Posts Tagged ‘ITALIAN NEO-REALISM’

Festival Focus: Bergamo Film Meeting 2019 | 9-17 March 2019

Bergamo Film Meeting unveils its 37th edition from March 9 – 17, 2019 in the mountain side venue just north of Milan in the Italian Dolomites. Bergamasco is one of Italy’s most intriguing dialects and the town boasts a wealth of gourmet restaurants and bars where you can savour saffron-flavoured risottos and a legendary pancetta laced pasta dish called casonelli alla bergamasca in a rich butter sauce accompanied by the local wines, including the famous red Moscato di Scanzo. Local handmade ice creams are based on regional ingredients, with stracciatella a speciality.

To open this year’s festival there will be a live performance of Fritz Lang’s  METROPOLIS on Friday 8th March, 20.30, Ex Chiesa di Sant’Agostino – P.le Sant’Agostino, Bergamo.

During the nine screening days and more than 180 films among feature films including world premieres, docs and short-films

COMPETITION EXHIBITION

Dedicated to new auteurs, the International competition will premiere 7 feature films, which will compete for the Bergamo Film Meeting Award (the audience will grant 5,000 euros to the best three films) and, from this year, for the Best Director Award (the International Jury will grant 2,000 euros to the best director). The competition line-up includes three debut features: British director Jamie Jones’ Obey; Holy Boom, which won an award at Zaragoza festival for Greek filmmaker Maria Lafi; Hadrian Marcu’s A Decent Man and Balkan feature Raindrops, Borders from Nikola Mijovic. Also in competition are two winners from last year’s San Sebastian festival: Benjamin Naishtat’s gripping Argentinian thriller RojoThe Snatch Thief from Agustin Toscano. Richard Billingham’s multi-awarded biopic Ray & Liz, 

CLOSE UP

Dedicated to documentary cinema. Two awards will be assigned: the Best Documentary CGIL Bergamo – Close Up Section (the audience will grant 2,000 euros) and the CGIL Jury Prize (the CGIL Bergamo trade union delegates will grant 1,000 euros).

EUROPE, NOW!

The complete works of two filmmakers who, in the last few years, have portrayed Europe’s varied  aspects through a uniquely personal vision: the Norwegian BENT HAMER (10001 Grams) and the Spanish director ALBERTO RODRÍGUEZ (Marshland) along with his collaborator RAFAEL COBOS, will be guests of the Festival from March 13 to 16.

RETROSPECTIVES 

JEAN-PIERRE LÉAUD. The renowned actor will be a guest of the Festival to mark this tribute to his film canon. The retro includes I Hired A Contract Killer; La Chinoise; L’amour en Fuite, La nuit americaine, Le depart, Les quatre cent coups, Masculin et Feminin, Porcile, La mort de Louis XIV, La mama et le putain. 

Also joining the celebration will be Macedonian director and cinematographer Karpo Godino as part of THE YUGOSLAVIAN BLACK WAVE: Retro of his work.

Polish director, animator, painter, cartoonist and performer MARIUSZ WILCZYŃSKI will also join to take part in the festival.

TRIBUTE to PETER MULLAN

PASOLINI AND THE ARABIAN NIGHTS, special event consisting of a photo exhibition, a panel discussion and the screening of three restored films: Il fiore delle Mille e una notte (Arabian Nights, 1974), Le mura di Sana’a (The Walls of Sana’a, 1971) and Appunti per un film sull’India (Notes for a film about India, 1968)

https://www.bergamofilmmeeting.it/

 

7 Neo-Realist masterpieces

The Italian Neo-Realist movement kicked off just after the Second World War and brought together a group of Italian filmmakers who focused their ideas on stories set amongst the poor and the working class reflecting the austerity of the era and government cut-backs. Frequently using non-professional actors or children, or professionals playing strongly against their normal character types, the films were set in a background populated by local people brought in for the films.

NEO-REALISM rejected the strict guidelines that had been imposed during the war years by Benito Mussolini’s ‘White Telephone’ films that toed the party line and, instead, explored themes of economic hardship, oppression and social injustice in everyday life, particularly amongst the working classes. These had been brought about by the devastation of the war years and changes in the nation’s psyche after the war which caused fractures in film industry financing and actual physical damage to some film studios and equipment.  Not deterred by this a group of filmmakers got together and decided to use this difficulty to create an entirely new style: Neo-Realism was born.

1860The main protagonists of the Italian school auteur-wise were Vittorio De Sica with Bicycle Thieves (1948); Alessandro Biasetti with the photo-realist 1860,(1934); Giuseppe De Santis with Riso Amaro/Bitter Rice (1949); Luchino Visconti, who made the first film in the genre: Ossessione (1943) followed by Roberto Rossellini’s: Rome Open City, which won the Grand Prix at Cannes just after the War. Manoel de Oliviera (Aniki Bobo/1942) Jean Renoir (Toni/1935) had also embraced the style, and traditional elaborate studio sets gave way to shoots in the countryside and in the open streets.

ITALIAN NEO-REALISM rapidly declined in the early 1950s when the economic situation improved. Viaggio in Italia (1954) was widely regarded as the culminating masterpiece and the film that inspired the French New Wave and, in to a certain extent THE POLISH FILM SCHOOL and Indian filmmakers. By then, most Italians were also ready for the optimism offered by American cinema. The vision of existing poverty and despair, presented by the neorealist films, were seen as a dampener on a nation anxious to embrace the mood of optimism, prosperity and change and no longer wanted their dirty laundry washed in public, so to speak.

cropped-The_Gospel_According_to_Matthew_6-e1361801472550.jpgThe individual became the main focal point in the Italian cinema that followed in the 1960s. Antonioni’s Red Desert and Blow-Up take neo-realist themes and develop them in the search for knowledge brought on by Italy’s post-war economic and political climate. Giovanni Columbu’s Su Re (2012) and Pasolini’s Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (1964) and Padre Padrone embody the characteristics of neorealism even though they were made much later and therefore cannot be classified as belonging to the genre.

Some filmmakers such as Vittoria de Sica and Luchino Visconti drifted away from pure neorealism into allegorical fantasy with films such as Il Miracolo di Milano (1951). One of the more tragic and moving is Umberto D (left), a story of elderly post war povertyOther features that embraced the genre are Jean Renoir’s Toni (1935), La Nave Bianca, Roberto Rossellini, (1941) Aniki-Bobo, Manoel de Oliviera (1942); People of the Po Valley, Michelangelo Antonioni (1947) Bitter Rice, Giuseppe de Santis(1949); Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950); Bellissima (Luchino Visconti, 1951); and Rome 11.00, Giuseppe De Santis (1952). MT

NOW AVAILABLE THROUGH CRITERON, EUREKA Masters of Cinema and AMAZON.CO.UK.

 

 

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