The film festival

“Ask us what we think is the best way to enjoy a film and we’ll tell you that it’s a 12-hour long retrospective of obscure Taiwanese directors in a half-empty cinema with attractive box-office clerks. Ask us again and we’ll tell you it’s outside in the summer. Wrapped ice creams, the mosquitoes, the summer breeze that distorts the screen, the mosquitoes, cigarette smoke drifting in from the wings, the mosquitoes. We are particularly happy with the collaboration with Manifattura Tabacchi because in this beautiful courtyard, in the shadow of the chimney tower, we have the possibility to offer what for us is the essence of outdoor cinema: a place to meet up and watch an inclusive programme of films, open to an audience of all ages for those who are spending August in the city.”

 

In fuga dalla bocciofila

Monday 29 July
Hollywood Party (Blake Edwards, 1968)
Bakshi is a young Indian actor who somehow manages to blow up an entire set whilst tying his shoelaces. When he is then accidentally invited to an important Hollywood party, this sets off a tale of never-ending surreal gags that make this film a comedic jewel, with an unforgettable Peter Sellers in the role of the good-natured protagonist.

Tuesday 30 July
The Square (Ruben Östlund, 2017)
Winner of the 2017 Palme D’Or at Cannes, a provocative tale handled with a refinement that has come to characterise Östlund’s work. The curator of museum in Stockholm oversees an installation which poses questions around trust. Things start to go awry when a social media company is brought on to promote the exhibition, in this comic satire on modern art, male privilege, and middle-class altruism.

Wednesday 31 July
The First Beautiful Thing (Paolo Virzi, 2010)
A journey through time, from the 1970s to the modern day, in working-class Livorno. The story of two brothers and their eccentric and beautiful mother. It’s also a story that also concerns us, because sooner or later we all have to deal with the past: how we were raised, the family we come from, the experiences that have made us. Making peace with the past in order to reconciliate with the present. A comedy of laughter, tears, and excitement.

Thursday 1 August
A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, 2009)
The parable of Malik, a nineteen-year old of Algerian origins, who follows a path of violence and awareness which sees him become the head of a prison gang, before rising to the top of the French underworld. Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, it remains a high point in the career of the highly-respected Audiard.

Friday 2 August
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989)
Indiana Jones is not just a star of the big screen, he’s not just an icon. Indiana Jones belongs to everyone, he’s practically family, a friend, a neighbour, someone you want to invite to dinner just so you can hear stories of his adventures. Masterfully interpreted by Harrison Ford and accompanied by Sean Connery, the third episode of the saga is a wild mix of action, mysticism, legendary relics and irony. Unmissable.

Saturday 3 August
The Concert (Radu Mihăileanu, 2009)
A tranquil Paris and a newly post-soviet Moscow host the desperate (and comic) attempts of a musician to come to terms with his tragic past and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D Major by Tchaikovsky. Gypsy violinists, KGB agents posing as theatrical agents, but above all unforgettable music bringing you tears of sadness and joy.

Sunday 4 August

Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959) –restored by the Cineteca di Bologna
Love and war, the past and the present, the black and white cinematography of Resnais, everything conspires to make a French actress and a Japanese architect fall in love in Hiroshima, dreaming that meeting and losing are not as terrible as they seem. A high-water mark for French New Wave cinema, and essential viewing.

Monday 5 August
Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004)
In a Los Angeles of night and neon, coyotes roam among the skyscrapers while a nihilist killer and an (initially) unsuspecting taxi driver engage in the eternal struggle between good and evil. A masterpiece of neo-noir from a master of action films and an homage to urban space. To prepare for filming, both Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx worked in public service (the former as a postman, the latter in transport) without ever being recognised.

Tuesday 6 August
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (Peter Greenaway, 2015)
The master, as well as the author of a film with notes of Fantozzi, The battleship Potëmkin, Sergej Ėjzenštejn, makes a visit to Mexico to escape his Hollywood failures and the suffocating maternal call of the Stalinist regime. Here, in the sunny and remote town of Guanajuato, he discovers a new revolution.

Wednesday 7 August
The Working Class Go to Heaven (Elio Petri, 1971)
A worker loves his own slavery to the point of not seeing it. It takes the loss of a finger in the jaws of the machine to realise that working, but having neither friends nor love, is not working for him. The slogans of the post-’68 Left, however, are not enough when the comrades abandon it and find themselves trying not to go crazy. How things haves changed, right?

Thursday 8 August
No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007).
Llewelyn Moss’s escape from the ruthless killer Anton Chigurh is already considered a modern classic. This story of the US/Mexican border springs from the pen of Cormac McCarty, a master, like the Coen brothers, of moving characters along trails of blood, through unnerving anticipation and explosions of violence, in the senseless attempt to amass considerable piles of money.

Friday 9 August
La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)
Tension is high in a Parisian housing estate: a young man is left in a critical conditional after being beaten by the police, and three friends, Vinz, Hubert and Said, find themselves seduced by urges of revenge which take form when Vinz finds an agent’s lost gun. It only takes a day for the three youngsters to find themselves with no escape from the eternal choice between black and white.

Thursday 19 August
Amacord (Federico Fellini, 1973) – restored by the Cineteca di Bologna
In the memory of one of cinema’s greats is Borgo, an imaginary Rimini, and life in the province during the 1930s. There is the passage of the Mille Miglia, of the transatlantic Rex, of the seductive Gradisca in the streets of the centre, and then there is fascism, and there are the school, the loves, and the passions of the young Titta Biondi. Fellini links all of this to a long recollection that immediately became a classic.

Tuesday 20 August
Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)
Based on Alan Moore’s graphic novel masterpiece, the film tells the story of an old group of masked vigilantes who find themselves fighting against a mysterious enemy who wants to destroy the world. What follows is a detective story with anomalous, poetic, and visionary traits, with spectacular moments of action and a finale that is as unexpected as it is brilliant. A joyfully gothic portrayal of the cold war era and a startlingly original film.

Wednesday 21 August
My Life as a Courgette (Claude Barras, 2016)
Presented at Cannes and later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Film, as well as winner of the award for best feature film at the Annecy Festival (in other words, the Oscars of the genre), a little diamond of French cinema made entirely in stop motion that speaks to people of all ages about the difficulty and the beauty of being a child.

Thursday 22 August
I’m Starting From Three (Massimo Troisi, 1981)
At some stage all of us have wanted to start again from scratch. But if we have achieved something good in our lives, why start afresh from zero? Why not start over from three instead? The dazzling directorial debut of Massimo Troisi is a brilliant and bittersweet comedy, winner of four Silver Ribbons and two David di Donatello awards.

Friday 23 August
Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
Los Angeles, 1937: a seemingly ordinary case of presumed marital infidelity is assigned to detective J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson). This projects us into a murky world populated by corruption, murderer, double dealing and tricksters. A tribute to the master Chandler and good old vintage cinema.

Saturday 24 August
Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)
Tarantino’s love of tough women is well known, but none of his films better celebrates women than this tribute to the exploitation films of the seventies. Eight irresistible amazonians (some perhaps less fortunate than others) pit themselves against the deranged retired stuntman Kurt Russel amid blood, witty dialogue, souped-up racing cars and a rampaging soundtrack on the dusty streets of Austin, Texas.

Sunday 25 August
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
A film that, with the great anticipation of the times, shows us one of the thousands of ways to make money by exploiting the possibilities offered by the world of the sharing economy, always full of inventiveness. A cocktail of comedy and drama that has consecrated Billy Wilder’s film as one of those masterpieces that, at the very least, you have to pretend that you’ve seen. This is why we are here.

Monday 26 August
Son of Saul (Laszlo Nemes, 2015)
In a Nazi concentration camp, a man looks for a rabbi to give a decent burial to a child he believes to be his son. A Hungarian masterpiece able to deal with the highest degree of horror and humanity. Oscar winner for Best International Feature Film.

Tuesday 27 August
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977) – restored by the Cineteca di Bologna
The biting irony of Alvy Singer, a fairly successful stand-up comedian, spares no one – especially himself – in the story of the troubled love story between him and Annie Hall, an aspiring New York singer. At times tender, at times awkward, and at times caustic, Allen uses a wide variety of narrative tools to tell us that all love affairs are basically long roller coaster rides.

Wednesday 28 August
Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara, 1992)
A New York police lieutenant exhibits less than exemplary behaviour: drugs, alcohol, prostitution and corruption form part of his everyday life. His spiral towards the abyss begins with an investigation into the sexual assault of a nun. Shocked by the substance of what he’s taking on, a real descent into madness begins, until divine intervention reveals the piece of the puzzle that was missing in order to solve the case. Extreme and moving.

Thursday 29 August
120 Beats Per Minute (Robin Campillo, 2017)
The life, love and death of a group of Parisian activists who, whilst HIV continues to claim its victims, fight against general public indifference. Winner of four awards in Cannes and inspired by the director’s experience among the Parisian militants of Act Up, the 120 beats of the title are a tribute to the BPM of pop hits in the early nineties.

Friday 30 August
The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
Before regularly entering lists of the greatest films of all time, this rarefied and intense film met with empty cinemas and frowning critics. The dreamy detective Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is at the centre of an intrigue not without twists, shot by Altman at the peak of his talents, taking apart genres and clichés, between satire and seriousness.