Herewith please find information on the Italian Film Festival with a focus on Lina Wertmuller that will take place in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. The festival is organised by the Italian Embassy, the Italian Trade Commission, Cine Cita Holdings and the Italian Ministry of Arts. Ms Wertmuller is looking to meet with South African film makers who are interested in pursuing a co-production between Italy and South Africa. If you are interested in meeting with Ms. Wertmuller please contact: Ms. Elisa D'Onofrio at [email protected]
"Swept away by... an unusual Lina"
by Adriano Pintaldi
Arcangela Assunta Wertmuller von Elgg, in art Lina Wertmuller, was born in Rome: her father came from Puglia and her mother was Swiss. When she was very young, she attended the Pietro Scahroff's Drama Academy; then she worked, first as animator, then as director, in the Mario Signorelli puppet show. For a period of time, she worked with Giorgio De Lullo and Garinei and Giovannini. Afterwards, she started working for RAI, devoting herself both to radio and television, until she directed the first edition of the famous "Canzonissima", singing show.
The first TV musical-comedy she created, "Gianburrasca's Diary"(with Rita Pavone) of the same period, is more than worthy of mention, too. In 1963 she entered cinema as Federico Fellini's assistant director on the set of the movie 8 ½, for which she also collaborated to the screenplay. In that same year, she made her feature debut, directing The Basilisks, a movie written, directed and even dubbed by herself in eight minor characters. The Basilisks, a delicate and scathing analysis of the provincial youth of Southern Italy, already showed Wertmuller's unmistakable hand, delineating her tones and stylistic uniqueness. The film received great praise by the critics and collected several awards both in Italy and abroad. In 1965 she shot Now Let's Talk About Men with Nino Manfredi, who won the "Silver Mask" for his outstanding performance. Between 1966 and 1967 she directed two musical films with Rita Pavone and a debuting Giancarlo Giannini: Rita the Mosquito and Don't Sting the Mosquito. In the same period she collaborated with well-known directors as André Cayatte, Sergio Sollima and Pasquale Festa Campanile.
She returned to direction with The Seduction of Mimì, a masterly tapestry of Southern Italy and its myths through the story of a young Sicilian emigrated to Turin. This film definitively marked Wertmuller's stylistic and thematic manners: a grotesque and irresistible satire of the Italian proletariat and under proletariat. Wertmuller has also had the merit of bringing to the public's attention two extremely talented actors as Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato, who will eventually become a formidable pair on the screen, obtaining a great success of audience and critical acclaim.
As a common denominator, Wertmuller's films have a great refinement of setting and a strong tendency to baroque in every aspect. This concept is even stressed by the baroque of the interminable titles used by the director, a length that has become proverbial. Then we find Love and Anarchy in 1973 with the Giannini-Melato pair, Everything Ready, Nothing Works in ‘74, Swept Away... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August always with Giannini-Melato, Seven Beauties in '75 with Giannini ( for which she received two nominations to the Academy Awards), A Joke of Destiny with Ugo Tognazzi, Summer Night, with Greek Profile, Almond Eyes and Scent of Basil in '86 with Michele Placido and On a Moonlit Night in 1989, a film that was different from the previous ones, in which the director dealt with the delicate subject of AIDS, managing to exorcize it anyway, through a bitter-sweet narration. For theatre she directed "Due più due non fa più quattro", "La cucina", "Amore e magia nella cucina di mamma", performed at the "Festival dei due Mondi" of Spoleto. For opera she directed the "Carmen" by Bizet at the San Carlo Theater of Naples. In 1990, she directed the TV-movie "Saturday, Sunday and Monday", starring an intense Sophia Loren with Luca De Filippo. The film, taken from a famous play by Edoardo De Filippo, received unanimous international consensus for the detailed setting and the extraordinary "Napleness" which pervaded it. In 1992 for the big screen she directed Me Let's Hope I Make It with Paolo Villaggio; then The Nymph based upon Domenico Rea's novel; finally, in 1996, The Blue Collar Worker and the Hairdresser in a Whirl of Sex and Politics, a film in which the director dealt again with class conflict; this time, the contrast was between an extreme leftist and a right wing hairdresser of the Northern Italian party.
Finally, always for the big screen, she directed Ferdinando e Carolina, a film about the teenage years of the "scoundrel king", Ferdinand Borbone. Besides other important TV directions of a series of documentaries, Wertmuller directed a marvelous Sophia Loren for TV again, in "Francesca and Nunziata". The story unfolds over a century of Italian history, from Risorgimento to the eve of World War Two. In this film, acclaimed also on an international level, Claudia Gerini's performance stands out as well in the tormented role of Nunziata. The tireless director has recently finished the shootings of her new feature, Too Much Romance... It's Time for Stuffed Peppers, once again with her great "friend" Sophia Loren, leading actress in the role of a beautiful woman from Naples who steals the heart of an American journalist correspondent in Italy - the Oscar winning Oscar F. Murray Abraham - who eventually decides to leave his job to marry her and move together to a little fishermen village on the Naples coast. Lina Wertmuller, a polyhedral screenwriter and director, with a great sense of performance, combative and against the mainstream, never submitting to vogues and trends, with a strong personality that makes her work unmistakable, pursues her activity, dividing herself among cinema, theater and literature, with the same enthusiasm which saw her, very young, next to names as Federico Fellini or Garinei and Giovannini, without ever losing sight of that sense of "humor" which is so important in the life of us all.
JOHANNESBURG - Rosebank Mall
Friday 3 June
17,30 NOTTE D'ESTATE CON PROFILO GRECO, OCCHI A MANDORLA E ODORE DI BASILICOSUMMER NIGHT, WITH GREEK PROFILE, ALMOND EYES AND SCENT OF BASIL duration 98'
Saturday 4 June
17,30 FILM D'AMORE E D' ANARCHIA... OVVERO, STAMATTINA ALLE 10.00, IN VIA DEI FIORI, ALLA NOTA CASA DI TOLLERANZALOVE AND ANARCHIA duration 125'
20,30 PASQUALINO SETTEBELLEZZESEVEN BEAUTIES duration 115'
Sunday 5 June
17,30 SOTTO SOTTO... STRAPAZZATO DA ANOMALA PASSIONESOFTLY, SOFTLY duration 100'
20,30 I BASILISCHI THE BASILISKS duration 84'
Monday 6 June
17,30 I BASILISCHI THE BASILISKS duration 84'
20,30 LA FINE DEL MONDO NEL NOSTRO SOLITO LETTO IN UNA NOTTE PIENA DI PIOGGIATHE END OF THE WORLD IN OUR USUAL BED IN A NIGHT FULL OF RAIN duration 100'
Tuesday 7 June
17,30 TRAVOLTI DA UN INSOLITO DESTINO NELL' AZZURRO MARE D' AGOSTO SWEPT AWAY... BY AN UNUSUAL DESTINY IN THE BLUE SEA OF AUGUST duration 125' ADMISSION FREE
20,30 LA FINE DEL MONDO NEL NOSTRO SOLITO LETTO IN UNA NOTTE PIENA DI PIOGGIATHE END OF THE WORLD IN OUR USUAL BED IN A NIGHT FULL OF RAIN duration 100'
Sunday 19 June
17,30 TRAVOLTI DA UN INSOLITO DESTINO NELL' AZZURRO MARE D' AGOSTOSWEPT AWAY... BY AN UNUSUAL DESTINY IN THE BLUE SEA OF AUGUST duration 125'
20,30 I BASILISCHI THE BASILISKS duration 84'
CAPE TOWN - Cavendish Square
Friday 17 June
17,30 FILM D'AMORE E D' ANARCHIA... OVVERO, STAMATTINA ALLE 10.00, IN VIA DEI FIORI, ALLA NOTA CASA DI TOLLERANZALOVE AND ANARCHIA duration 125'
20,30 PASQUALINO SETTEBELLEZZESEVEN BEAUTIESduration 115'
Saturday 18 June
17,30 FATTO DI SANGUE FRA DUE UOMINI PER CAUSA DI UNA VEDOVA... SI SOSPETTANO MOVENTI POLITICIBLOOD FEUD duration 110'
DURBAN - Gateway
Friday 1 July
17,30 FILM D'AMORE E D' ANARCHIA... OVVERO, STAMATTINA ALLE 10.00, IN VIA DEI FIORI, ALLA NOTA CASA DI TOLLERANZALOVE AND ANARCHIA duration 125'
20,30 PASQUALINO SETTEBELLEZZESEVEN BEAUTIES duration 115'
Saturday 2 July
17,30 FATTO DI SANGUE FRA DUE UOMINI PER CAUSA DI UNA VEDOVA... SI SOSPETTANO MOVENTI POLITICIBLOOD FEUD duration 110'
20,30 LA FINE DEL MONDO NEL NOSTRO SOLITO LETTO IN UNA NOTTE PIENA DI PIOGGIATHE END OF THE WORLD IN OUR USUAL BED IN A NIGHT FULL OF RAIN duration 100
Sunday 3 July
17,30 TRAVOLTI DA UN INSOLITO DESTINO NELL' AZZURRO MARE D' AGOSTOSWEPT AWAY... BY AN UNUSUAL DESTINY IN THE BLUE SEA OF AUGUST duration 125'
20,30 I BASILISCHI THE BASILISKSduration 84' 20,30 PASQUALINO SETTEBELLEZZESEVEN BEAUTIES duration 115'
Wednesday 8 June
17,30 NOTTE D'ESTATE CON PROFILO GRECO, OCCHI A MANDORLA E ODORE DI BASILICOSUMMER NIGHT, WITH GREEK PROFILE, ALMOND EYES AND SCENT OF BASIL duration 98'
20,30 TRAVOLTI DA UN INSOLITO DESTINO NELL' AZZURRO MARE D' AGOSTOSWEPT AWAY... BY AN UNUSUAL DESTINY IN THE BLUE SEA OF AUGUST duration 125'
Thursday 9 June
17,30 LA FINE DEL MONDO NEL NOSTRO SOLITO LETTO IN UNA NOTTE PIENA DI PIOGGIATHE END OF THE WORLD IN OUR USUAL BED IN A NIGHT FULL OF RAIN duration 100'
20,30 SOTTO SOTTO... STRAPAZZATO DA ANOMALA PASSIONESOFTLY, SOFTLYduration 100'
Posted on Wednesday 1 Jun 2005
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