Italy

  • Luigi Comencini – Cercasi Gesù (1982)

    1981-1990ComedyItalyLuigi Comencini

    Giovanni is a young man who has been used by a catholic publishing house to advertise, with his face, a publication by installments concerning Jesus life. Francesca is a mysterious girl he met on the street and who’s being sought by the police.Read More »

  • Marco Ferreri – L’udienza AKA The Audience [+Extras] (1972)

    Drama1971-1980ItalyMarco Ferreri

    A young man from north Italy named Amedeo decides to come to Rome. He has a crazy idea in his head to meet the pope.Read More »

  • Nanni Loy – Made in Italy (1965)

    1961-1970ComedyCommedia all'ItalianaItalyNanni Loy

    The ’60s for Italian cinema were the decade of the film a episodi, with 3-4 segments that may almost reach the feature-film length and were directed by celebrated directors such as Fellini, Visconti, Pasolini, Monicelli.

    Nanni Loy’s Made in Italy is composed instead by many microepisodes, which give him way to depict several facets of Italian society and, not unimportantly, to cast several stars: Manfredi, Sordi, Spaak, Chiari, Fabrizi, Magnani, Lisi, Koscina, P. de Filippo…Read More »

  • Vittorio De Sica – Teresa Venerdì (1941)

    1941-1950ComedyDMCA PolicyItalyRomanceVittorio De Sica

    Plot Synopsis from allmovie.com
    Doctor Beware was the U.S.-released title of Vittorio DeSica’s 1941 effort Teresa Venerdi. DeSica not only directed, but played the leading role of orphanage official Dr. Vignali. The thinnish storyline finds the good doctor becoming romantically involved with three women. It is up to orphaned girl Teresa Venerdi (Adriana Benedetti) to untangle all the plot lines–and, as a bonus, to come to the financial rescue of the improvident Vignali. When the film was released to the U.S. in 1951, supporting actress Anna Magnani, cast in a secondary role as one of Dr. Vignali’s amours, was given star billing.Read More »

  • Rino Di Silvestro – Diario segreto da un carcere femminile AKA Women in Cell Block 7 (1973)

    1971-1980CrimeExploitationItalyRino Di Silvestro

    Although this is basically a WIP movie, it differs greatly from both the popular Corman produced US/Filipino versions and the much sicker European variant typified by the work of Jess Franco. It is a mid-70’s Italian film, so about half of it is a crime thriller with the usual car chases and violent Mafia intrigue involving a missing load of heroin. The WIP subplot comes in when the daughter of kidnapped Mafia boss (the not-even-remotely-Italian-looking Anita Strindberg)goes undercover in a woman’s prison to protect and get information from the “new fish” (Jenny Tamburi), whose dead boyfriend was transporting the heroin. However, this surprisingly complex plot still leads to the usual shower scenes, catfights, lesbian groping, and everything else audiences have come to expect from these type of films.Read More »

  • Damiano Damiani – Perché si uccide un magistrato AKA How to Kill a Judge (1975)

    1971-1980CrimeDamiano DamianiDramaItaly

    In How to Kill a Judge, Nero plays filmmaker Giacomo Solaris, whose latest film features a judge corrupted by the mafia and who is later found murdered. The real judge the character is based on seizes the footage, but is later killed in the same way. Feeling a degree of responsibility, Solaris investigates, but as the assassinations increase around him, will he reach the source of the conspiracy? Full of twists and a fascinating meta-commentary on cinema through the film-within-the-film, Damiani points the camera at himself and the genre as he investigates the social impact of mafia violence.Read More »

  • Marco Ferreri – Storia di Piera AKA The Story of Piera (1983)

    1981-1990DramaItalyMarco FerreriRomance

    This erotic drama about the incestuous relationship of a mother and daughter is based on the autobiography of Italian theater actress Piera Degli Esposti.Read More »

  • Davide Ferrario – Umberto Eco: A Library of the World (2022)

    2021-2030Davide FerrarioDocumentaryItaly

    A documentary immersion into all things Eco, Davide Ferrario’s film takes us on a tour of Umberto Eco’s private library, guided by the author himself. Combining new footage with material he shot with Eco in 2015 for a video installation for the Venice Biennale, Ferrario documents this incredible collection and the man who amassed it. As Eco leads us among the more than 50,000 volumes, we also gain insight into the library of the mind of this vastly prolific and original thinker.Read More »

  • Gualtiero Jacopetti & Franco Prosperi – Africa addio AKA Farewell Africa (1966)

    1961-1970DocumentaryExploitationFranco ProsperiGualtiero JacopettiItaly

    “What the camera sees it films pitilessly, without sympathy, without taking sides,” it begins. “This film only says farewell to the old Africa and gives the world a picture of its agony.” As colonialism collapsed in 1960s Africa, Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi rushed to the Dark Continent to record the horrifying battle for control that followed. Here was a world now ruled by rebels and refugees, plunderers and poachers, mercenaries and murderers, a land suddenly aflame with brutality, racism and unspeakable slaughter. At the risk of their own lives, the filmmakers’ cameras captured it all. The result is a daring and disturbing work that ranks among the greatest achievements in documentary cinema, an experience that remains as shocking – and shockingly relevant – as it was 40 years ago. This is AFRICA BLOOD AND GUTS!Read More »

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