Cinema Italia: Ovosodo (Paolo Virzì, 1997)

Sunday 28 August 2022, Cinema: Ovosodo / Hardboiled egg (Paolo Virzì, 1997), 96 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:30, Film starts at 21:00.

Ovosodo is a coming-of-age film set in Livorno, an industrial city in Tuscany. We follow the life of Piero from childhood to adulthood, in his struggle to get out of the limitations his family life history poses. The protagonist is a working-class member, and slowly but steadily, through his endless search for love, he becomes aware of what this means. The film is also a sharp critique of left-winged Italians who come from other social classes. Moreover, it depicts Italy just before the computer’s revolution with the World Wide Web deeply transforms society, with its omnipresent mobile phones. That was a society where people met face-to-face, without the mediation of technology. A society where contacts were more real and full of solidarity, as in the 1950s, but soon to disappear.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Cinema Italia: Pane e tulipani (Silvio Soldini, 2000)

Sunday 21 August 2022, Cinema: Bread and Tulips / Pane e tulipani (Silvio Soldini, 2000), 114 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:30, Film starts at 21:00.

Bread and Tulips is first and foremost an act of love towards Venice. The protagonist is a woman, interpreted by Licia Maglietta, who wants to escape a meaningless housewife life. She meets a mysterious man, interpreted by Bruno Ganz, who is exceptionally acting in Italian. Aside from the comedy and the beauty of Venice, also shot in angles that you do not expect, this film presents a multi-layered message of social critique of an Italy of fin de siècle (meaning 1990s), stuck between a glorified past and the desire to live life here and now, without compromises.

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: I cannibali (Liliana Cavani, 1970)

Sunday 14 August 2022, Can Dialectics Break Bricks Cinema: The Year of the Cannibals (Liliana Cavani, 1970), 87 minutes, in Italian with English subtitles. Doors open at 20:30, film starts at 21:00.

This is a wild offbeat plunge into European cinema of the 70s… a time when everything was up for grabs and bold experiments were being forged by visionary directors… in this case Liliana Cavani (The Night Porter). As I have mentioned before, female directors were emerging here in Europe in this period, a phenomena that would pretty much be dashed in the 80s. This bizarre document was made during the social protest years of 1967-69 and stars Britt Ekland along with the uncompromising Pierre Clémenti. It’s loosely based on the Greek tragedy Antigone by Sophocles, but this version has been updated into a surreal-symbolic Italian sci-fi of the 70s.

We enter a situation where the city streets are littered with the copses of hundreds of boys and girls, who were probably demonstrators beaten by the police. The bodies are left there as a warning against rebellion by the government, and no one is allowed to touch them. The story centers on a woman who wants to bury her dead brother, and together with her friend Tiresias, they conspire to break the law and bury the dead. The thunderous music score is by Ennio Morricone.

Ironically the cityscape strewn with lifeless bodies anticipated a bomb which exploded in a Milan bank a few months later. First blamed on leftists, it was later discovered it had been planted by neo-fascists. The bomb blast killed 18 and wounded 80. Director Liliana Cavani would later call her film a “tragic prophecy.”

Film night at Joe’s Garage, cozy cinema! Free entrance. You want to screen a movie, let us know: joe [at] lists [dot] squat [dot] net

August 2022 at Joe’s Garage