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Having spent long stretches of the 1980s and 1990s in the doldrums, Italian cinema is currently enjoying something of a mini-boom, with a new generation of directors, actors and screenwriters blending Hollywood-style ambition and savvy with a distinctly European sensibility, writes Matt Barker
Internationally, Rome’s new breed of film directors are fast gaining recognition, drawing parallels with the greats of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti. They reigned during the golden era of Cinecittà Studios, out on the southeastern tip of Rome, known as “Hollywood on the Tiber”. Nowadays, films such as La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth), Buongiorno Notte (Good Morning, Night) and Romanzo Criminale (Crime Novel) use Italy’s turbulent Cold War years as a potent backdrop, while others, such as Respiro and Le Fate Ignoranti (The Ignorant Fairies), tackle more contemporary, though no less thorny, issues.
The new Cinema-Festa Internazionale di Roma film festival aims to bridge this cinematic past and present. A week-long celluloid celebration of the Eternal City, the festival will include a series of gala premieres, a competition of new films – judged by members of the Roman public, and Alice in the City, a mini-festival within a festival, dedicated to children.
Perhaps surprisingly, this will be the Italian capital’s first major international film festival. Organisers are hoping that it will quickly establish itself alongside Italy’s other annual shindigs up in Venice and Turin. The Piedmont city was Italy’s first centre for all-things-cinema, before Mussolini moved everything down to Rome and opened Cinecittà in the 1930s.
The Cinema-Festa will be based at various locations across Rome and the wider Lazio region, all iconic representations of the city’s rich cinematic heritage. Cinecittà will reopen its doors, a rarity these days given its rediscovered popularity as a set for Hollywood big-budget productions, whose directors are keen to make the most of Italy’s skilled technicians and their digital editing know-how.
Away from the backlots and gleaming high-tech editing suites, the city centre has been given a starring role. The Renzo Piano-designed Auditorium Parco della Musica, in the Flaminio district, will be the main venue, with four cinemas and festival village, while the Piazza del Popolo, Via del Corso and, of course, the Trevi Fountain, will all be home to screenings and related events. The Via Veneto, the beating heart of La Dolce Vita, is undergoing a facelift and will become the business area: a network of screening rooms, open-air salons and lounges for movers-and-shakers to set up deals, with a perfectly mixed negroni cocktail to hand.
The Casa del Cinema will stage a Marcello Mastroianni retrospective, a fitting tribute on the 10th anniversary of the death of the actor who, for many, symbolised the monochrome, finger-clicking confidence of Italy’s post-war boom. Elsewhere, the Casa del Jazz will showcase classic film soundtracks with a series of concerts, while photography exhibitions and talks will take place all around the city.
The people’s jury will comprise 50 members of the film-viewing public and will award prizes for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Actress. It’s a great idea, adding a grass-roots touch to an event that might otherwise become an elitist, industry back-slap, with the ordinary film-goer kept strictly behind the velvet rope. Festival president Goffredo Bettini is confident that the festival will not only be a showcase for new cinematic talent but also for the city of Rome itself. “More than just a celebration, it will be a new occasion for Rome to present itself to the world. Rome has changed for the better. Tourism has increased, cultural events have increased and there are a whole string of modern services, transport links, and so on. It’s no longer only popular for its antiquity, but also for its modernity,” he says.
Despite this, Bettini remains aware that the city’s contemporary film culture runs the risk of being forever trapped by its glorious past. The festival will promote the new generation, but within the context of Italian cinema’s history and traditions.
“It will look to the future,” he explains. “To young artists. To the most innovative Italian and international cinema. To the new technologies. Ours is a look forward, but with respect to what’s behind us, what went before. The festival will represent a fundamental link. There is space for a festival that defines itself as an event with a populist nature: one that puts the public at its centre. European cinema needs new lifeblood.” The Cinema-Festa Internazionale di Roma runs from 13 to 21 October. For more information, visit www.cinemafest.org
Screen savers
The cream of Italy’s new acting talent is spearheading a revival in the country’s cinematic fortunes
Luigi Lo Cascio
Left medical school to join the theatre, before establishing himself as one of the faces of the new Italian cinema, with starring roles in La Meglio Gioventù (The Best of Youth) and Buongiorno Notte (Good Morning, Night).
Jasmine Trinca
First came to prominence in Nanni Moretti’s La Stanza del Figlio (The Son’s Room), and has since appeared in La Meglio Gioventù, Romanzo Criminale (Crime Novel) and Il Caimano (The Caiman), Moretti’s recent parody of life under Berlusconi.
Maya Sansa
Half-Iranian, half-Italian, and a graduate of the Guildhall School of Drama in London. Another star of La Meglio Gioventù, she also took the lead role in Buongiorno Notte and, most recently, in spy thriller The Listening.
Kim Rossi Stuart
Comes from an acting family and has worked with some of Italy’s best-known directors, from Roberto Benigni to the legendary Michelangelo Antonioni. Made his directorial debut at Cannes earlier this year with Anche Libero Va Bene (Across the Ridge), a tragicomic tale of childhood strife.
Giovanna Mezzogiorno
Roman native with a long list of starring roles to her credit, including a number of French productions and, shooting this year, Mike Newell’s adaptation of the Gabriel García Márquez novel, Love in the Time of Cholera.
Alessio Boni
Played Luigi Lo Cascio’s troubled brother in La Meglio Gioventù and recently shone in the excellent Arrivederci Amore, Ciao (Goodbye My Love), playing a former left-wing terrorist who returns from hiding in South America to reinvent himself among the northern Italian bourgeoisie.
Stefano Accorsi
Bologna-born actor with an impressive CV, including a turn as the young Casanova and, in his English-language debut, Tabloid, a footballer. Working a lot in France lately, having set up home with model Laetitia Cast.
The Eternal City’s greatest scene-stealing big-screen appearances
La Dolce Vita
Launched a thousand clichés, but Fellini’s masterpiece remains as seductive as ever, both a cultural signpost for post-war Italy and curtain-raiser for the swinging 1960s. Marcello Mastroianni defined a whole new concept of cool and the Via Veneto, recreated on a Cinecittà stage, never looked better.
Roma, Città Aperta (Rome, Open City)
Roberto Rosselini’s remarkable tribute to the Italian resistance ushered in the neorealism movement. Produced using scraps of film stock salvaged from various sources, including Allied-forces cameramen, filming began within weeks of the German army leaving the Eternal City.
Mama Roma
Pier Paolo Passolini showed the flipside of La Dolce Vita with this powerfully direct look at an ageing prostitute who tries to start a new life and keep her teenage son on the straight and narrow in the shadow of St Peter’s.
Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves)
Vittorio De Sica’s classic story of an unemployed Roman who lands a job putting up film posters around the city, only to have his bicycle stolen, has the simplest of plot lines, but retains real emotional punch.
Romanzo Criminale (Crime Story)
Chronicle of a Roman criminal gang that spans the decades, linking the underworld with the volatile political landscape of 1970s and 1980s Italy. Excellent performances from the crop of the country’s new generation of acting talent.
Roman Holiday
Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck scoot around the city in William Wyler’s Oscar-winning 1950s charmer that is part rom-com, part travelogue, with a scrubbed-up Rome ready for its close-up.
Roma
Fellini’s surreal love letter to the city is a series of vignettes, including an anarchic traffic jam, an archaeological dig along the underground railway network, the briefest of cameos from the great Anna Magnani and Marcello Mastroianni and, the pièce de résistance, a clerical fashion show.
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