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Film and the Arts
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis Blooms Again
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Previews
- Published on Wednesday, 29 August 2012 13:51
- Written by Laura Blum
With fall in the works and the cultural frenzy that comes with it, fans of classic Italian cinema will want to mark their calendars for October 23, 7:30 pm. That’s when the 
vintage Avon Theatre in Stamford, Connecticut is set to screen The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.
Jointly presented with JCC Greenwich and the Italian Cultural Insititute of New York, this Critic's Choice showing is a rare opportunity to catch legendary director Vittorio De Sica (The Bicycle Thief) at the top of his game. Finzi-Continis won the 1971 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
You'll bask in the lush setting, the ripe score, the dreamy ambiance. But you won't want to get too comfortable. The fate awaiting our beautiful and privileged protagonists is no less than an expulsion from Eden.
Inspired by a real family, the Finzi-Continis are Jewish owners of a gracious manor house cloistered from the outside by high walls, luxuriant grounds and the tranquility of a gentler era. There's even a 500-year-old tree that the Borgias may have planted. The adult children, elegant Micòl (Dominique Sanda) and Alberto (Helmut Berger), entertain their
friends with endless rounds of tennis and picnics, as befits their carefree aristocratic life in Ferrara, Italy.
Yet it’s 1938 and the close of an epoch stretching back to the Middle Ages that has granted the local Jewish community a modicum of communal protections. Leave it to the less affluent and cushioned co-religionists to detect the writing on the wall as, one by one, social prerogatives become increasingly off-limits.
One such middle-class landsman is Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), who is mortified by Mussolini’s edicts. A friend of the family, he has loved Micòl since their youth, and imagines that she reciprocates his affections. Micòl, however, is busy carrying on with Giorgio’s Gentile friend Bruno Malnate (Fabio Testi), a manly jock who’s soon to enter the armed forces.
Recent racial purity decrees forbid Jews from doing just that -- serving in the military -- as well as from marrying non-Jews, attending public schools, being listed in the phone directory and engaging Aryan servants. These restrictions seem to occur beyond the pale of the Finzi-Continis. As Giorgio's father notes, “They are different. They don't even seem to be Jewish." Yet no amount of wealth, standing, credentials or obliviousness could shield the victims of Fascism from its intensifying thrust.
A surprising footnote here is that anti-Semitism was not part of the Italian Fascist platform during Mussolini’s first 15 or so years in power. According to Giorgio Bassani -- author of the 1962 autobiographical novel on which the film is based -- most of the Ferrarese Jewish community held party membership until Nazi ideology invaded Italy.
Bassani, who also collaborated on the film's screenplay, helped De Sica imagine the looming
sense of loss that the community struggled with in the years leading up to and during the war. In 1943, after northern Italy was occupied by Nazi forces, Ferrara’s small Jewish community was sent to the concentration camps; only one of its 183 deportees came home.
De Sica looks back and forward on history, showing the specter of tragedy through the characters' unfolding awareness. Painting with symbols, he equates the safe, idyllic gardens of the Finzi-Contini palazzo with the past. Similarly, Giorgio represents an innocent childhood bond for Micòl, allowing her to tolerate him as a platonic relationship. Yet to regard him as a romantic partner would mean swapping yesterday for tomorrow, an altogether too frightening notion in her vulnerable state of denial.
Following the October screening, Columbia University professor Alexander Stille will shed light on these and other key issues explored in this film of unusual power and merit.
For tickets and information, contact jccgreenwich.org or (203) 552-1818.
Avon Theatre
272 Bedford Street
Stamford, CT 06901
avontheatre.org
The Luminous "The Things of Life" Graces Claude Sautet Retrospective
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Previews
- Published on Tuesday, 07 August 2012 03:28
- Written by Jack Angstreich
The late Claude Sautet was an accomplished director who emerged alongside the celebrated French nouvelle vague -- new wave -- in the late'60s, early '70s. His auteurist credentials received an implicit endorsement in François Truffaut's favorable review of Vincent, François, Paul and the others. Truffaut was one of the most exacting critics who had written for Cahiers du cinèma — but he also used Sautet as a script-doctor on his own films.
The long overdue retrospective of Sautet's work -- titled Claude Sautet: The Things of Life -- at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (running from August 1st - 9th, 2012), affords audiences an exciting opportunity to re-evaluate the impressive achievements of a director who, at the very least, was an exquisite craftsman until his death in Paris on July 22nd, 2000, at the age of 76.
From 1970, The Things of Life/Les choses de la vie inaugurated many of the director's most enduring and significant collaborations -- most of which are included in this series. It was sensitively scripted by Jean-Loup Dabadie, beautifully photographed in color by the distinguished cinematographer Jean Boffety and brilliantly scored by Philippe Sarde — his first feature — all of whom went on to work with Sautet multiple times.
The film also greatly benefits from a strong cast. In it star two of the French cinema's most extraordinary talents, both of whom were leads in several subsequent Sautet works: Michel Piccoli, one of the subtlest of French actors, and the lovely, understatedly glamorous, Romy Schneider. The attractive Lea Massari, who is something of a legend in her own right, is also memorable in a supporting role.
Most notable for an intricate editing style which recalls similar, contemporaneous approaches in films by Alain Resnais, Nicholas Roeg, and Richard Lester, The Things of Life tells of Pierre (Piccoli) a successful highway builder who ends up in a deadly auto crash. Seriously hurt, he lies there waiting for the ambulance and possibly death, while the film recalls his past in flashbacks -- reviewing his loves and relationships.
This associative construction is complemented by an intelligent deployment of telephoto that serves as a vehicle for the subjective examination of the narrative concept. Although this is is a moving and worthwhile work, I have reservations about whether it ultimately transcends a certain insubstantiality as envisioned here — Sautet was to attain even greater depths in later films.
The print of The Things of Life being screened is an old one — a French import — with good color, although not without disappointingly considerable dirt and some wear.
Claude Sautet: The Things of Life
August 1st - 9th, 2012
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Walter Reade Theatre
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023
FFTrav's Brad Balfour Will Help You Get Your Film Online
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Previews
- Published on Monday, 06 August 2012 00:17
- Written by Renzo Adler
Making your own film can be pretty scary. Selling and distributing it can also be just as Herculean a task. Many indie filmmakers look to the internet now to self-distribute and release their films, but even that world has its own pitfalls. Lucky for you, a unique mix of filmmakers want to help you navigate that world.
On Wednesday, August 8, 2012 at the Wix Lounge (10 West 18th Street 2nd floor), four panelists, moderated by Film Festival Traveler’s own Brad Balfour, will discuss self-releasing a film online, and reaching your audience. This is part of Film 2.0: The Digital (R)evolution, a series of three talks about how the internet effects the film industry in conjunction with the Beneath the Earth Film Festival.
The panelists are:
- Andrew S. Allen (Director of The Thomas Beale Cipher and founder of Short of the Week)
- Jason Sondhi (Writer, director, Co-Founder of Short of the Week)
- Chris Chan Roberson (Editor, Co-Founder of Etc… experimental troupe comedy, Telly Award winner)
- Adam Schartoff (Founder and programmer of the New York based film series, Filmwax, blogger)
- Brad Balfour (Moderator, editor-in-chief of filmfestivaltraveler.com and Huffington Post blogger)
This event is not only a great opportunity to learn from experienced members of the online indie film community, but to also meet and network with your peers. And since it’s at a lounge you can at the very least get a drink out of the whole affair.
Film 2.0: The Digital (R)evolution
Building An Audience
August 8, 2012
Wix Lounge
10 West 18th Street 2nd floor
New York, NY 10011
Crazy 4 Cult NY Celebrates Cinema Sleaze
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- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Previews
- Published on Friday, 13 July 2012 19:02
- Written by Renzo Adler
From August 9th to September 1st, 2012, Gallery1988 NY Pop-Up Store (64 Gansevoort Street) will pay tribute to the undeniable charm of video-store era cult movies with Crazy 4 Cult: NEW YORK.
Going to the video store used to be a ritualistic trek to a valley of rack after rack of tantalizing box-art with promises of so many cheap thrills and unexpected delights.
I still remember the time when the box for John Water's twadry and disgusting Pink Flamingos first caught my eye at a local video store. These movies, cheap and tawdry to some, had an undeniable allure to them, sometimes coupled with a sense of reverent mysticism.
The Crazy 4 Cult art-series has been a fixture at Gallery1988’s California locations (where they’re wrapping up on “There’s always money in the banana stand”, a display of art based on the show Arrested Development) for four years now, and this will be the first time the Crazy 4 Cult series will be conducted in New York.
To learn more, go to: http://nineteeneightyeight.com/
Crazy 4 Cult: NEW YORK
August 9 – September 1, 2012
Gallery1988 NY Pop-Up Store
64 Gansevoort Street
New York, NY 10014
