Adriana Asti
The documentary relates the decisive moments, the turning points and the rollercoaster ride of a brilliant, eventful international career and the extraordinary life of a great Italian artist. From his origins as an illegitimate child with no name to the attainment of great international fame as a film director, art director, painter and stager of theatrical and operatic productions. Through original and archive interviews with some of the most acclaimed stars who have known, admired and loved him and with his closest relatives, friends and collaborators, this gripping account paints a picture of the person and the artist—and not just “the master”—Franco Zeffirelli in all his many and even conflicting facets.
We are with Pasolini during the last hours of his life, as he talks with his beloved family and friends, writes, gives a brutally honest interview, shares a meal with Ninetto Davoli, and cruises for the roughest rough trade in his gun-metal gray Alfa Romeo. Over the course of the action, Pasolini’s life and his art (represented by scenes from his films, his novel-in-progress Petrolio, and his projected film Porno-Teo-Kolossal) are constantly refracted and intermingled to the point where they become one.
A middle-aged writer is looking for a quiet retreat; a slightly younger female estate agent gives him details of a house a close to Venice.
Karol: The Pope, The Man is a 2006 TV miniseries chronicling Pope John Paul II's life as pope in flashbacks from October 22, 1978's papal inauguration to his death in 2005 and was directed by Giacomo Battiato. It is the sequel to the 2005 TV miniseries Karol: A Man Who Became Pope, which portrayed John Paul's life before the papacy and ended on October 16, 1978, the day of his papal election.
Spanning four decades, from the chaotic 1960s to the present, director Marco Tullio Giordana's passionate epic 'La Meglio Gioventu' follows two Italian brothers through some of the most tumultuous events of recent Italian history.
An expressionist biography of Edith Stein, who converted from the Jewish faith to the Catholic one and became a Carmelite sister. She would die in a German concentration camp.
The story of the murder of a poet, a man, a great film director: Pier Paolo Pasolini. The story begin with the arrest of "Pelosi", a young man then accused of the murder of the poet. All the investigation about the crime is about the question: "Was ONLY the "Pelosi" to kill Pasolini?" The help of a Policeman, Trepalle put in evidence a trouble: Was Pasolini killed because of his accuses to some politicians?
Bruno is an idealistic hero who questions the meaning of life in this confusing and sometimes hallucinatory erotic drama. After a night in jail, he is gang-raped by punk rockers in a garbage dump. He later saves an old man who believes he is Garibaldi and a woman he believes is Ophelia. Bruno watches helplessly as she later jumps from a window.
The perversion behind imperial Rome, the epic story of Rome's mad Emporer. All the details of his cruel, bizarre reign are revealed right here: His unholy sexual passion for his sister, his marriage to Rome's most infamous prostitute, his fiendishly inventive means of disposing those who would oppose him, and more.
Set in a rural area of France in the 19th century, this simple tale tells the story of a servant girl whose life seems marked by grand tragedy, but whose heart is simple and uncomplicated enough not only to endure, but even to attain serenity in the face of her manifold frustrations. Her only friend, to whom she pours out all her troubles, is an old parrot. When the parrot dies, she reverently has it stuffed and continues telling it her woes. This drama is based on a story by Gustave Flaubert.
Black Journal (originally titled Gran Bollito) is a 1977 Italian drama film directed by Mauro Bolognini. It is based on the real life events of Leonarda Cianciulli, the Italian serial killer best known as the "Soap-Maker of Correggio".
t Happened in Naples . - A tourist, duped by Carmine thinks of buying a fourteen year old virgin and is sold at a homosexual. Tonight or Never - The rich ing. Bislecchi , rejected by Gigia maintained , it does " rejuvenated " by dr. Himler and becomes a robot. The amnesty . - Milcare , with the excuse to see a good lawyer , possesses under the eyes of her husband Colonel sure to enjoy then of an impending amnesty . Gennarino the emigrant . - In Germany with his wife Anna , Gennaro works as a stallion for the lowest category of porn movies . Only when he's in front of his wife as partner reaches record performance . Exchange made in Germany. - Nicola and Sisina , Sicilian barons , go to Germany for an "exchange of couples" , Sisina is reluctant ; Then , when her husband fails to disinibirla , beats him by far.
Film in five episodes on the female universe. Among the women portrayed, neglected wives who become prostitutes, a worker who improvises a sexy bomb and a priestess who gives herself as wife to an emigrant.
Rome, 1880. Gregorio Ferramonti (Anthony Quinn) has decided to close his bakery, the family business. Then he tells his sons Pippo (Gigi Proietti), Mario (Fabio Testi) and Teta that they will have to fend for themselves. But Irene (Dominique Sanda), the wife of Pippo, a beautiful, calculating and ambitious young woman, wants to take over the inheritance. Acting on intelligence, weighing every step and its consequences, she manages to convince the brothers that they must prevent at all costs that his father falls in love again to avoid the risk of losing their inheritance.
The young Rimini native Stefano Santi goes to Rome, with a letter of recommendation for the maestro Melchiorri, artistic director of the Opera House, to take part in a competition for cellists. While trying in vain to be received by Melchiorri, he met an unscrupulous girl, Giorgia Muller, an architectural student temporarily linked to a fellow student. Between one misfortune and another the cello smashes, a homosexual theater manager tries to enmesh him Stefano, who now has a precarious employment in a nightclub, yields to the allurements of Giorgia, ending up in his bed. The girl, however, is unfaithful to him, so that Stefano, disgusted with her, and having now lost all hope of participating in the competition,
A mental hospital somewhere in Tuscany during the thirties. Far away from fascism, this closed world is rules over by Dr. Bonaccorsi, a passionate benevolent psychiatrist whose dream is to isolate the germ of madness. He is also a very active ladies'man and makes three women benefit from his sexual itch: Francesca the hospital manager's wife, Bianca, his devoted nurse and Carla, a nymphomaniac doctor's wife. His well-ordered universe starts being challenged with the coming of Anna, a trainee psychiatrist, who disapproves of his theory on the origin of madness. Worse, she resists his advances. As Bonaccorsi is more insecure than he looks, what will become of him
A newly arrived governor finds his province under the control of the corrupt Colonel Huerta. To avoid assassination by Huerta, he pretends to be weak and indecisive so Huerta will believe he poses no threat. But secretly he masquerades as Zorro, and joins the monk Francisco and the beautiful aristocrat Hortensia in their fight for justice against Huerta and his soldiers.
The year is 2037 A.D. Depletion of natural fuels has eliminated electrical power throughout the world. No light… no heat… no T.V., until a team of award-winning scientists succeeds in harnessing energy from the world’s oldest source of reciprocating motion.
Greece 1974 - during the brutal era of the military government, and innocent tourist manager (Ugo Tognazzi) is accused of being a member of the illegal resistance movement. Two secret agents (Michel Piccoli and Mario Adorf) are bringing the innocent victim to Athens. During their trip, their car breaks down, and they're stopping in a small village. From now on, everybody is fighting against each other, and a psychological cat-and mouse-play is starting...
Documentary produced by Italian television about the production of Federico Fellini's film Amarcord (1973).
This Surrealist film, with a title referencing the Communist Manifesto, strings together short incidents based on the life of director Luis Buñuel. Presented as chance encounters, these loosely related, intersecting situations, all without a consistent protagonist, reach from the 19th century to the 1970s. Touching briefly on subjects such as execution, pedophilia, incest, and sex, the film features an array of characters, including a sick father and incompetent police officers.
1936. In a village in the Bassa Padana, a beautiful and shapely forty-year-old girl is aunt of some boys in the middle of their sexual maturity.
Demetrio Cultrera, is a young rich car dealership Sicilian bachelor who becomes engaged to the beautiful and rich Rosalba Giordano. After their wedding, Rosalba's attitude changes when she decides to try turning Demetrio into the modern husband she'd like. This causes a problem, as Demetrius prefers sticking to what he sees as more traditional gender roles. Despite her attempts, Rosalba's persistent attempts to convert him to the rituals of high society, enlightened, or feminine tastes do little more than annoy him. Strongly determined to build a stable relationship with a woman who can fulfill his visions of peaceful married life, he leaves for the Amazon, where he is offered the opportunity to choose and buy a new wife as a slave. The choice falls on the beautiful and docile Manua that he trains to act the way he'd like, then proudly shows to friends and to his former wife, attracting curiosity, envy, and his ex-wife's resentment.
Historical evocation of Ludwig, king of Bavaria, from his crowning in 1864 until his death in 1886, as a romantic hero. Fan of Richard Wagner, betrayed by him, in love with his cousin Elisabeth of Austria, abandonned by her, tormented by his homosexuality, he will little by little slip towards madness.
From his youth, Paolo Castorini, a Sicilian baron, is as attracted to women as they to him. Giovanna, a servant girl, Lillian, a serious girlfriend in Rome, a hostess at a post-war party, Paolo makes love to them all. He also feels dissatisfied with a life only of the body, compared to his journalist friend Vincenzo and his own father, a sober and serious thinker. When his father is on his deathbed, Paolo learns of syphilis in the family and something of the curse of dissolution. Some years later, he resolves to marry Katrina, the pure daughter of the woman he should have married. He wants her purity to redeem him so he can make something of his life. But is it too late?
Vittorio De Sica's A Brief Vacation (Una Breva Vacanza) stars Florinda Bolkan as a downtrodden working woman. Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, Bolkan contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world--and potential new life--is opened up to her.
Four young people named Riccetto, Girasole, Lallo and Tombarolo try to make money by stealing what they find in the tombs of the rich buried. They often find themselves in trouble…
Michele is a three-testicle, sexually insatiable man who goes around bedding all women in town (regardless of age), until one day things goes terribly wrong.
A liberal-thinking author watches his wife as she attempts to seduce his best friend at a dinner party. She ends up taking on another man as well, and the writer has an affair with the another dinner guest. Soon the three men and two women are entangled in a confusing series of partner-swapping sex sprees where everyone's morals are challenged in the wake of the sexual revolution.
Bauer, a university professor, and his wife, Francesca, hire someone to help in arranging some papers for publication. The employee, Tomas, comes to live with the couple, and quickly discovers that things are not quite right with them. Francesca and Tomas end up having sex while the professor goes after the young man's mistress, Ingrid. Soon, the men swap partners, and reality and fantasy start to blur.
Italy, the early 19th century. A villa is the home of a small English community, all rich and superficial people lounging about in its beautiful surroundings. Claire, George's wife, and Robert, her son, are murdered by a mysterious killer. Thinking the murderer is one of the family, distraught George devises a plan to unmask the culprit. Having met a woman, Ann, who is a dead ringer for Claire, he takes her back to the villa and announces their imminent marriage. Ann is considered an outsider and treated with contempt and hostility, while George fails to find any significant clue to the solution: everybody is to be blamed, at least morally, but the final revelation is more bitter than expected...
The film consists of six short stories created by different directors, but all the stories share one thing: a warm irony to current events.
Some puppets come to life in a theater with no windows. This time the puppets interpret William Shakespeare's Othello.
Inspired by the writings by Robert Musil. Won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno International Film Festival in 1968.
The study of a youth on the edge of adulthood and his aunt, ten years older. Fabrizio is passionate, idealistic, influenced by Cesare, a teacher and Marxist, engaged to the lovely but bourgeois Clelia, and stung by the drowning of his mercurial friend Agostino, a possible suicide. Gina is herself a bundle of nervous energy, alternately sweet, seductive, poetic, distracted, and unhinged. They begin a love affair after Agostino's funeral, then Gina confuses Fabrizio by sleeping with a stranger. Their visits to Cesare and then to Puck, one of Gina's older friends, a landowner losing his land, dramatize contrasting images of Italy's future. Their own futures are bleak.
Salvatori pays a visit to his old ma who is bedridden in a gloomy old people’s home. He promises her that pretty soon he’ll be rich and they’ll live together in their house. The young man is hired as a catering assistant in a desirable mansion, but the owner of the place is dying. The wife and the daughter are trying to regain the old man’s love and affection while the son is busy gathering his friends for a feast.
When a widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her sons become romantic rivals, with deadly results.
A young girl falls in love with an actor. She persuades her father to support his acting company, but when she discovers him with another girl she runs away. Then everybody try to find her.
