Those Happy Years - Daniele Luchetti - Opening Night U.S.
Premiere. Q&A with filmmaker Daniele Luchetti at both screenings.
Since the festival’s inception, Antonio Monda has handled
the artistic side of things, choosing which films to bring to American
audiences eager to see diversity, art, beauty and, simply put, a sampling of
the most significant Italian films of the past year. The 2014 edition includes
the latest work by established veterans, award winners and promising new
talents making commercial and independent films
Organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center together
with Istituto Luce-Cinecittà- Filmitalia, in collaboration with the Italian
Cultural Institute of New York, professor and journalist Antonio Monda, the
Alexander Bodini Foundation and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, “Open Roads: New
Italian Cinema” celebrates its thirteenth year (June 5-12) with an
exceptionally strong and diverse l
Considered the leading showcase of contemporary Italian
cinema in North America, Open Roads (named after Rossellini’s famous film Rome:
Open City) was co-founded by Antonio Monda, Richard Peña – then the Film
Society’s Director – and Giorgio Rosetti, former manager of Italia Cinema,
which later became Film Italia. Since the festival’s inception, Monda has
handled the artistic side of things, choosing which films to bring to American
audiences eager to see diversity, art, beauty and, simply put, a sampling of
the most significant Italian films of the past year.
How would you describe this 2014 edition of Open Roads?
“One word: diversity. This ediion includes the latest work
from established veterans such as Gianni Amelio (who is represented by two
films) Roberto Andò and Daniele Luchetti, top award winners, and promising new
talents from both the commercial and independent spheres.”
One clear novelty of this season is the abundance of
documentaries.“In past years it seemed there was no room for them in Italian
cinema. The art of documentary filmmaking seemed to have disappeared. Yet we
are glad to say that many filmmakers have used it to tell their stories. And
they tell them successfully.”
This is proven by the fact that two documentaries presented
have already won top prizes. Gianfranco Rosi’s Sacro GRA was the first
documentary to win the Golden Lion for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival.
“The film focuses on the lives that surrounds GRA (Grande
Raccordo Anulare) Rome’s 43.5-mile highway encircling the whole city. Inspired
in part by Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities, the film offers moving
portraits of areas drivers pass through but never see, revealing a different
side of the bustling city dwellers and a paradoxical reality.”
Then we have Alberto
Fasulo’s debut docudrama Tir which won the top prize at
the Rome Film Festival...
“Fasulo is very inventive. The film follows a former teacher
from Bosnia who takes a job driving a tractor trailer (‘tir’) through Europe.
Using professional actors and real truck drivers, Fasulo has created a striking
film about what life is really like on the road – including the sounds, the
landscape, and the longing for company. This film is not a pure documentary but
a hybrid of reality and fiction.”
Other beautiful and thought-provoking documentaries include
Vincenzo Marra’s Naples-centric The Administrator and Gianni Amelio’s Happy to
Be Different. Both tackle sensitive social issues. Italy’s often dysfunctional
society is the focus of many of your films.
“Indeed. Marra, for instance, examines a superintendent’s
dealings with his larger-than-life tenants, painting a tough-minded yet
affectionate portrait of crisis-addled Italy. And Amelio offers a moving,
enlightening work of oral history about gay life in Italy from the fall of Fascism
through the early 1980s.
And several films in this year’s lineup explore the
evolution of Italy’s political system, including Daniele Luchetti’s
opening-night selection Those Happy Years.
“As in the past, one of our aims is to showcase a variety of
films, ranging from sober dramas to irreverent comedies. Many portray Italy as
a disenchanted and melancholic country, given its current difficulties. But
different directors do this in different ways.”
Two examples?
“On the one hand, Gianni Amelio ’s A Lonely Hero, starring
comedian Antonio Albanese. It tells the story of a man forced to reinvent
himself in his pursuit of a job (as a train conductor, a fishmonger, a tailor,
etc.), as a result of the country’s unstable unemployment crisis. On the other
hand the scathing critique of Italian political dynamics in Roberto Andò’s Long
Live Freedom staring Toni Servillo as a seasoned politician navigating the
decline of his party by fleeing to Paris and hiding out at the home of his
ex-girlfriend.”
Talking of Toni Servillo, he is a great actor whom Americans
have gotten to know after Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty took home the Academy
Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Has that victory affected the way Italian
cinema is perceived in the US?
“Well, it was an extraordinary victory and it has helped,
but ‘one swallow does not a summer make.’ Just because one good thing has
happened, you cannot be certain that more good things will happen and the whole
situation will improve. You must work hard at it. There is more curiosity and
interest in Italian cinema, sure, but it needs to continue to reinvent itself.”
Source: i-italy.org
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