Contemporary Italian cinema has many interesting directors, narrative diversity, from genre films to independent films, as well as very articulate author films. The possibility of seeing these films in Italy and especially abroad is quite disproportional to their quality



The selection of films for this year’s Review of Contemporary Italian Films in Zagreb is an attempt to present what is currently going on with Italian filmmaking. It is also an attempt to show the Croatian audience the creative and expressive diversity of the many film works that include interesting and important authors’ characteristics. Contemporary Italian cinema has many interesting directors with diverse narrative styles, from genre films to independent films, as well as very articulate author films. The possibility of seeing these films in Italy and especially abroad is quite disproportional to their quality.

The first Review in Zagreb includes the retrospective of films by Francesco Calogero, one of the most interesting young authors who debuted in the early 1990s.

This selection does not include films by Paolo Sorrentino because just a few months ago a retrospective in his honor took place in Zagreb. However we eagerly await the opportunity to see his latest film next year, which was already presented in Cannes this year. Nevertheless, Sorrentino is ideologically present in this program because he is the most mature author among those who have appeared on the Italian film scene over the last ten years.

A series of events that the students, followers of the film arts and other film lovers can see in Tuškanac, at the Academy of Drama Arts, Faculty of Philosophy and Italian Cultural Institute, is a part of the lively review of Italian film art in Italy from 2003 to 2005.
Comedy is a genre that is deeply rooted and dramaturgically developed in the history of Italian film. Over the last few years, a number of films have revitalized this genre. In this program you will encounter different narrative structures: classical in Nessun messaggio in segreteria, very humorous in the Pirandello’s sense of the word in Volevo solo dormirle addosso, melodramatic in Mater Natura shot in a unique and independent production, comic and ironic in L' uomo perfetto, set in a socio-political context in Now or Never (Ora o mai piu). The films tell stories, describe and reference different towns and parts of Italy from the South to the North of the country. They end this anthropologically interesting journey together with other films that are not comedies but rather present a different stylistic approach to the film, even though they possess the same critical commentary that is in this case more of a psychological than environmental nature. The film that has a strong dramaturgical structure that simultaneously strengthens expressiveness through silence, what is outside of the shot and the duration of the shots, is The Spectator (La spettatrice). Nemmeno il destino tells the life story of a boy from the periphery in a way that has not been seen on Italian film for along time, probably, without exaggeration, since Pasolini. The director Gaglianone experiments with new possibilities of expression in a film based on the contemporary writer Bettini’s story. Marco Turco analyzes Italian history in a dramatically realistic way in his documentary In un altro paese, a film essay about the anti-mafia team of Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino in Sicily.

I already mentioned Sorrentino, but it is important to quote him again in order to stress his ability to experiment with film language. For narrative purposes he shoots outside of the frame and also uses close ups. His narrative progressively reveals something disturbing that lies outside of the frame and leads us to a powerful inner world, for example in the film The Consequences of Love (Le conseguenze dell'amore) which achieved an artistic peak of Italian film equal to famous authors such as Amelio, Taviani, Mazzacurati, Soldini, Winespeare and Capuano, author of Mario's War (La guerra di Mario). The latter film tells the dramatic story of a boy who is getting adopted and also showcases the liveliness of contemporary Naples. The film language in this picture is light and simply expressive, serving the actors as well as the unique directing style.

The program ends with the film L' isola (The Island), which, while not the most recent film, has a unique artistic value. In this film we are able to analyze the use of language because Costanza Quatriglio uses the Sicilian dialect of the Italian language as it is spoken on the island of Favignana. It is especially interesting to see how the director managed to keep the balance between the duration and amount of information in one shot, thus alluding to the esthetics of a documentary. The story unfolds slowly within an adventurous framework that connects the different sequences and gives them psychological and anthropological meaning.

Along with these new authors and a few already well known ones, this program will present two Calabrese documentaries dealing with the topic of emigration. The first one, They'll see you in Cosenza (Ti vedrano a Cosenza), by the debutant Pino La Facea is a story about emigrants from Calabria who moved to Canada. The other one is Canto dei nuovi emigranti also directed by debutants Arturo Lavorato and Felicea D’Agostino, who won the first prize for their film at the international festival Cinema Giovani in Turin in 2005. The two directors found inspiration in the poet Franco Costabile and retold his life story. The third documentary from the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, Realities Kosova/o, voci di minoranze dimenticate, directed by Eva Ciuk, is a testimony to the diversity of ethnic groups in Kosovo. This film strikes a good balance between an emotional impression and an objective attempt to show dramatic realities.

A special part of this program is dedicated to Francesco Calogero, an author who deserves a deep critical analysis in Croatia. Calogero made his debut with his two first films, La caviglia di Amelia and La Gentilezza del Tocco, in his own production house with very few technical means and more for personal than professional use (super 8). Nevertheless, critics recognized his value as a director and he managed to make his first feature film Nessuno on 35 mm. When he made his next two feature films, Cinque giorni di tempesta and Metronotte, that skillfully find a balance between comedy and a simple, yet deep psychological analysis of the characters, a wider audience noticed him. In this program we will also show his last two documentaries, (L'implacambile tenente Rossi i In the Name of the Godfather). Nowadays he works primarily as a theater director, mostly of operas.

This is only the first of what we hope will be a series of Reviews of Italian Film in Zagreb, organized by the Italian Federation of Film Clubs and Croatian Film Clubs’ Association, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb and University for Foreigners Dante Alighieri from Reggio Calabria. Next year we will organize the second Review whose main task is to exchange knowledge and experiences as well as to expand the areas of academic, science and organizational collaboration between Croatia and Italy.
(Paolo Minuto, president of the International Federation of Film Clubs and art director of the Review)