The American Cinematheque and Cinecittá Holding - Rome present Cinema Italian Style: New Films From Italy at the Egyptian Theatre, October 6 – 16 and at the Aero Theatre, October 7 - 13.
Continuing in the glorious tradition of such filmmakers as Michelangelo Antonioni (whose complete retrospective in new prints from Cinecittà Holding screens at the L.A. County Museum in September), Pier Paolo Pasolini, Luchino Visconti and Bernardo Bertolucci, contemporary Italian cinema remains among the most vibrant and unpredictable anywhere in Europe, examining and celebrating an Italy both complex and sentimental, dark and solar, rural and urban.
This two-week showcase of the best and most challenging in new Italian filmmaking opens with the bittersweet comedy Manual of Love from director Giovanni Veronesi, the biggest Italian box office hit of the past year. The series closes with the L.A. Premiere of director Pupi Avati’s So When are the Girls Coming?, a jazz-themed portrait of the friendship between three “Gen X” Italian youths. The series features recent films from acclaimed directors including Cristina Comencini’s gripping emotional drama, Don't Tell; director Marco Tullio Giordana (Best of Youth), with his latest Once You Are Born … (Quando sei nato non puoi più nasconderti), about the collision between a wealthy Italian family and a boatload of illegal immigrants; Ettore Scola’s loving portrait of one of Neorealist Italian Cinema’s greatest screenwriters, Sergio Amidei; and Academy Award-winning director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo) with the offbeat, female private eye thriller Quo Vadis Baby? The filmmakers in the series include director Roberto Faenza, with the hard-hitting Mafia drama Come into the Light; director Giuseppe Piccioni, with The Life That I Want, a surprising, behind-the-scenes romance about an actor and actress who fall in love both on-screen and off-; Michele Placido, with the hotly-anticipated crime epic Romanzo Criminale; plus a program of the best of “New Italian Short Films.”
The series will also feature several classics of Italian Cinema, including Vittorio De Sica’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (Ieri, Oggi e Domani), starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, and De Sica’s legendary Neorealist classic Shoeshine (Sciuscià), along with the Los Angeles Premiere of Michelangelo Antonioni’s lost, 3-1/2 hour documentary on modern China, Chung Kuo-China from 1972! In person guests for the “Cinema Italian Style” Series directors Giovanni Veronesi (Manual of Love), Cristina Comencini (Don't Tell), Gabriele Salvatores (Quo Vadis Baby?), Giuseppe Piccioni (The Life That I Want), and Pupi Avati (So When are the Girls Coming?) and actor Luca Zingaretti (Come into the Light).