Manila-based film aficionados are in for a great treat as the best of Italian cinema, nine carefully selected movies from the Venice International Film Festival, will be shown locally in various venues from November 14 to 18.
The movies, which are winning entries in last year’s 74th Venice International Film Festival, include: “Ammore e malavita” (musical), “Una famiglia” (drama), “Hannah” (drama), “The Leisure Seeker” (adventure/comedy), “Il colore nascosto delle cose” (romance), “Brutti e cattivi” (comedy), “Gatta Cenerentola” (animation), “Il deserto rosso” (classic/drama), and “Novecento” (classic/drama).
The opening salvo of the 5-day film festival will be Ammore E Malavita (Love and Bullets), which will be screened on November 14, 2018 at the atrium of Central Square Mall (High Street, BGC, Taguig). It filmed in Naples and directed by the famous Manetti brothers, Marco and Antonio. It holds the distinction as the first Italian musical that competed at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Pasinetti Award for Best Cast and La Pellicola d’Oro for best Production Manager.
Philippine Italian Association (PIA) general manager Alessandro Milani highly recommends “Novecento” of critically acclaimed Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci to get a deeper understanding of the Italian way of life, as well as filmmaking.
Bertolucci himself was quoted as saying that, “Novecento is a microcosm… If you look at a speck of dirt under the microscope it is as if you were looking at the universe. A speck of dirt makes you dream and the microcosm of Novecento really ought to be like that: a tiny region of Italy much enlarged.”
Prepare to spend a good amount of time in the cinema, though, as the film is almost six hours long (317 minutes, to be exact)!
Here are some other recommendations:
If you like adventure, there’s the Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland starrer ‘Leisure Seeker’, which will take you down memory lane aboard an RV (recreational vehicle). Sutherland suffers from dementia in the movie, so he and wife Mirren go on a last road trip together.
If you want to sample Italian animation, watch Gatta Cenerentola (Cinderella the Cat), which is about the travails of an heiress with a terrible stepmother and six wicked stepsisters.
If you’re into romantic dramas, “Il Colore Nascosto Delle Cose (Emma)” is just the film for you. It is a love story between a carefree advertising executive who is used to fooling around until he met a blind woman who challenged and intrigued him.
All of the featured films are equally good since they’re all award-winning; but if you don’t have the time to watch them all, check out the movie trailers to decide which ones to watch. Ideally, though, you should watch as many as you can since movie tickets only cost Php150. You can reserve your seats at Central Square in Bonifacio High Street, Taguig; at Greenbelt 3 in Makati; and at U.P. Town Center in Quezon City.
As FDCP chairperson Liza Diño Esguerra pointed out: these world-class movies were only brought to the Philippines and not to any other Asian countries. “We can’t all go to Venice to watch, so let’s grab this great opportunity to see the winning films,” she added.
The “ITALIAN CINEMA FROM VENICE TO MANILA, a selection of movies from the Venice International Film Festival” is co-organized by the Philippine Italian Association (PIA) and the Italian Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines (ICCPI) together with the Film Development Council of the Philippines and the Venice International Film Festival under the auspices of the Embassy of Italy.
For movie schedules, see below. For other details, check out the festival’s Facebook page, From Venice to Manila.
