From November 18th to the 22nd, the Italian Culture Institute in Marseille will host the Palmarés of Annecy’s 2005 Italian film Festival with screenings at the Amerigo Vespucci hall and Prado Movie Theatre in Marseille.
This Marseille event will call attention to Annecy Italian Film Festival’s twenty year commitment to Italian cinema, and its support in favour of the distribution of Italian films across the Alpine border. It is concerned with the diffusion of contemporary Italian cinema through southern France, where our movie industry is known to have actual problems in distribution and therefore aims to increase the work potential of Italian companies such as AIP- Filmitalia and Cinecittà Holding who are concerned with productions and film subtitling, through this Provence ‘extension’ of the Annecy Film Festival, in collaboration with the Italian Culture Institute in Marseille, with the intention of sharing and promoting the “Sistema Italia” overseas.
This year the films earning major consensus and which will again be screened at the Institute are The Fever , modern day life of an ambitious thirty year old, living in a small provincial town, by Alessandro D’Alatri, awarded the Sergio Leone prize at Annecy; E se domani, a comedy laced with tragedy about a bank robbery , a friendship and love story by director Giovanni La Parola, with actors, Paolo Kessisoglu and Luca Bizzarri, and actress Sabrina Impacciatore; Saimir, bitter life tale seen through the eyes of a sixteen year old in an Albanian community set in Italy, by director Francesco Munzi, received the Best Film award.
As part of the programme the Institute will also screen two films which particularly deserve to be included in this panorama of Italy’s most recent productions, the first one being Italy’s Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film, a courageous story with superb acting, La Bestia nel Cuore by Cristina Comencini and Tre metri sopra il cielo by Luca Lucini, successfully adapted from the best selling book about adolescent life in Rome.
The official introduction and press conference for this review will take place on Wednesday November 9th, as the Institute will present the screening of the film presented in Competition at Cannes Once You’re Born ; and also host a Photo Exhibit, formerly at Annecy, of photographs taken by Angelo Turetta during the filming of Giordana.
November 21st and 22nd the programme will also extend to the schools, with the morning screenings at the Prado Theatre of The Fever and Tre metri sopra il cielo for the college and high school students, and a conference and refresher course for Italian teachers from the region, organized in collaboration with the Provveditorato, to be hosted at the Institute. The introduction to this course will be given by Jean Gili, master of ceremonies in Annecy, followed by comments from the actors and directors from the films in the programme.
The enormous success of the 2004 edition is proof that today Italian cinematography still generates a lot of interest, and is considered one of the most prolific and important industries not only in Europe, but worldwide. The prospect of having subtitled copies of the films in French, which were chosen for Annecy therefore serves as a unique opportunity in which an eager and enthusiastic audience can be presented with live art.
The Italian Cultural Institute committed to the promotion of our Belpaese’s contemporary culture, can through this initiative acquaint the people of Marseille with Italian cinema’s new young talents, and ideally make this a regular calendar event in the city.