alienation from
her militant comrades and her ultimate plan to set him free
after 54-days—before he is executed for his declared
crimes. Mixing the struggles of the group to carry out the
plan, her evolving sense of the justice and futility of their
actions and the articulate reflections of Moro, Bellocchio’s
meditation on politics, power and group dynamics provides
a challenging and provocative inquiry in which humanity triumphs
over self-righteous ideology. (105 mins.) Print courtesy of
Film Albatros. Sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute,
San Francisco.
Selected Filmography: Fists in the
Pocket (65), China Is Near (67), In the Name of the Father
(71), Devil in the Flesh (86), The Wet-Nurse (99), My Mother’s
Smile (02).
SHOWTIMES:
2/25, 6pm B2; 2/26, 8:30pm and 2/28, 7pm B1. |
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| I’M NOT SCARED |
Gabriele
Salvatores |
It is 1978, the hottest summer of the century.
Nine-year-old Michele lives in a poor Sicilian village with
his parents and younger sister. Playing in the countryside,
he dis-covers that a covered pit in an abandoned farmyard
hides Filippo, a boy about his age, clinging to life in abject
conditions. Michele develops a relationship with the mysterious
prisoner, but tells no one of his discovery. Soon he must
confront the reality that he holds the fate of a fragile human
life in his hands. Haunting and suspenseful, I’m Not
Scared tells the story of a boy who discovers a chilling secret
just beneath the surface of an idyllic rural landscape—and
his own idyllic life. Salvatores delves into his characters’
hearts through striking images that infuse the subtle, sinister
mood of a thriller into a morally complex coming-of-age story.
(110 mins.) This year’s Italian submission for the Best
Foreign Film Oscar. Sponsored by the Italian Film Commission,
Los Angeles.
Selected Filmography: Marrakech Express
(89), Mediterraneo (91), Sud (94), Nirvana (97), Teeth (01),
Amnesia (02).
SHOWTIMES:
2/20, 6:30pm and 2/22, 2pm GU.
Short: Standing Room Only (Deborah Lee
Furness, Britain, 12 mins.) |
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| LETTERS IN THE WIND |
Edmond
Budina |
This moving tale of the struggle to maintain
dignity in a world of crumbling moral borders depicts a contemporary
Albania unsure how to define its free-market future and uncertain
how to reconcile its Communist past. Niko (played by writer-director
Budina) is an unemployed professor and former Party secretary
now reduced to selling bananas on the street and waiting for
money sent from Italy by his son Keli to make ends meet. But
correspondence from Keli, rumored to be a powerful criminal,
has ceased. Rejecting an offer of cash from Goni, an old friend
who has prospered as a gangster, there is no choice but to
go and try and find his son. For a proud man of the intelligentsia,
the triumph of corruption, whether involving friends or family,
is a devastating reality, especially so when all you can do
is watch. Niko’s fall is paralleled by Goni’s
rise—the vacuum of moral authority enabling a corrupt
man to replace an honest one. (90 mins.) In Albanian and Italian.
Sponsored by the Italian Film Commission, Los Angeles.
First Feature.
SHOWTIMES:
2/21, 8pm; 2/23, 8:15pm and 2/26, 6pm B2. |
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