The third edition of the Italian film festival in Cuba, takes place from June 19 to 23, at the 23 and 12 cinema, of the Cinemateca, with proposals that cover classic gems of Italian cinema to some of the most outstanding and recent pieces of a cinematography that was once one of the most popular in Cuba, but currently, unfortunately, the exhibition of each of its titles is almost Rare avis.
Of course, Italian films today bear little resemblance to those of the 60s and 70s, but if we try to draw a better future, Italians and Cubans, we need to reconstruct in memory the best of the past, and this is one of the objectives of the Orizzonti Italy-Cuba project, focused on promoting intercultural dialogue between our countries and creating “a bridge between both film industries.”
This year the Orizzonti, to name it colloquially, occurs in the context of the centenary of Marcelo Mastroianni (1924-1996), the proximity of Sophia Loren’s 90th birthday, and the half century since the death of De Sica (1901-1974).
Such reasons justify the presence, in the classics segment, of a series of restored copies, which are projected in high definition, with the participation of some of the three celebrities, and the film, which is rarely seen in Cuba, is even shown. Yesterday Today and Tomorrow (1963) that is resolved in three sketches, where De Sica directs Marcello and Loren who plays, of course, three different women.
The three artists would work together again, to the memorable display of each one, in the sentimental comedy MaItalian wedding (1964) and in historical melodrama The sunflowers (1969) also present in the Cinematheque cycle.
As the Horizon lives not only of stars, and of the sixties, there are also classics of very different styles and purposes, closer in time, such as Interview (1987), perhaps the last great film directed by Federico Fellini, a complex game between fiction and documentary, as the cult director, one of the most important in the world, explains his way of working, while preparing the version of a story by Franz Kafka, in the Cinecittá studios, where he conceived most of his great works.
Mastroianni also participates in the film, as the protagonist of several Fellini films such as The sweet life and Eight and a half, and it could not be missing from this kind of tour of Fellinesque filmography. Furthermore, Mastroianni is the absolute protagonist of a kind of confessional and memoir interview titled Yes, I remember made in 1996 and which covers, in great leaps of memory, the best moments in the very long career of one of the most complete and versatile performers in world cinema.
On the other hand, the opening of the contemporary segment of the Italian cycle in Cinemateca is carried out by the sophisticated melodrama that is The best of you (2023), a love story starring the grieving characters of Maria Grazia Cucinotta and Vincent Riotta, both directed by Fabrizio Maria Cortese, who also agreed to present his film for Cuban viewers and offer a master class at the Film and TV School , from San Antonio de los Baños. The second chance uses the resources of fantastic comedy, in the aspect of offering its characters, the troubled parents of two 18-year-old twins, the opportunity to return to the time when the children were small, and perhaps then the parents can begin again, and try to overcome the thousand mistakes they previously made in raising their children.
They also deal with the conflicts, the smiles and tears that are part of the couple’s relationship, or rather the inner world of broken families, Faithlegality and Mine which, likewise, speak of tensions and temptations. The first of the two thematically recalls the best films of Luchino Visconti (Rocco and his brothers, The fall of the gods) regarding the detailed analysis of a family whose stability is undermined by the controlling and egotistical nature of the parents. The disintegrating element in Mine He is a seductive young man who turns the life of a fifteen-year-old girl, a member of a family that had been happy, into a nightmare.
Although it is part of the contemporary segment of this exhibition, my hair hurtsdirected by Roberta Torre, also has a nostalgic aftertaste, as it presents a woman, in contemporary Italy, who becomes obsessed with looking like that brilliant actress who will always be Monica Vitti, and not only manages to look like her (in a very notable performance by Alba Rohrwacher), but tries to reproduce in her life situations of the characters that Vitti played, except that she is one of the most versatile stars of European cinema, capable of embodying, in tragic pieces or delirious comedies, women of the more diverse dispositions and inclinations.
With this plot pretext, the director manages to speak, subtly, about the value of memory and the past, as unavoidable components in the formation of personal identity and even the idiosyncrasy of an entire nation.
She also wanted to adopt an essentially feminine point of view, perhaps I should say feminist, Mercy, Emma Dante’s third feature film. The plot takes place in a small fishing village in Sicily, where Arturo is born, the son of a prostitute who dies in childbirth. Arturo is raised by the other prostitutes, but he seems to be a strange being, without fear, in a microworld populated by marginalized women, besieged by poverty, ignorance and discrimination.
Within the traditional importance that social criticism cinema has had in Italy is not only the aforementioned film, but also Palazzina LAF, directed and starring Michele Riondino and inspired by a true story set in 1997, when the managers of a steel company use a worker as a spy to inform them about the problematic elements that will have to be gotten rid of. But the shot backfires on them.
The Orizontti also includes documentaries and films aimed at genres of universal descent, and aimed at entertainment, such as Diabolikthe third part of an action and adventure trilogy inspired by a very popular comic book character in Italy.
Regarding documentaries there are two very relevant titles: I can enter?an ode to the city of Naples, to its culture and its beauty, which also gives a voice to those who need to talk about the ugly part, chaos or crime, and Semideia journey through the history of two statues, created by artists of classical Greece, and rescued from the seabed in Riace, in 1972. But the most extraordinary thing is that the two bronze warriors are preserved intact, despite the eroding passage of the times.
