3rd Italian Film & Food Festival
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Plant Zero Arts Center
Sponsored by Mamma 'Zu Ristorante & the Richmond Moving Image Co-op
Admission $10/screening (includes food); All-day passes $25

All-Day Advance Tickets Available Chop Suey Books and Video Fan beginning January 13.

10 am “Viaggio in Italia (Voyage to Italy)” Director Roberto Rossellini, with Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders (1953, b&w, 100 mins.) From a bare-bones plot of a couple whose marriage crumbles as they sight-see their way through Italy’s ruins, writer/director Roberto Rossellini fashioned one of his most revered works. Film historians often refer to its simplicity and austerity, fans of the film describe the experience as something approaching the spiritual or the sublime. British actor George Sanders shines as Alexander Joyce, the cruelly calculating husband, and Ingrid Bergman evokes the screen beauty and reserve of Garbo as Katherine, the wife who tries to resuscitate the marriage, but the metaphoric landscape upon which this drama is played emerges as the real star. Captured in Rossellini’s trademark long takes and subtly moving camera, his tour of Italy takes us to the lava fields of Vesuvius, the excavations of Pompeii, the catacombs of Fontanelle, as Katherine and Alexander try to get at the emotional roots of their gradual disintegration. Martin Scorsese used the film as the centerpiece of his recent documentary on Italian cinema, entitled “My Voyage to Italy”. Now you, too, can make the journey—don’t miss this rarely seen gem. (16mm) Introduction by Trent Nicholas, VCU, Department of Art History

1 pm “Lamerica” Director Gianni Amelio (1996, color, 120 mins.) One of the more important new voices in recent Italian cinema is that of director Gianni Amelio, who won the coveted Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1998 for The Way We Laughed, the story of two Sicilian brothers who make their fortunes during the boom growth of the late ‘50s. The historical context of Lamerica is post- Communist Albania, a country with whom Italy has had a long and spotty relationship. In this Kafkaesque satire, two Italian entrepreneurs, a savvy CEO and his young assistant, set a half-crazy old man up as the puppet chairman of a fraudulent Italian company in a country whose economy is non-existing and where anarchy reigns. When the old man slips away under his charge to return to his native Sicily (he claims that he too is actually Italian), the cocky assistant is forced to pursue him through uncharted territory, forming a reluctant and transforming bond with his intended quarry. Linda Duchin of New Yorker Films, notes that Lamerica is her favorite film in their entire catalogue—quite an endorsement seeing as they boast hundreds of classic and foreign titles in their collection! (16mm) Introduction by Paul Porterfield, Director, Media Resource Center, University of Richmond Boatwright Library

4 pm “La Notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of San Lorenzo, Night of the Shooting Stars)” Director Paolo and Vittorio Taviani (1981, color, 107 mins.) Brother directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani scored heavily on the U.S. arthouse circuit with this film in 1982, after making an initial splash with Padre, Padrone (’77). The Night of San Lorenzo is the mythical night of falling stars when wishes come true, but here, as recounted by our narrator, there was a night long ago when the stars that rained down the Tuscan night sky were the flares and fire of the invading German army and the peasants of her village scurried for hideouts. Taking a page from their own childhood, the Tavianis transform autobiography into a collective oral epic, preserved in the telling but flamboyantly embellished. Romantic and full of compassion for the human condition at the same time, Night of the Shooting Stars is a magical, exquisitely filmed tale by directors of insight and vision. Introduction by Jim Collier, VCU, Department of Photography & Film

7:30 pm “L’Eclisse (The Eclipse)” Director Michelangelo Antonioni with Monica Vitti, Alain Delon (1962, b&w,125 mins.) The final installment of Antonioni’s modernist trilogy (L’Avventura, La Notte) on fractured relationships in a world where communication is futile and feelings are as transient as the wind. The strikingly photogenic Vitti leaves one lover at the onset, only to take up with her mother’s young stockbroker, the handsome Delon. Weighted by expectation and then complacency, the new relationship ultimately goes nowhere as the two promise to meet again at a special rendezvous but neither keeps the appointment. The chilling montage sequence that closes the film is Antonioni’s definitive statement on love and life in the modern world. L’Eclisse is considered by many film historians to be Antonioni’s greatest work; riding the tide of international acclaim he would later go on to direct Blow Up (’66) and Zabriskie Point (’70). In 2004, we featured his neorealist Il Grido as part of the first Italian Film and Food Festival. Introduction by Robert Ellis, VCU, Department of English