Carlo Lizzani
Documentary about the lost 1914 film "Sperduti nel buio". Film historian Denis Lotto journeys across Europe following the trail of the lost movie.
This short film tells the story of the most important cinema trend that Italy has ever produced - Neo Realism. Born after the Second World War, this veritable cultural revolution rapidly became a boundless source of inspiration for movie-makers throughout the entire world. Even today it influences those wanting to produce quality movies characterized and identified as Italian products able to be exported as well. It is precisely one of the masters of this unique current rich in different personalities who introduces the story - Carlo Lizzani - whose 'lesson' reconstructs the birth and development of Neorealism in Italy. It combined innovative movie techniques with a new view based on a 'true' interpretation of reality. Due to its high cultural value, this short film was given the highest reknown of the Presidency of the Republic of Italy.
A documentary about director Valerio Zurlini. The "lost images" of the title are the movies Zurlini was never able to shoot: between 1962, the year he won the Golden Lion with Family Diary, and 1982, the year of his death, he directed only four features. The documentary features interviews with close collaborators (celebrated screenwriters Enrico Medioli and Nicola Badalucco) and some of his actors (Jacques Perrin and Claudia Cardinale).
A new documentary film on Fellini's 'La Città del Donne' ('City of Women') directed by Dominique Maillet, featuring producer Renzo Rossellini, film historian Aldo Tassone, producer and film historian Carlo Lizzani, and Federico Fellini's assistant Dominique Delouche (1955-1960).
Based upon Vincenzoni's biography, "Pane e cinema", the documentary traces the story of the screen play writer who invented many stories that became blockbusters throughout the world.
A brief tribute to the grat director, spanning through some insights about his character, his works, his life, through the words of critics, relatives, colleagues, with a collage technique of interviews, archive footage, and brief excerpts and pictures from some of his works.
How will the Germans react to the armistice of the 8th of September 1943, due to which Italy betrays them and sides with the allied forces? This is the distressing questions that a group of 16 Italian - Greek Jews evacuated at The Meina Hotel ask themselves.
Looks back at the Sciuscià , its success abroad, its influence on later filmmakers, its Oscar win, and the social conditions at the time of its production.
Interviews with directors Marco Bellocchio and Carlo Lizzani, assistant director Maurizio Ponzi, and editor Roberto Perpignani.
"Western all'italiana" is a documentary produced and broadcast by the satellite broadcaster Studio Universal in 2004, on the occasion of the broadcasting of a selection of Italian western films, the so-called "spaghetti westerns". In the course of the video, the birth, evolution and conclusion of the Italian western trend is told.
This is a two-part Italian television mini-series directed by Giorgio Capitani and broadcasted in April 2002 on Rai Uno. It is the life story of Pope John XXIII, nicknamed "the good Pope".
Documentary about master director Roberto Rossellini, who tells details of his life and childhood and visits the places where he has lived and shot some of his most famous movies.
A chronological look at the creative life of Luchino Visconti (1906-1976). It examines his theatricality, role in the neorealist movement, use of melodrama, and relation to decadence. It touches on the impact of a fabulously wealthy childhood, his writing for "Cinema," his politics, his work with Renoir, his appreciation of Thomas Mann, and his deep knowledge of literature and the arts. Visconti moves constantly between film and the theater, staging plays provocatively, working with Maria Callas at La Scala, and shooting films in theaters. Clips from his films and interviews with actors, crew members, and critics provide details for this portrait of creativity.
Documentary about the life and works of Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini.
Promotional omnibus film, made for the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy, featuring portraits of 12 Italian cities.
Enrico Berlinguer (Sassari, May 25, 1922 - Padua, June 11, 1984) was an Italian politician, general secretary of the Italian Communist Party from 1972 until his death.
Girolamo, a teenager from a good family suffering from bone tuberculosis, is hospitalized in a sanatorium where he is forced to suffer the harassment of his rough roommate, sadistically backed by an Austrian nurse. To alleviate his suffering a little will be the tender friendship with Polly, a sweet English girl.
Franca and her husband Antonio decide to sell a yellow rug which was a gift of Franca's stepfather. One day, while Antonio is out, a strange man rings saying he wishes to buy the rug. But the man's visit becames a nightmare. He kidnaps Franca and says he killed his wife on that same yellow rug. Then Franca kills the man. But is that really all that has happened? And who was that strange man?
Fontamara is a village in the Marsica, forgotten by all but God and its inhabitants are called 'cafoni' (boors). Berardo Viola wants to marry Elvira but only after gaining enough money to buy some land and in order to reach his aim he has the idea of going to a great city. When Maria Grazia is raped by the fascists, Berardo and Antonio decide to leave Fontamara and go to Rome. Here they are swindled by a lawyer and afterwards they are invited by an antifascist to a restaurant where they are arrested by the police because of some subversive papers they had.
Pascale, married to an architect, misses her flight to London and is forced to stay in Berlin, at the Kleinhoff Hotel where she stayed as a student. Karl, a would-be revolutionary lives in the adjoining room and Pascale spies him and his ex-girl-friend through a hole. Then she follows him to a questionable place where she is arrested by the police during a revolutionists raid. When she returns to the Kleinhoff Hotel, Pascale finds Karl crying, and enters his room to console him and they have a love affair.
A quartet of young neo-Fascists terrorise the Milanise locals while the Police mostly look the other way.
A drama about several teenage girls from different backgrounds who are drawn to prostitution and enter a world of violence and abuse that is almost impossible to leave behind.
Mino and Lello, two sons of a worker wrongly accused of murder, try to find out evidence of his innocence and begin to investigate mafia business in Torino.
Nino Manfredi is a police captain, giving an onlooker's point-of-view towards the decadent society folk. Party itself features a down & out baron, who dances with the party's glamorous hostess Virna Lisi so that he can steal her valuable earrings. When they're missing, she's angry enough to call in the cops (Manfredi shows up) and have the baron taken away.
Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.
A thinly-disguised biography of African leader Patrice Lumumba, here called Lalubi. Lalubi, a Christ-like leader determined to save his people, by passive resistance, from the dictatorial regime propped up by European colonialists, is imprisoned and tortured, along with a thief who comes to a greater understanding through his contact with Lalubi.
Requiescant is a 1967 spaghetti western directed by Carlo Lizzani. After surviving his family being massacred, a young boy is taken in and raised by a preacher. Years later he comes face to face with the man that killed his family and he is tempted into back into violence.
A petty hoodlum pulls jewellery store heists in broad daylight. The cop on his tail knows he has accomplices and focuses on the gangster's girl friend is his attempt to catch him.
After the Civil War ends, two soldiers return home with a cache of stolen money. They are caught by Union troops. One escapes, but the other is sent to prison for five years. When he gets out and goes home, he finds that his wife has died in poverty because his partner kept all the money, and is now a major power in the area with an army of deadly gunmen to back him up.
A U.S. intelligence general (Robert Ryan) recalls three Cold War cases of Soviet (Henry Fonda), French and Italian (Vittorio Gassman) spies.
Luciano Bianchi lives with his wife and son in the small town of Guastalla. As an intellectual and bibliophile, he works as head of cultural initiatives at a mining plant.
Three episodes of varying pitch and quality. In the first a maid plans the elimination of her lover's wife with him, but she doesn't enjoy the fruits of victory. In the second (The patrol) a soldier of the Foreign Legion neglects his duties for running after a prostitute. The third segment has as its protagonist a general of the belle époque that goes on a date.
This film is the moving story of Edda Ciano, the daughter of Italian dictator Mussolini, who was unable to prevent the atrocious assassination of her husband by fanatics of her father.
A Roman nobleman, Horatius leads an imperial legion during the long and bloody war between the Romans and the Albans. A desperate arrangement is agreed on how to settle the war. Three valiant brothers are chosen from each side to fight one last fierce and bloody duel...
L'oro di Roma (internationally released as Gold of Rome) is a 1961 Italian war - drama film directed by Carlo Lizzani. The film is based on actual events related to the Nazi roundup in the ghetto of Rome, in October 1943.
Alvaro Cosenza, also known as the Hunchback from Quarticciolo, during Rome's occupation by Nazis in 1943, decides to revolt.
Achilles, a Hulot-like factotum for an evening newspaper, travels around looking for a scoop in the Milan of the "economic miracle."
In 1925 the young florentine typographer Mario moves to via del Corno to be near his girl-friend Bianca. Here he becomes friends with Maciste, his landlord, and Ugo, anti-fascists both of them. When Campolmi is beaten by the fascists, Mario meets Milena, Campolmi's wife, at the hospital and falls in love with her leaving Bianca. Then Maciste is killed, again by the fascists, Ugo is wounded and he seeks shelter in ^ÓSignora^Ô's house. Here he falls in love with Gesuina and the two marry. Campolmi dies, but Mario and Milena part themselves. Later Mario too is arrested by the police.
Five stories of life, love and tears in Rome by five of Italy's best film directors. Each of them take his turn at showing how love is found, lost, and nurtured in the Eternal City.
Based on real events, in Rome a lawyer is not sure whether to accept defending a lower-class worker wrongly accused of the murder of his girlfriend.
During the winter of 1944, the partisans stationed in the Ligurian Apennines must go to a factory in Genoa, in order to pick up a delivery of weapons. Meanwhile, there's a strike in the city and the Nazis are trying to suppress it violently. The factory becomes the scene of fighting between the Germans and the partisans but the latter, aided by the workers, will be able to get the better.
The film by the well-known Italian director Carlo Lizzani is one of the now classic documentaries about the post-war problems of southern Italy. It focuses primarily on the congress concerning the post-war reconstruction of the region, but its main themes are poverty, exploitation of workers and the underdevelopment of the southern regions, exacerbated by WWII, and emphasizes the role of protesting workers as the leading force of transformation. While scenes of workers’ demonstrations were to be cut from the film in Italy, its original form won the Best Short Film Outline award at the 1950 Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder.
The final film in Rossellini's war film trilogy (the first two being Rome, Open City and Paisà ). Germany Year Zero takes place in post-war Germany, unlike the others, which take place in German-occupied Rome and post-war Italy, respectively. The story follows a twelve-year-old boy, Edmund Kohler, who is mainly left to his own devices in order to survive and to help his family do the same.
Set amongst the Italian peasantry of WW2, Caccia Tragica (Tragic Chase) is set in motion when a truck loaded with money targetted for farming projects is stolen by bandits. The local villagers set aside their petty political and personal differences, banding together to capture the outlaws and recover the loot. The story takes a romantic detour by concentrating on the romance between two young people caught in the middle between the pursuers and the pursued. At the time of its release, Caccia Tragica was perceived as a Communist tract (it was produced by the left-leaning National Association of Italian Partisans). This didn't prevent the film from winning an award at the 1947 Venice Film Festival, quite a coup for first-time director Giueseppe De Santis.
A profile of the film director Roberto Rossellini, looking at his life, personality and films, following his career and his relationship with Ingrid Bergman.
