News

Making its online premiere on Dn today, Gregory Shell’s Fire is a stark and evocative exploration of trauma, possessive desire, and the detrimental lingering effects of violence. An early student project at the Moscow School of New Cinema, Shell felt compelled to radically rework the short when war broke out in Europe despite it being well on its way through the finishing touches of post production. What followed were reshoots of parts of the film and a tricky re-editing in order to better capture the shifted realities of the world as it now stood. Central to the film’s power is the performance of non-professional actor Ignat Dvoinikov, whose raw and unfiltered portrayal of Vasya, a young man struggling to reintegrate into civilian life after returning from military service to discover the girl he loves is now with someone else, brings an unsettling authenticity to the story. We invited...

Midway through the 81st Venice Film Festival, Italian director Giovanni Tortorici ranks near the front of the pack of the event’s most promising new director discoveries of 2024. The Palermo-born filmmaker, who spent several years as an assistant and apprentice under leading Italian auteur Luca Guadagnino, premiered his first feature Diciannove Friday on the Lido. The film is competing in the festival’s Horizons section, which focuses on promising work by first or second-time filmmakers.

A coming-of-age film that eschews all the familiar tropes of the genre, Diciannove is a brutally honest portrait of what it feels like to be 19 years old, full of disparate desire, intellectually ambitious, and utterly lost. The film tells the story of teenaged Leonardo Gravina (first-time actor Manfredi Marini), a young man who is coming into himself while coming apart at the seams after he makes the sudden decision to abandon business studies in London...

One of the defining moments of being a young adult heading off to college is attempting, for better or worse, to define yourself. Are you going to be one of the in-crowd, socializing and partying your way to the future? Are you going to focus on your studies and graduate at the top of your class? Or are you going to pick neither route, forging your own strange and winding path, wherever it may lead you?

In writer-director Giovanni Tortorici’s uncompromising feature debut, Diciannove, it’s clear from the get-go that its 19-year-old protagonist, shy and handsome Sicilian student Leonardo (promising newcomer Manfredi Marini), belongs to the latter group. And it’s also clear that this nearly plotless film, which follows every move of a veritable loner who refuses to mingle with his fellow classmates, adhere to the curriculum set out by his professors or engage in a romantic...

At first glance, Luca Guadagnino’s upcoming tennis film “Challengers” — which recently pulled out of the Venice Film Festival and delayed its theatrical release due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike — might seem like it covers familiar narrative territory for the director.

Zendaya stars as a successful tennis coach who becomes embroiled in a love triangle with her professional tennis player husband (Josh O’Connor) and his friend and rival who happens to be her ex-boyfriend. The queer undertones that emerge seem to evoke past works from the desire-obsessed director, such as “Call Me By Your Name.” But Guadagnino has resisted comparisons to his other works, calling the film “first comedy” as a director.

In a new profile in V, O’Connor spoke about his “Challengers” director’s sense of humor. As it turns out, Guadagnino appreciates R-rated American comedies as much as arthouse classics.

“Actually, there was one night when...

A kindred spirit of Luis Buñuel, but one whose existential compulsions are more palpable, Pier Paolo Pasolini perpetually rebelled against moral hegemony, commiserating with outcasts and creating and dying as one. Today, his canon has been co-opted by forces on the right and left, the faithful and the secular. Which is to say, he belongs to us all.

The Criterion Collection’s new box set, Pasolini 101, represents the most comprehensive collection of Pasolini’s films to date, collecting nine of his features, as well as two shorts (1963’s La Ricotta and 1969’s The Sequence of the Paper Flower) that he made for anthology films and two documentaries that he shot during his travels. In addition to his own work, the set’s extensive and richly informative extras, among them two commentary tracks and a 100-page book featuring an essay and notes on the films by critic James Quandt, remind us...

Tom Luddy, the co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival and a longtime producer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, died on Monday after a prolonged illness. He was 79.

His death comes on the verge of the festival’s 50th anniversary, as Telluride planned to salute the man responsible for establishing the Colorado gathering as a critical launchpad for international cinema. Luddy was shrewd cinephile with a daunting grasp of film history that informed his sharp opinions about the medium, much of which played a role in the unique nature of the Telluride community.

The festival drew crowds of major directors and industry insiders in tandem with amateur movie lovers attracted to the same welcoming environment he created for anyone who shared his passion for the movies. For many Telluride devotees, Luddy was its biggest draw — someone as emblematic of cinema’s global presence as the directors he championed.

As...

Tom Luddy, co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival and producer of numerous films for Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios, died February 13 at a nursing home in Berkeley, CA, where he had been under care for dementia. He was 79.

The festival announced Luddy’s death this morning. The news comes two months after the death of another Telluride co-founder, Bill Pence.

Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Bill Pence Dies: Telluride Film Festival Co-Founder Was 82 Related Story Telluride Review: Werner Herzog's 'Theater Of Thought'

“The world has lost a rare ingredient that we’ll all be searching for, for some time,” said Julie Huntsinger, executive director of the Telluride Film Festival. “I would sometimes find myself feeling sad for those who didn’t get to know Tom Luddy properly. He had a Sphinxlike quality that took a little time to get around, for some.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDore O.'s Alaska (1968)The German avant-garde artist Dore O., whose poetic films were at once vast and intimate explorations of dreams, has died at 75. O. was a founder of the Hamburg Filmmakers Co-op (1968-1974), a participant in the famous German exhibit documenta 5 in 1972, and a prolific painter. The DVD label Re:voir Video had recently released a collection of six restored films by O. In 1988, the critic Dietrich Kuhlbrodt wrote: "Dore O. has become classic, and suddenly it turns out that her work has passed the various currents of time unharmed: the time of the cooperative union, the women's film, the structuralists and grammarians, the teachers of new ways of seeing."Subscriptions are now open for Notebook magazine, our print-only publication devoted to the art and culture of cinema. Subscribe now and you’ll...

As Italy marks the centennial of Pier Paolo Pasolini‘s birth with a series of special events, the Academy Museum is honoring the influential film director, poet, writer and intellectual, whose 1975 murder remains a mystery, with a complete retrospective.

Titled “Carnal Knowledge: The Films of Pier Paolo Pasolini,” the Los Angeles tribute in the Academy’s Renzo Piano designed temple of cinema opened Feb. 17 with Oscar-winning production designer Dante Ferretti on hand.

Ferretti, in a moving tribute, said he owed his career to Pasolini, having worked on nine of his films, starting with Pasolini’s first work “The Gospel According to Matthew” and ending with his incendiary condemnation of the Italian upper classes “Salò – or the 120 Days of Sodom,” released in Italy just a few weeks after Pasolini’s murder on Nov. 2, 1975, at age 53, in the seaside town of Ostia outside Rome.

The Academy’s complete retro of Pasolini’s...

Paris-based Carlotta Films, a leading player in the distribution of heritage cinema, is preparing a number of major releases next year, including a retrospective of Pier Paolo Pasolini and a showcase of works by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Pasolini’s birth, the retrospective will featuring restored versions of “Accattone” (1961), “Mamma Roma” (1962) and others.

Carlotta is currently at the Lumière Festival and International Classic Film Market in Lyon, where it’s launching several titles, including 4K restorations of François Truffaut’s five-picture series “The Adventures of Antoine Doinel,” released between 1959 and 1979. They include “The 400 Blows,” “Antoine and Colette,” “Stolen Kisses,” “Bed and Board” and “Love on the Run.” Carlotta is releasing the films, newly restored in 4K by MK2, in French theaters and on DVD/Blu-ray in December. They are part of Carlotta’s ongoing collaboration with Paris-based MK2 that also included the 2020 release of a Claude Chabrol collection.

Selection also pays tribute to late UK filmmaker and cinema theorist Peter Wollen.

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s award-winning romantic drama In The Mood For Love is among the 25 narrative titles and seven documentaries selected for Cannes Classics 2020, the cinema heritage programe of the Cannes Film Festival.

The festival said many of the titles would now play at the Festival Lumière in Lyon, which Cannes Film Festival’s delegate general Thierry Frémaux oversees and runs October 10-18 this year.

Some of the works will also screen at the long-running Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes, scheduled for November 23 to 26.

The festival...

Selection also pays tribute to late UK filmmaker and cinema theorist Peter Wollen.

Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai’s award-winning romantic drama In The Mood For Love is among the 25 narrative titles and seven documentaries selected for Cannes Classics 2020, the cinema heritage programe of the Cannes Film Festival.

The festival said many of the titles would now play at the Festival Lumière in Lyon, which Cannes Film Festival’s delegate general Thierry Frémaux oversees and runs October 10-18 this year.

Some of the works will also screen at the long-running Rencontres Cinématographiques de Cannes, scheduled for November 23 to 26.

The festival...

The Thief of Baghdad

Blu ray – All Region

Colosseo Film

1961 /100 min.

Starring Steve Reeves, Georgia Moll, Arturo Dominici

Cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli

Directed by Arthur Lubin

When he shuffled off this mortal coil in 1995, Arthur Lubin’s New York Times obituary was titled “Arthur Lubin, 96, Director Of ‘Mr. Ed’ TV Series, Dies.” It’s doubtful the prolific Lubin would have complained about that particular credit headlining his accomplishments; the man who directed Karloff and Lugosi, jumpstarted Abbott and Costello’s film career and gave Clint Eastwood his first break, also had a thing for talking animals. In 1950 he bought the rights to a book about a talking mule and began a series of hit comedies starring a four-legged chatterbox named Francis and his two-legged pal played by Donald O’Connor.

Industrious to a fault, Lubin’s career was spent crisscrossing from theater to film to television and back again yet...

Above: Chinese poster for Spirited Away; artist: Zao Dao.The most popular poster to date on my Movie Poster of the Day Instagram, by a dragon’s length, with more than double the amount of likes of its closest contender, was this gorgeous Chinese poster (and its color variant which you can see here) for Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001), which apparently just got a Chinese theatrical release eighteen years after it was made. The posters were painted by the young Chinese comic book artist Zao Dao who you can, and should, read more about here.I was happy to see Renato Casaro’s prop poster for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood’s film-within-the-film Kill Me Now Ringo, Said the Gringo—which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago—make such an impression, as well as another of my favorite Casaros painted forty years earlier, for Screamers, a.k.

The year 2018 is shaping up to be a tragedy of epic proportions for lovers of world cinema. In April, Czech director Milos Forman passed away, and now, in late November, within a matter of days, we have lost avant garde maestro Nicolas Roeg and that great Italian iconoclast Bernardo Bertolucci.

Consider: Forman’s “Amadeus,” Roeg’s identity-shattering “Performance” (co-directed with Donald Cammell), and Bertolucci’s still unsurpassed exploration of moral ambiguity and personal compromise, “The Conformist.” The medium is inconceivable in its present form without these films, whose directors were hardly one-hit wonders, contributing masterpiece after masterpiece during the most fertile stretches of their careers. Though each had struggled to maintain his relevance in recent decades, any late-life disappointment seems inevitable when judged relative to the achievements that came before.

Of the three, Bertolucci was by far the most successful at sustaining his impact until the end, for his brand was controversy,...

Bernardo Bertolucci, the legendary Italian director behind classics such as “Last Tango in Paris” and “The Last Emperor,” has died at age 77. Bertolucci’s publicist, Flavia Shiavi, confirmed the director’s passing on the morning of Monday, November 26. The filmmaker, who had been suffering from cancer, died at his home in Rome, Italy.

Bertolucci was widely considered one of Italy’s greatest auteurs throughout his five decades making films in both Hollywood and Italy. The filmmaker got his start working with another giant of Italian cinema, Pier Paolo Pasolini. Bertolucci was an assistant on Pasolini’s first feature, “Accattone,” before he made his own directorial debut at age 21 with “The Grim Reaper” in 1962. The drama centered around the murder of a Roman prostitute and premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Bertolucci gained recognition in Hollywood following the release of “The Conformist,” which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Don Kaye Nov 26, 2018

The controversial and visionary director of Last Tango in Paris and The Last Emperor is gone.

Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, a giant of European cinema, has passed away at the age of 77. Bertolucci died in Paris on Monday morning (Nov. 26) after a battle with cancer. He had been confined to a wheelchair for the last decade following unsuccessful surgery for a herniated disc.

Bertolucci was best known for his 1987 film The Last Emperor, which won Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Director. Yet his works also included such controversial and groundbreaking films as The Conformist (1970) and Last Tango in Paris (1972). The former was a masterful political drama while the latter was a raw examination of sexual and emotional torment. 

Born in Parma in 1941, Bertolucci was the son of a poet and teacher and grew up around the arts. When he was 20 years old,...

Bernardo Bertolucci, whose epic “The Last Emperor” won nine Oscars and who influenced generations of filmmakers with other groundbreaking works such as “The Conformist” and “Last Tango in Paris,” in which he explored politics and sexuality through personal storytelling and audacious camera work, has died. He was 77.

His publicist, Flavia Schiavi, said Bertolucci died at his home in Rome at 7 a.m. Monday. He had been suffering from cancer.

Italy’s greatest auteur of his generation, Bertolucci managed to work both in Europe and Hollywood, though his relationship with the studios had its ups and downs. But even when he operated within the studio system, Bertolucci always managed to make films that were considered projections of his inner world.

“The Last Emperor,” an adaptation of the autobiography of China’s last imperial ruler, Pu Yi, swept the 1987 Oscars, winning every category in which it had been nominated, including best picture and best director.

Weaver, Giuseppe Tornatore and Pierre Bismuth to particpate in ‘Close Encounters’ event in October

Sigourney Weaver, director Giuseppe Tornatore and French artist, filmmaker and Oscar-winning co-writer of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind Pierre Bismuth, will participate in the ‘Close Encounters’ talks series of the Rome Film Festival to be held October 18 -28.

They join Martin Scorsese who will be at the festival for two days to receive its lifetime achievement award, as announced earlier this month. Scorsese will also take part in a Close Encounters event, said artistic director Antonio Munda who hosted a press conference to unveil the...

Martin Scorsese, Sigourney Weaver, Giuseppe Tornatore and French multi-hyphenate Pierre Bismuth will hold onstage conversations at the upcoming Rome Film Festival, which Monday announced the world premiere of Italian director Paolo Virzi’s new comedy, “Notti Magiche,” as its first title.

Scorsese, as previously announced, is being honored with a lifetime achievement award by the fest and will hold forth Oct. 22 with artistic director Antonio Monda on the Italian films he considers most influential, one of which is Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Accattone,” Monda said. Scorsese is scheduled to see Pope Francis the following day, Monda said, then reappear on the Rome fest stage Oct. 24 to present the freshly restored version of a still undisclosed Italian classic. There is a possibility that Scorsese may show footage from his long-gestating gangster pic “The Irishman.”

The Oscar-winning director will receive his achievement award from Paolo Taviani, the surviving member of venerable directorial duo the Taviani brothers.

Any list of the greatest foreign directors currently working today has to include Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The directors first rose to prominence in the mid 1990s with efforts like “The Promise” and “Rosetta,” and they’ve continued to excel in the 21st century with titles such as “The Kid With A Bike” and “Two Days One Night,” which earned Marion Cotillard a Best Actress Oscar nomination.

Read MoreThe Dardenne Brothers’ Next Film Will Be a Terrorism Drama

The directors will be back in U.S. theaters with the release of “The Unknown Girl” on September 8, which is a long time coming considering the film first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016. While you continue to wait for their new movie, the brothers have provided their definitive list of 79 movies from the 20th century that you must see. La Cinetek published the list in full and is hosting many...

Above: Italian 2-foglio for Loves of a Blonde (Miloš Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1965).As the 54th New York Film Festival winds to a close this weekend I thought it would be instructive to look back at its counterpart of 50 years ago. Sadly, for the sake of symmetry, there are no filmmakers straddling both the 1966 and the 2016 editions, though Agnès Varda (88 years old), Jean-Luc Godard (85), Carlos Saura (84) and Jirí Menzel (78)—all of whom had films in the 1966 Nyff—are all still making films, and Milos Forman (84), Ivan Passer (83) and Peter Watkins (80) are all still with us. There are only two filmmakers in the current Nyff who could potentially have been in the 1966 edition and they are Ken Loach (80) and Paul Verhoeven (78). The current Nyff is remarkably youthful—half the filmmakers weren’t even born in 1966 and, with the exception of Loach and Verhoeven, the old guard is now represented by Jim Jarmusch, Pedro Almodóvar,...

The Italian film legend, known for his expressive face, made many films with Pier Paolo Pasolini and starred in Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films

The Italian cinema legend Franco Citti has died in Rome aged 80 following a long illness. Friend and fellow actor Ninetto Davoli confirmed that Citti had died on Thursday.

Citti, known internationally for his role as Calò in Francis Ford Coppola’s the Godfather I and III and as the face of films by director Pier Paolo Pasolini, came to fame at the age of 26 playing the title role in Pasolini’s 1961 Accattone. He continued to work with the legendary director throughout the 60s and 70s, appearing in films such as Mamma Roma, Edipo Re, Pigsty and The Decameron.

Continue reading...

Actor known for his roles in the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini

Franco Citti, who has died aged 90, made a memorable screen debut playing the title role of a pimp in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s first film, Accattone (1961), which was inspired by several characters whom Pasolini had met in the barren areas on the impoverished Roman outskirts.

Franco was one of the non-professionals cast in the film after Pasolini had met him through his brother, the writer and director Sergio Citti. The producer Alfredo Bini, who took over Accattone after its stuttering start with Federico Fellini’s production company, accepted Pasolini’s choice of Franco, but insisted that his dialogue be postsynched by a professional, something that Pasolini later regretted. However, Franco’s extraordinarily expressive face was more important than his voice in the film which, respecting the director’s love for Masaccio’s paintings and the films of Carl Theodor Dreyer,...

It should surprise precisely nobody that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne made a single list for Sight & Sound, and it doesn’t strike me as odd that they acted so nonchalant about the effort. Their comments section will say it all: “A random list of ten greatest films.” I do, however, question the extent to which this is “random,” insofar as connections to their oeuvre are concerned, and fellow fans will probably notice commonalities from the word “go.”

All right, yes, The Big Heat doesn’t exactly scream “social realism,” but the concerns shared by many of these pictures — economic and social inequality, for one, as well as the strains they put on romantic and parent-child relationships — rings through the Dardennes’ long career. If Shoah or Modern Times are a bit more dour and comedic (guess which adjective applies to which film) than The Kid with a Bike, they have the qualities of forebears,...

The Gospel According to Matthew

Written and Directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini

Italy, 1964

As an avowed Marxist, homosexual, and atheist, Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini may seem to some a dubious choice to have made one of the most austere, faithful, and simply one of the best films about the life and death of Jesus Christ. But, with The Gospel According to Matthew, from 1964, that’s exactly what the controversial filmmaker, poet, novelist, and theorist did. This gritty and unpolished depiction of the life of Christ contains many of the narrative hallmarks featured in other film versions of the same story: the virgin birth, the early miracles, the apostles, Christ’s persecution and, ultimately, the crucifixion. However, no other cinematic depiction of this well-known chronicle looks, sounds, or feels quite like this one.

Before making this film, Pasolini had directed his first feature, Accattone!, in 1961, followed by Mamma Roma, starring...

“Movie Houses of Worship” is a regular feature spotlighting our favorite movie theaters around the world, those that are like temples of cinema catering to the most religious-like film geeks. This week, Fsr’s Allison Loring chose one of her favorite theaters in Los Angeles. If you’d like to suggest or submit a place you regularly worship at the altar of cinema, please email our weekend editor. Aero Theater Location: 1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, CA Opened: Originally opened in 1939 as a 24-hour theater for aircraft workers, but closed in 2003 after Robert Redford’s Sundance Cinemas project (which was going to take over ownership of the theater) fell through because General Cinemas (which was being sold to AMC) went bankrupt. The Aero is now officially known as the “Max Palevsky Aero Theater” thanks to Palevsky’s funding for the American Cinematheque’s refurbishment of the theater which re-opened in January 2005. No. of...

Jameson Cult Film Club | Between The Lines | Borderlines Film Festival | Pier Paolo Pasolini

Jameson Cult Film Club, Liverpool & Sheffield

Twenty years before he had the budget to film men shooting each other on horses, Quentin Tarantino had to resort to filming men shooting each other in warehouses. But while Django Unchained has been praised as a bracing return to form, these special "immersive" screenings celebrate the movie that established Tarantino's form in the first place: Reservoir Dogs. By "immersive", they mean screening the movie in a warehouse setting, decked out like an extension of the movie, with characters (watch out for the psychotic Mr Blonde), themed catering and even recreations of the movie's more memorable moments (bring spare ears). It's all free as well, though you'll have to register quickly.

Camp & Furnace, Liverpool, Wed; Gibb Street Warehouse, Birmingham, Thu

Between The Lines, London

This promises to be a ground-breaking festival...

Champion of the disinherited of postwar Italy, Pier Paolo Pasolini's masterworks reveal an obsession with martyrdom that foreshadowed his own wretched death

At the end of Mamma Roma (1962), Pier Paolo Pasolini's great film, the hero lies dying on a prison bed like the dead Christ of Mantegna or a barefoot saint by Caravaggio. Much has been made of the Renaissance and baroque iconography in Pasolini's cinema. The implied blasphemy of Caravaggio's grubby, low-life Christs excited the iconoclast in the Italian film-maker, whose wretched death was somehow foreshadowed in his own work. On the morning of 2 November 1975, in a shanty town outside Rome, Pasolini was found beaten beyond recognition and run over by his Alfa Romeo. A woman had noticed something in front of her house. "See how those bastards come and dump their rubbish here," she complained.

The scene of the murder, Idroscalo, recalls a setting for a...

News.

Lola, one of our favorite film journals, has released some content from their third issue. The articles include a piece by Dana Linssen on the film Nadine, among others, and the nature of feminist cinephilia. Also, you shouldn't miss this collective approach (part one of two) to Holy Motors. More cinephilic delight: the full version of the Flemish film journal Photogénie is now online, featuring Tom Paulus on Olivier Assayas, Sarah Keller on Jean Epstein, and an interview with Girish Shambu. Birthdays: Hayao Miyazaki turned 72 on the 5th (speaking of which, check this out) and Jean-Marie Straub turned 80 yesterday (David Hudson has collected some related material).

Finds.

"Happy New Years", Apichatpong-style: a brief short entitled 2013. Above: new images from Hong Sang-soo's new film, Nobody's Daughter Haewon, set to debut in Berlin next month. Via Moving Image Source, filmmaker Miguel Gomes writes on Manuel Mozos and the film Xavier:

"As I see it,...

Above: Giotto, Meeting at the Golden Gate, 1305.

Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salò (1975) was released by Criterion in 1998 and in 2004 they released Mamma Roma (1962). This past month they released a much belated box-set of his six-hour Trilogy of Life (1971-1974), in a beautiful restoration and accompanied with an awesome heap of great docs, essays and other goodies. On December 13 MoMA started a month-long retrospective dedicated to his work.

I. Defending Pasolini Against His Devotees

The prevailing view of Pier Paolo Pasolini has become subjugated to the misshapen reputation of his most infamous film, Salò (1975). The film’s unyielding serial descent into ever more severe cycles of mutilation, sodomy, coprophagia, and chronic rape of a group of 12-15 year olds has scandalized and influenced a culture that is frantic for any stimuli that can remind its constituents of their humanity. The film has furnished ample fodder for generations of filmmakers intent on...

His life tragically and brutally cut short by a still unknown assassin, Italian auteur Pier Paolo Pasolini’s last completed project, known as the Trilogy of Life, gets the master treatment from Criterion this month, which includes three films based on classic literary anthologies, The Decameron (1971), The Canterbury Tales (1972), and Arabian Nights (1975). Pasolini was one third done with his next project, to be called the Trilogy of Death, of which his last film, Salo (1975), was the first installment. Upon each of their initial releases, the Life films were all equally greeted with controversy, celebration, and a distinct notoriety, but all overshadowed by the infamy of Salo, which stands on many lists as one of the most difficult to watch films of all time (and was the first Pasolini title to be inducted into Criterion’s annals). Pasolini’s overall motif encapsulated in these three features is a celebration of life,...

© All rights reserved by afifestpublicity / May 24, 2012.

The American Film Institute announced today that internationally acclaimed filmmaker and Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter Bernardo Bertolucci will serve as its Guest Artistic Director at AFI Fest 2012 presented by Audi. Last year.s Guest Artistic Director was Pedro Almodóvar, and David Lynch, an alumnus of the AFI Conservatory, held the role in 2010.

Bernardo Bertolucci began his career as an assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini on Accattone and directed his first feature film at the age of 21. His second film, Before The Revolution (1964), was released to great acclaim and he has continued to shape the way the world looks at cinema. His 1970 film The Conformist with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli premiered in Berlin and received Bertolucci.s first Oscar nomination, and his 1972 film Last Tango In Paris with Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Léaud received another two Oscar nominations. His fame...

The European Film Academy has announced that Bernardo Bertolucci will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the European Film Awards. The ceremony will take place December 1, 2012 in Malta. Full press release below. In recognition of a unique and dedicated contribution to the world of film the European Film Academy takes great pride in presenting Bernardo Bertolucci with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Bernardo Bertolucci began his career as an assistant director to Pier Paolo Pasolini on Accattone and directed his first feature film at the age of 21. His second film, Before The Revolution (1964), was released to great acclaim and he has never since then stopped to shape the way we look at cinema. His 1970 film The Conformist with Jean-Louis Trintignant and Stefania Sandrelli premiered in Berlin, won the Italian David di Donatello for Best Film and received Bertolucci’s first Oscar nomination and his 1972 film Last Tango In Paris with Marlon Brando,...

14th Mumbai Film Festival (Mff) announced its complete lineup today in a press conference. Mff will be held from October 18th to 25th at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (Ncpa) and Inox, Nariman Point, Liberty Cinemas, Marine Lines as the main festival venues and Cinemax, Andheri and Cinemax Sion as the satellite venues. Click here to watch trailers and highlights from the festival.

Here is the complete list of films to be screened during the festival (October 18-25)

International Competition for the First Feature Films of Directors

1. From Tuesday To Tuesday (De Martes A Martes)

Dir.: Gustavo Fernandez Triviño (Argentina / 2012 / Col. / 111′)

2. The Last Elvis (El Último Elvis)

Dir.: Armando Bo (Argentina / 2012 / Col. / 91′)

3. The Sapphires

Dir.: Wayne Blair (Australia / 2012 / Col. / 103′)

4. The Wall (Die Wand)

Dir.: Julian Pölsler (Austria-Germany / 2012 / Col. / 108′)

5. Teddy Bear (10 timer til Paradis)

Dir.: Mads Matthiesen (Denmark / 2012 / Col. / 93′)

6. Augustine

Dir.: Alice Winccour (France / 2012 / Col.

On October 30, 1975, three days before he was murdered, Pier Paolo Pasolini was in Stockholm to present what was to be his last film, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, to Swedish critics. A roundtable discussion was recorded with the intent of turning it into a radio broadcast but news of the filmmaker's death oddly resulted in the withholding of the recording rather than, as would surely happen today, an immediate publication. Eventually, the recording was lost, but as Eric Loret and Robert Maggiori tell the story in Libération, Pasolini's Swedish translator, Carl Henrik Svenstedt, a passionate archivist, recently discovered his own private copy. In December, the Italian newsweekly L'espresso posted the audio recording and published an Italian transcript. Here, for the first time, is an English translation. After a couple of informal questions, the roundtable officially opens with "Ladies and gentlemen…"

What do you know about Swedish cinema?

I know Bergman,...

John Hooper selects 10 of his favourite Rome-based films from Hepburn in Roman Holiday to Fellini's La Dolce Vita

• As featured in our Rome city guide

Roman Holiday, William Wyler, 1953

Insulated from the commotion of Roman life, Via Margutta is a cobbled street near the Spanish Steps, draped in ivy and lined nowadays with art galleries, restaurants and boutiques. It was home to Federico Fellini and Truman Capote. And at number 51, Crown Princess Ann (Audrey Hepburn) began her fleeting love affair with an American foreign correspondent, Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) in the enchanting, if improbable, comedy that shot Hepburn to fame and forever welded Vespas to Rome in the popular imagination. "You have my permission to withdraw..." slurs Hepburn, unaware she has previously been sedated, as she lets her skirt slip to the floor. "Why, thank you very much," replies the gentlemanly Peck and leaves her to sleep alone. It...

Berlinde De Bruyckere: Into One-Another to P.P.P.

Hauser & Wirth, NYC

Through April 23, 2011

"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! How like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither...." Hamlet's despair. The existential dilemma. Before his untimely death at the hands of a trick gone bad, the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (The Gospel According to Matthew, Accattone!, and Salo) captured the ruins of post-wwii Italy -- and the metaphoric inner decay of its people -- by showing the beauty of man corrupted. Belgium artist Berlinde De Bruyckere pays homage to Pasolini and the history of Northern Renaissance masters in the exhibit Into One-Another to P.P.P. currently at Hauser & Wirth, New York.

Producer of Pier Paolo Pasolini's early films

Though an enterprising film producer, often ahead of his times, Alfredo Bini, who has died aged 83, is best remembered for having given the poet Pier Paolo Pasolini the chance to make his debut as a film-maker with Accattone (1960), when no other film company was prepared to back it. Bini produced more than 40 films, including all the features made by Pasolini up until 1967, including Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St Matthew, 1964). Among his other films were many starring his wife, Rosanna Schiaffino.

Bini was born in Livorno, Tuscany, and, during the second world war, ran away from home to join the army. He was wounded and got a medal, but went back to finish his studies in biology. He soon gave up the idea of a scientific career and in 1945 moved to Rome, where, after taking on various jobs, he managed a theatre group.

To celebrate its 20th Anniversary, it appears as though the Tiff Cinematheque is set to pull out all the stops.

According to Criterion, the Tiff, formerly known as the Cinematheque Ontario, will be bringing out a rather superb and cartoonishly awesome summer schedule, that will include films ranging from Kurosawa pieces, to films from Pier Paolo Pasolini. Other films include a month long series dedicated to James Mason, Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales, a tribute to Robin Wood, and most interesting, a retrospective on the works of one Catherine Breillat.

Personally, while the Kurosawa, Pasolini, and Rohmer collections sound amazing, the Breillat series is ultimately the collective that I am most interested in. Ranging from films like the brilliant Fat Girl, to the superb and underrated Anatomy of Hell, these are some of the most interesting and under seen pieces of cinema of recent memory, and are more than...

Enjoy a mini-film school during our Italian Neorealism series by drinking in the work of these outstanding directors. Pier Paolo Pasolini Accattone “It was like being present at the birth of cinema.” ~Bernardo Bertolucci, on working on Accattone. Sun Nov 1: 8:00pm Sat Nov 21: 9:30pm Vittorio De Sica Bicycle Thieves / Ladri di biciclette An unforgettable plunge into the day-to-day world [...]...