A unique collaboration between Cineteca di Bologna and LMU School of Film & TV offers a free one day movie marathon of restored prints of rarely seen cinema masterpieces, part of the world’s classic cinema patrimony. Reservations are required at this site.
The day devoted to screening a collection of invaluable restorations of three great cinematic works plus a selection of shorts during Movie Marathon: Il Cinema Ritrovato: Rediscovered Film on Friday, September 30, 2011 at the LMU campus’ Mayer Theater.
The marathon kicks off at noon with Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Le amiche”, followed by Vittorio De Seta’s “Banditi a Orgosolo” (2:30 p.m.), Charlie Chaplin’s “Keystone Shorts” (5 p.m.), and wraps up with Djibril Diop-Mambéty’s “Touki Bouki”, (7:30 p.m.).
“This is a fantastic opportunity to see a diverse sampling of some of the best restored films by the Cineteca,” said Stephen Ujlaki, dean of the School. “Our selection of these rarely seen treasures shows off the inspiring work of a world class institution that is tirelessly dedicated to saving many great films for future generations to enjoy and learn from.”
Cecilia Cenciarell, Curator of the Chaplin Project at the Cineteca di Bologna and Research and Archival Coordinator for the World Cinema Foundation, will be on hand to introduce the films. Movie Marathon community presenting partners include Film Independent and the Italian Cultural Institute Los Angeles.
The American premiere of the newly restored print of the 1961 Italian film “L’Assasino” starring Marcello Mastroianni, opens SFTV’s festival “Il Cinema Ritrovato: Resdiscovered Film”, STFV Dean Stephen Ujlaki and Cecilia Cenciarelli from the Cineteca Bologna will be in attendance. The festival kickoff is an invitation only screening and reception for SFTV alumni and friends at the Landmark Theatre.
Elio Petri’s restored “L’Assasino” (“The lady killer of Rome”) which stars Marcello Mastroianni and and Micheline Presles, debuted as a part of Cannes Classic in 2011. Suave playboy Mastroianni is the prime suspect when his socialite girlfriend is murdered. Petri’s cleverly constructed Giallo uses flashbacks to reveal Mastoianni’s exploitative life, under investigation by Police commissioner Gian-Maria Volonte. Piero Piccioni’s big band jazz score and Carlo Di Palma’s sharp black and white cinematography add muscle to Petri’s debut film.
The program is as follows:
Noon
“Le amiche”
Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy, 1955; 104 mins)
Editorial note: Adapted by Michelangelo Antonioni, Suso Cecchi d’Amico & Alba De Cespedes from the novel “Tra donne sole” by Cesare Pavese , this sensual black and white romance is, along with “Il Grido” and “Story of a Love Affair”(“Cronaca di un amore”), one of Antonioni’s early masterworks. Characters glide in and out of frame in his elaborate mise–en scene in ways that prefigure his later mastery, developing a style that places location in the story as a character. Antonioni’s existential modernism captured the condition of angst, passivity and voyeurism in ways that no other modern filmmaker has. In my opinion, he is the unacknowledged father of the current generation of global minimalist filmmakers.
One of Michelangelo Antonioni’s early films, “Le amiche” hints at the style and narrative concerns that would characterize his later films. This gem, seldom seem in the United States, tells the story of Celia (played by Eleonora Rossi Drago), a working class woman who moves from Turin to Rome to set up a fashion salon. On her first night in Rome, she discovers that the woman in the hotel room next to hers has taken an overdose of sleeping pills in a failed suicide attempt. When Celia befriends the woman and her wealthy friends, she is pulled into the tangled world of Rome’s desperate housewives. The film, which was nominated for the Golden Lion and won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film festival, tells its story through Antonioni’s genius for visual storytelling, in which the complex relationships between the women is figured through the mise en-scéne and fluid camera. The Cineteca di Bologna has made a new digitally restored print from the original black-and-white 35mm camera negatives, creating the best possible circumstances for rediscovering this underappreciated classic.
Credits: Written by Antonioni, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Alba de Cespedes. Photographed by Gianni di Venanzo. With Eleonora Rossi Drago, Gabriele Ferzetti, Franco Fabrizi, Valentina Cortese. (104 mins; Restored by Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata with funding provided by Gucci and The Film Foundation) A MUST SEE!
2:30 p.m.
“Bandits of Orgosolo” (Banditi a Orgosolo).
Vittorio De Seta (Italy, 1961; 98 mins)
Set in the remote Sardinian countryside, De Seta’s first feature is as spare as the surrounding mountains, unforgiving in their barren majesty. Featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors, “Bandits of Orgosolo” has the stark authenticity of neorealism, lyrically heightened by De Seta’s austerely beautiful and haunting photography. The film, renowned for its use of natural moonlight, tells the story of Michele, a shepherd who wants nothing more than to tend his flock but finds his life turned upside down when he and his twelve-year-old brother are wrongly accused of associating with bandits. Forced to flee the carabinieri, Michele and his brother drive their sheep, their sole possessions, into the treacherous terrain of the surrounding mountains. De Seta uses the full range of cinematic techniques to tell the story of a delicate social and moral order that, if tilted even slightly, will collapse. Director-screenwriter Vittorio De Seta is considered one of the Italian cinema’s great imaginative realists of the Sixties.
Credits: Written by De Seta, Vera Gherarducci. Photographed by De Seta. With Michele Cossu, Peppeddu Cuccu, Vittorina Pisano. (98 mins, In Italian with English subtitles, B&W, 35mm)
Preceded by several shorts from the series:
“The Lost World” (Il Mondo Perduto).
Vittorio De Seta (Italy, 1955; 21 mins)
Prior to making his first feature, “Banditi a Orgosolo”, De Seta made ten short documentary films, each about ten minutes long, all shot in color, and all exhibiting the filmmakers concerns that would take narrative form in his feature film: a fascination with traditional cultures struggling to survive in the changing terrain of post-war Italy, a desire to let the subject speak for themselves, and an austerely beautiful photographic eye. In 2004 at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, De Seta was given the Distinguished Career Award. In his introduction and interview with De Seta, Martin Scorsese, who had been given a gift of several of the filmmaker’s documentaries, recalled that he heard of De Seta “the way one hears of a legendary place: someone must have seen it at some point but no one remembered who, or when, or where… I was sharing his curiosity and his amazement and I was sadly realizing, as he must have, that the vitality of an unspoiled culture was being filmed for the very last time.”
Cannes Award-winner “Islands of Fire” (Isole di fuoco) (1955, 11 mins) and “Peasants of the Sea” (Contadini del mare) (1955, 10 mins). (Color, ‘Scope, 35mm, In Italian with English subtitles, From Cineteca di Bologna) • (Total running time: 119 mins)
5:00 p.m. Keystone Shorts • (Total running time: 72 mins)
Charlie Chaplin (United States, 1914; Total running time: 72 mins)
Charlie Chaplin, one of the truly great movie auteurs as well as one of the first bona fide international celebrities, got his filmmaking start at Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studio, home of the Keystone Kops as well as the launch pad for the careers of such actors as Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle, Gloria Swanson, Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Harry Langdon, and Ben Turpin. When it became an autonomous film unit of the Triangle Film Corporation in 1915, it joined the august company of filmmakers such as D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince. Filming in and around Silverlake, Griffith Park, Glendale, and Venice Beach, the Keystone films helped put Los Angeles and Hollywood on the map as the filmmaking capital of the world. It was at Keystone that Charlie Chaplin, fresh from the Music Hall stage, created his Little Tramp character, a beloved figure that would soon become the most popular character in the Keystone camp and a recognizable figure world-wide. Having started as an actor, it wasn’t long before Sennett trusted Chaplin with the camera. In his first year as a director at Keystone, Chaplin made 34 short films and one feature, honing his craft on the whetstone of Keystone slapstick comedic chaos.
“Making a Living” (1914, 14 mins). “A Busy Day” (1914, 7 mins). “Mabel’s Busy Day” (1914, 13 mins). “Caught in the Rain” (1914, 12 mins). “The Face on the Barroom Floor” (1914, 12 mins). “His Musical Career” (1914, 14 mins) (B&W, 35mm, From Cineteca di Bologna)
7:30 p.m.
“Touki Bouki” (aka La Rire de hyène, or The Hyena’s Laugh or The Hyena’s Voyage).
Djibril Diop-Mambéty (Senegal, 1973)
Senegalese director Djibril Diop-Mambéty is considered, along with Ousmane Sembène, one of the founders of African cinema. His 1973 debut “Touki Bouki” was one of the first to embrace the energy and fire of a new generation of Africans, freed from the shackles of colonialism and struggling to find ways to combine the traditional with the modern in the desire to create a new nation as well as a film style that would embody their energy and unique stories. Unlike the first African films that were heavily influenced by Italian neorealism with its longer long takes and slower rhythms, Touki Bouki–based on the filmmaker’s own story and made for $30,000–draws on the stylistics of the French New Wave. The story of two young Senegalese, the trickster/grifter Mory and his radicalized friend Anta who dream of escaping Senegal for a better life in Europe, the film combines the pre-modern, the pastoral, and the frenzied modern in a style that captures the multiple facets of 1970s Senegal. Fresh from the countryside, Mory and Anta tool around Dakar on a motorcycle, scheming their way to a new life and encountering visions both real and unreal. A picaresque tale of adventure enlivened by the raw energy of urban Dakar and 1960s global psychedelia, “Touki Bouki” has been called an African “Easy Rider”, generous in its embrace of cinematic New Wave traditions, but firmly, proudly of its time and place. The restored “Touki Bouki” debuted as part of Cannes Classic 2008
Credits: Written by Diop-Mambéty. Photographed by Georges Bracher, Pap Samba Sow. With Magaye Niang, Mareme Niang, Aminata Fall, and Ousseynou Diop. (88 mins, In French, Arabic, and Wolof with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Cineteca di Bologna)
VENUE: The Mayer Theater in the School of Film and Television on the Loyola Marymount University campus, just south of the intersection of Lincoln and Jefferson Boulevards.
TICKETS: Admission is free. Reservations are required at
http://sftv.lmu.edu/moviemarathon
PARKING: Parking on campus is free however all cars entering prior to 4 p.m. must have a permit. Enter the campus at the LMU Drive and Lincoln Boulevard intersection and proceed to the information kiosk to obtain a guest permit.
ADDITIONAL INFO: Please call 310-258-7200 or visit http://sftv.lmu.edu/events/moviemarathon.htm