11 am
La Grande Strada Azzurra (The Wide Blue Road)
Director: Gillo Pontecorvo, 1957, color, 99 minutes
Director Pontecorvo, best known for Battle of Algiers and Burn! in the 1960s, made his first feature in the hallowed neo-realist tradition—human tragedy set against the the direst of social circumstance. Set in a small village on the Adriatic coast, fisherman Yves Montand manages to feed his family by taking his sons with him to deeper and deeper waters where he illegally employs dynamite to enhance his catch. Eventually his ploy is endangered by the coast guard and he’s forced to go to fateful lengths to ensure survival. The late Pontecorvo’s reputation may rest with the still controversial Battle of Algiers but his social and political bent was already evident in this overlooked Italian classic. With Alida Valli and Francisco Rabal. Recently restored by Milestone Films.

2 pm
La Mortadella (Lady Liberty)
Director: Mario Monicelli, 1972, color, 95 minutes
Starring the incomparable Sophia Loren as an Italian émigré and bride-to be trying to smuggle an enormous sausage through U. S. Customs, La Mortadella is a spirited satire on cultural impact. Unable to satisfy the red tape guys, more inventive ways of smuggling are devised with mad-cap, comic results. One of the many international productions of the sixties and seventies, it stars American actors Willaim Devane, Danny DeVito, Ed Herrmann and Susan Sarandon.

5 pm
Giulietta Degli Spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits)
Director: Federico Fellini, 1965, color, 137 minutes
Fellini’s first color film is a lavishing, loving look at and tribute to his wife, actress Giulietta Masina, who stars in this surrealistic portrait of sexual fantasy and desire. Stuck in a lifeless marriage, Masina’s character loses herself in an almost hallucinatory exploration of who she really is and what she really wants. A kind of Candide meets Diary of a Mad Housewife, in mind-blowing wide-screen Technicolor. One of Fellini’s very best.
Note—this  is the third Fellini to film be screened as part of the five-year festival, with 8 ½ and Nights of Cabiria. With Mario Pisa, Sylva Koscina.

8 pm
Divorzio All'Italiana (Divorce Italian Style)
Director: Pietro Germi, 1961, color, 104 minutes
Hilarious Oscar-winning farce starring the inimitable Marcello Mastroianni as a middle-aged man who falls for his beautiful young cousin, Stephanie Sandrelli. Unable to get a divorce from his wife, Daniela Rocca, he plots to have her appear unfaithful, and then kill her in a fit of rage. Threads start unwinding almost from the beginning as the laughs pile up in this delicious dark comedy from the swinging sixties! Academy Award for screenwriting!