Francesco Nuti… e vengo da lontano

A documentary about Vittorio de Sica with clips of his films and testimonials from friends and family.

The documentary focuses on Marco Ferreri and shows an unconventional man, extreme, provocative in ways, always a step ahead in its work, and often considered a visionary and experimental. The documentary honors the memory of a filmmaker too soon forgot that left an indelible mark in the seventh art.

Era Roma is about a magic moment in the city’s history – from 1963, with the founding of Gruppo ’63, and 1979, when the Poets’ Festival was held at Castelporziano – when the Italian capital exerted a magnetic pull on artists who were independent, underground, and freewheeling. It would not come around again. They were artists who sought each other out and used politics to engage with society and change lives, in a season that started with the post-war economic boom and ended in a reaction against the upheaval of the 1968 protests. Stock footage, film clips, and interviews with the leading figures of the day, all collected over the years, make Era Roma the distillation of an amazing, turbulent era when the arts blurred the borders with real life and tried to turn reality into a work of art.

After shooting to fame with Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960), actor Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) starred in more than 160 films in his nearly half-a-century career. Directors Mario Canale and Annarosa Morri look into the melancholic charm of one of the most famous Italian actors through interviews with his two daughters, Barbara and Chiara; directors Fellini and Luchino Visconti; actresses Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee; and in archival footage of Mastroianni himself. The subject matter ranges from Mastroianni’s passion for kidney-bean pasta and his addiction to the telephone to his famous laziness, humility and talent. Shown in black-and-white, Mastroianni — elegantly holding a cigarette in between his fingers — is undeniably the dandy.