In a key initiative for Italian cinema in 2015, Italian Trade Commission and ANICA announce big push into Latin America
50 films and 20 guests in a special artistic delegation, retrospectives dedicated to Bernardo Bertolucci and Bruno Bozzetto, market meetings and publications.

Berlin, February 10, 2015. – As part of the broader showcase 2015 – Year of Italy in Latin America, Italian cinema has created a strong partnership with the Guadalajara International Film Festival, the continent’s most important film event that will hold its 30th edition from March 6 to 15 this year.
The event is realized in cooperation between the Italian Trade Commission (ICE-Agenzia), Istituto Luce Cinecittà and ANICA, with the support of the Italian Ministry of Heritage, Cultural Activities and Tourism (MiBACT), the Ministry for Economic Development and in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Industry

ICE-Agenzia and ANICA will curate, in collaboration with the network of Italian Film Commissions, the Italian Documentarists Association (Doc/it) and UNEFA (the association of Italian Film exporters), the Italian participation in Guadalajara’s industry section. They will create an exhibition space in the center of the Market with monitors for projections of Italian film trailers and info points for the distribution of materials. In addition, the stand will feature work stations for industry encounters that will be organized for the Italian professionals present.

On March 10, there will be a presentation of the Italian system of support for audiovisual productions to the international professional audience. Experts from ICE-Agenzia, MiBACT, ANICA, the Italian Film Commissions and UNEFA will lead through the event and explain the available opportunities such as national and regional funds, distribution funds, tax credits, product placement opportunities or activities of the film commissions. All of these activities serve to underline the particular interest of Italy as a competitive film location for foreign as well as for co-productions.

Italy will also participate at the 11th Coproduction Forum of the Guadalaljara Festival with the project “The Whale”, an international coproduction put together by Andrea Stucovitz’ Partner Media Investment and directed by Andrea Pallaoro.

Finally, on the occasion of the Guadalajara Festival and in the year of the Milan World Expo dedicated to Food and the Environment, ICE and Istituto Luce Cinecittà have brought out a new Spanish edition, updated by the author, of Laura Delli Colli’s El gusto del cine italiano.

Films and filmmakers

Over the course of the last year, Istituto Luce Cinecittà organized the selection process in Italy for Ivan Trujillo, Director of the Guadalajara Festival. While Italy will be the festival’s guest of honor, Trujillo is not so much a guest in the context of Italian cinema but rather an attentive guide and sensitive connoisseur. He chose the Italian program from over 150 films that he personally reviewed, closing himself into the screening rooms of Cinecittà for long periods of time.

Trujillo’s selection covers the three years from 2012 to 2014, a period that has seen Italian cinema rise on the international stage to conquer awards and recognitions in frantic sequence: right after a new generation made its mark by winning an Oscar, the next generation took Cannes. And while new comedies reach a vertigo-inspiring box office, another group of Italian filmmakers tears down the walls between fiction and documentary. The selection of 33 feature films to be shown in Guadalajara coherently represents the eclectic state of Italian film production today.

The film Born in the U.S.E. (United States of Europe) will be presented in World Premiere: it is dedicated to the birthday of the cinema, which will celebrate 120 years in 2015. Its title refers to the first screening of the history of the cinema, held in Paris in 1895. The film, written and directed by the young director Michele Diomà, combines the narrative paths of reportage and pure fiction; it is a stylistic choice wich allows Diomà to tell some of the most revolutionary moments of the history of the Seventh Art in a little more than 80 minutes. The film stars master Francesco Rosi, Golden Lion and Golden Bear for career achievement and Palm d’or at the Cannes Film Festival for The Mattei Affair. In Born in the U.S.E., the last cinematographic work which sees his participation, Francesco Rosi also tells some unknown anecdotes about his extraordinary work on political cinema. In addition, Born in the U.S.E. stars director Giuseppe Tornatore, Academy Award for Cinema Paradiso, and Luis Bacalov, Academy Award for The Postman by Michael Radford and Massimo Troisi. The film also stars the producers Renzo Rossellini and Donald Ranvaud.

>Click here for the full selection of contemporary films<

Retrospectives of Bernardo Bertolucci and Bruno Bozzetto

This panorama of the most recent Italian productions will be flanked by a special perspective on the works of two masters. For the first time in Latin America, Istituto Luce Cinecittà will present the complete, Spanish-subtitled retrospective of Bernardo Bertolucci who will also receive in person the Premio Mayahuel Guadalajara Internacional for his contribution to world cinema and his acknowledged influence on many of the continent’s most important filmmakers.

Another first in Latin America is the rerospective dedicated to Bruno Bozzetto, the genius of Italian – and world-wide – animation. The Guadalajara audience will have the opportunity to see all of his feature films in recently restored versions as well as a selection of his magnificent short films.

Both retrospectives will be accompanied by ample catalogs as well as a delegation of at least 20 authors and artists who will join Bernardo Bertolucci and Bruno Bozzetto on their flight to Mexico.

Bernardo Bertolucci and Bruno Bozzetto in Guadalajara: Two (in)credible parallels

The Italian events at Guadalajara 2015 honors Italian cinema with retrospectives dedicated to two unique personalities: Bernardo Bertolucci and Bruno Bozzetto. This is an extraordinary and double opportunity: On the one hand, they present to the Latin American public two complete retrospectives of memorable works that have delighted and influenced generations of filmmakers from different origins, languages and nations. Secondly, they enable an encounter of and a critical reflection upon two names that at first glance don’t seem to have much of a connection.

However, Bernardo Bertolucci and Bruno Bozzetto are contemporaries (the public record has them born only three years apart but united by their initials). Their first features are roughly at the same time (La commare secca from ’62, West and Soda from ’65, both shown in the program). And if West and Soda synthesized in a flash the passion and history of the Western genre 50 years ago, twinned with Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars) by Sergio Leone, part of that was due to the fact that Bertolucci was strongly influenced through his collaboration with Leone. He was only 27 when he collaborated with Leone and Dario Argento on the script to C’era una volta il West (Once Upon A Time In The West).

These are not merely coincidences among cinephiles. Love of cinema and an inclination to quote from movie history turns out to be one of the main threads in their respective masterworks. Each in their particular manner, they create films in which one can see an atlas of world cinema.

Another common theme has been chronicled in the news: Both Bertolucci and Bozzetto’s successes in the US – a story of Oscars, nominations, honors, collaborations, not least the homage Pixar paid to Bozzetto. All of this sharpened their powers of observation and a sense of acute analysis and criticism of images of Western civilization. One could easily, for example, mix up some of their titles: Novecento, Storia del mondo per chi ha fretta, Il signor Rossi, Il conformista, Vip – Mio Fratello Superuomo, Partner, Ego… In a word: these two directors, so far apart in common perception, gave us a new perception of the West, originally and in parallel.

For news and full information:
www.facebook.com/CinemaMadeInItalyGuadalajara