Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2011

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 30 May 2011 05:00

Written by L E Shannon

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema is back again from June 1 - 8, 2011 at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City.

This 11th edition also marks the 150th anniversary of the Risorgimento, the movement that united the assorted city-states into the modern Italy that we know and love.

As a tribute to this milestone, the Series is screening two films that commemorate this event:

We Believed / Noi Credevamo
dir. Mario Martone
US Premiere of an epic reconstruction and re-imagination of the social and political forces that led to Italian independence.

1860 (I Figli Di Garibaldi)
dir. Alesasandro Blassetti (1934)
A rare screening, this epic of the Risorgimento follows a group of peasants on their road to joining Garibaldi.

The Opening Night Film is the US Premiere of The Salt of Life, directed by Gianni Di Gregorio. Starring Di Gregorio, Valeria de Franciscis, Teresa Di Gregorio, Alfonso Santagata
In this follow-up to his 2010 sleeper hit Mid-August Lunch, Di Gregorio plays a middle-aged retiree. As his friends snare "beautiful younger women on the sun-kissed cobblestones of Trastevere," Gianni tries his "polite, utterly gracious best to generate some kind of extracurricular love life -- with both hilarious and poignant results." Di Gregorio will be in attendance on June 1.

Some of the other films are:

20 Cigarettes / 20 Sigarette
dir. Aureliano Amadei
starring Vinicio Marchioni, Carolina Crescentini, Giorgio Colangeli
"When a young antiwar activist heads to Iraq to work on a film, he quickly finds himself a victim of sectarian violence and soon an unlikely media sensation. Amadei’s powerful debut feature is based on his own experiences as the only civilian survivor of the 2003 suicide bombing of Italian military HQ in Nasiriyah."

Unlikely Revolutionaries / Figli delle Stelle (Children of the Stars)
dir. Lucio Pellegrini
starring Pierfrancesco Favino, Lidia Biondi, Edoardo Gabbriellini
After botching a high-profile kidnapping, a group of disillusioned northeasterners are forced to learn how to coexist under absurd and clandestine conditions. A comedy of modern times.

The First Assignment / Il primo incarico
dir. Giorgia Cecere
starring Isabella Ragonese, Alberto Boll, Francesco Chiarello
Nena, a girl from the south of Italy, has to travel far from home to get her first job as a teacher. She arrives to find a world beyond her imagination: a school isolated on a high mountain plain, wild children, people she has nothing in common with and a hostile environment.

The Passion / La Passione
dir. Carlo Mazzacurati
After a leak in his Tuscan apartment destroys a 16th century chapel’s fresco, a has-been director agrees to stage some Good Friday celebrations. Dead-easy penance, right? Doesn‛t he wish...

For more information, go to www.filmlinc.com.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema
June 1 - 8, 2011

Walter Reade Theater
at Lincoln Center
165 West 65th Street
New York City