Italy

THE ROOF, largely considered the last masterpiece of Italian Neorealist cinema, dramatizes a single night in the lives of Luisa (Gabriella Palloti) and Natale (Georgio Listuzzi), a strikingly good-looking but destitute pair of newlyweds. The couple shares a small two-room apartment with several relatives. Following a bitter family dispute, Luisa and Natale pack out of this untenable living situation. Luisa turns to a friend for housing, while Natale finds shelter in a toolshed. Realizing that separation is no solution, the couple struggles to build a small shack for themselves in a race against time by a Roman municipal edict, which declares that if the roof is not completed by dawn, it will be torn down by the police. True to writer Cesare Zavattini and director/producer Vittorio De Sica’s previous works (THE BICYCLE THIEF, UMBERTO D.), what risks being lost isn’t just material property, it is the personal dignity of the couple and by extenuation, the dignity of all of mankind. The acting, writing, and directing throughout THE ROOF is superb, creating an honest and touching story centered upon the mutual love and devotion of the young newlyweds.Read More »

Description
Poems in 8mm are the early works of Franco Piavoli, digitally restored. Independent short films, captured with a simple Paillard camera, involving no crew and no production. In this collection, one can find Le Stagioni (The Seasons), precursor to Il Pianeta Azzurro (The Blue Planet), Emigranti (Emigrants), a short on immigration in Milan during the Sixties, Domenica Sera (Sunday Evening), and the experimental Evasi (Convicts). These titles, up to this point unavailable to the public in an edition that respects the original state of the film. This also goes for the Piavoli’s first work, Ambulatorio (Surgery), described by the director as mere playing around with the camera. Without music and words, it is nonetheless revealing of an artistic sensibility that would soon show itself in full splendour.Read More »

A dejected, worn-out, ill-kempt man spends an inordinate amount of time observing what appear to be well-dressed 1920s high-society types moving in and around a library set in the middle of an otherwise deserted island. Eventually, an irritating explanation for this situation is paired with an improbable one.Read More »

Synopsis
At the end of the war, Odysseus, the wandering hero, with his companions begins his sail back home to the Mediterranean. The conclusion of his adventure is delayed by many natural obstacles and he takes an internal journey of fleeting memories of his childhood, his parents, love for a beautiful girl, nostalgia for the past, regret for what he did, and the deep silence that envelops everything. He confronts the most terrible loneliness following a shipwreck in which all the comrades perish.Read More »

Quote:
An ode to the cycles of life charts the passages of infancy, youth, maturity and old age against the seasons of the year in the bucolic Lombardy village of Castellaro.Read More »

IMDB:
form A to B coolness!, 16 June 2007
8/10
Author: jvanmaare from Netherlands

Colt 38 special squad is a rare breed in the poliziotteschi genre. Excellent shot and filled with great casting, cinematographer/director Massimo Dallamano really comes trough on this one. Known for his outstanding camera precision on the Sergio Leone trilogy Colt 38 grapes you all the way. Of course there are a lot good examples for movies in those Italian cop/crime films.Like Milano Calibre 9 or The big racket. But Colt 38 special squad belongs among those films. Rather than just focusing on the usual violence this one delivers also a other angle, those of the mental-pain and struggle. Like a real pro Massimo let’s you get involved in those characters and start to care form them. With all well paced storytelling we follow French crime lord Ivan Rassimov as the Dark angel in his mad rage against the city and his cops. Expeccialy against Marcel Bozzuffi as hard boiled Capitan Vanni. An old beef is going on between the two of them.Read More »

Synopsis
Florence, Italy, 1348. As the plague ravages the city dwellers of Tuscany, a group of young men and women takes shelter in a remote villa in the hills surrounding Florence. Now living as a community, they decide to tell each other a story a day to take their minds off their precarious situation…Read More »

This is the 1951 film of Menotti’s opera about a fake medium who starts to feel real supernatural presences. Beautifully filmed and sung (in English)Read More »

Adapted from the novel by Paolo Giordino, The Solitude of Prime Numbers is the third feature film from the Italian director Saverio Costanzo (Private, In Memory Of Me) and is, to my eyes anyway, a really bold and engaging work that demands conversation and a wider audience. I heard almost nothing about this film from my colleagues here in Toronto, only mild jeers from a few people and one vocal supporter who shared my enthusiasm after the mostly empty Press and Industry screening. Given that I can only cover so many films as a programmer and a blogger, I have been waiting until the end of the festival to decide which movie would need my support the most (as if it meant anything, but still…) and for me, The Solitude of Prime Numbers has been the movie that has stayed with me, the silence surrounding it a baffling consequence of unfortunate inattention.Read More »