Italian Film Festival comes to San Diego

CINEMA SUD, a series of films representative of the fertile cinematographic culture of Southern Italy is coming to San Diego. The series was organized by the Italian Ministry of External Affairs and sponsored by the Italian Consulate and the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles. It is presented in San Diego by the Italian American Arts and Culture Association.

The films, all in Italian with English subtitles, show the diversity of life in the southern regions of Italy: Campania, Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria, Sicilia and Sardegna. The screenings will be at the beautiful venue of a major sponsor, the Museum of Photographic Arts, in Balboa Park, beginning in October, 2007.

The dazzling wheat fields of Puglia are the background for the story of two boys cruelly thrust from childhood in Gabriele Salvatores’ Io non ho paura (2003). A young Sicilian boy courageously struggles against mafia corruption in I cento passi (2000), Marco Tullio Giordana’s film based on a true story. Gianni Amelio’s Il ladro di bambini (1992) follows a young southern Carabiniere and two abandoned Sicilian children in a return migration from Milano through Calabria to Sicily in a story of compassion and renewed human bonds.

Antonietta De Lillo’s insightful Non è giusto (2002) tells the story of two children of separated parents who meet by chance and become friends during a suffocating summer in Naples. Vincenzo Marra’s Tornando a casa (2001) tells the story of Neapolitan fishermen and the Tunisian man they rescue, as they fish the borders along North Africa. Mio cognato (2003) is Alessandro Piva’s portrayal of brothers-in-law, one a scoundrel, the other an innocent, as they go about looking for their stolen car in the city of Bari.

Ballo a tre passi (2003), by Salvatore Mereu, presents four stories set on the wild and magnificent island of Sardegna. Piero Sanna’s La destinazione (2003) is the story of a young carabiniere from Emilia-Romagna who gets to know the old traditions of the impenetrable Barbagia region of Sardegna. Sangue vivo (2000) by Edoardo Winspeare, filmed in southern Puglia, is the story of two brothers and self-sacrifice.

Del perduto amore (1998), by Michele Placido, tells the story of a young teacher who opens a school for illiterate girls in a stable in Basilicata. Il vangelo secondo Matteo is Paolo Pasolini’s classic portrayal of Jesus Christ’s life and the revolutionary beauty of the evangelical message.

Seven Sicilian Documentaries is the work of Vittorio De Sica. Seven short documentaries, shot 50 years ago, portray the lost world of a people who refused to surrender to adversity. The films shed a poetic light on the reality of hard work, respite from work, holidays and mourning. Detour De Sica is a documentary presentation of the 50 years of Vittorio De Sica’s cinemagraphic career, covering the past and present of Southern Italy. It was described as “an extraordinary and amazing documentary” by Martin Scorsese.

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