Intrigue

One of the most controversial, original and loved figures of Italian cinema. The most censored director of all time. An anarchist of the film, a gifted experimenter, an inventor of dreams. A truly great artist.

Tinto Brass is one of the most important Italian directors, recognized worldwide as the master of authorial erotic cinema. This documentary narrates the formation years of Tinto Brass in Paris at the Cinématèque Française next to Roberto Rossellini and Joris Ivens, discussing Cinema with other young filmmakers with renowned names such as Bresson, Godard. His return to Italy and his first masterpieces like "Chi lavora è perduto", "L'urlo", "Nerosubianco", expression of an anarchic, innovative, experimental cinema full of linguistic innovations. An almost forgotten cinematography that the documentary will bring to light thanks to the analysis of Marco Müller, Gianni Canova, to then reach the films on power like Salon Kitty and Caligula which decreed an enormous success with the public. Until reaching today, Brass as a media character and his iconography of erotic pleasure and voyeurism, in the tales of Gigi Proietti, of the Academy Award Winning Helen Mirren, Franco Nero and the two time Academy Award winner Sir Ken Adam. This film wants to tell of a nonconformist man, who "loves Love" in a world that adores violence, his enduring every censorship, always and foremost delivering a cinema whose superiority was form over content, signifier over significance. "The ass is the mirror of the soul" is not a simple boutade, but the poetic synthesis of a precise ethical, aesthetic and philosophical project, which sees the joy in living, in the affirmation of Eros over Thanatos the only free path for the individual.—Press office

One of the most awaited documentaries on cinema at the 70th annual Venice International Film Festival was Istintobrass, the film on Tinto Brass, the king of erotic cinema. Directed by Massimiliano Zanin, Brass' assistant director and screenwriter for more than ten years, and co-written by Caterina Varzi, the maestro's new muse, Istintobrass pays homage to the Milanese filmmaker. The documentary recounts the story of controversial Tinto Brass, gathering the views of film critics (Manlio Gomarasca, Gianni Canova, Marco Giusti), actors (Gigi Proietti, Franco Nero, Franco Branciaroli), actresses (Serena Grandi, Adriana Asti, Helen Mirren), and other prominent personalities of the film world. The result is a vivid portrait of Tinto Brass, the director of Caligula (1979) and La clef (1983), who consistently dealt with a theme unjustly considered inferior.—Nick Riganas