Contemporary Italian film scenario

The glory days of the Neo-Realism of the Italian cinema of the 1940s and early 1950s were over by the 1960s, but Fellini, Antonioni, Pasolini, and Bernardo Bertolucci, either continued or started making films in the 1960s. In merely three years' time died the stalwarts of the Italian cinema - de Sica (1902-1974), Pasolini (1922-1975), Visconti (1906-1976), and Rossellini (1906-1977) thus, leaving a vacuum behind which took several years to fill up. But it wasn't quite the same.

Italian cinema restored some of its past glory in the 1990s. Bernardo Bertolucci, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, Giuseppe Tornatore, Gianni Amelio, Nanni Moretti, Lina Wertmuller, Maurizio Nichietti, and Gabriele Salvatores are actively making films. Most of these filmmakers started making their first films much earlier, and some of them got critical acclaims before. They were making positive impressions about the Italian cinema outside Italy among the critics and audience alike. They also bagged quite a good number of prizes in the international film circuits.

Zahir Raihan Film Society will screen some Italian films of the most recent times. Six films will be shown in the ongoing series of film sessions focusing on the European cinema. Films from one particular country will be presented each month. In the first series, these Italian films will be projected on 9th, 10th and 11th November, each day at 3:30p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

Roberto Benigni's Pinocchio is the most recent film adaptation of Carlo Collodi's classic tale of the wild adventures of Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that comes magically to life. At the same time he enjoys the guidance from the beautiful Blue Fairy and the love of his father Gepetto. Starring the same award winning cast of Life Is Beautiful Benigni himself as Pinochhio and Nicoletta Braschi as the Blue Fairy the film is a celebration of life.

Bernardo Bertolucci started his filmmaking career in the early 1960s starting as an assistant to poet filmmaker Pasolini. Then he made some excellent films like The Spider's Stratagem, Before the Revolution, The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, La Luna, The Last Emperor, and Little Buddha. Stealing Beauty is Bertolucci's 1996 film that deals with the coming of age story of 19 year-old Lucy, who comes from the USA to the beautiful Tuscany to consummate her romance with the Italian boy with whom she fell in love with four years earlier and to discover the identity of her father through the clues in her late artist mother's diary.

Il Postino (The Postman), a film made in Italian by the British filmmaker Michael Radford, is the story of bumbling mailman Mario, who is deeply in love with the most beautiful woman in town and who's too shy to tell her about his feelings. But life becomes easier for him when Pablo Neruda comes to the town to stay for some time. Neruda, one of the greatest poets of love, teaches his mail-deliverer disciple the power of words to express his feelings and also the power of love to win over the obstacles.

Giuseppe Tornatore is the acclaimed maker of films like Cinema Paradiso, A Pure Formality and The Star Maker. Cinema Paradiso is one of the most popular and best loved Italian films of all time. It also won innumerable awards all over the world. Malena, a film released in 2000, is an utterly unforgettable story of a boy's journey into manhood amid the chaos and intolerance of the WWII. In a small Sicilian town he gets attracted to Malena (Monica Bellucci), the most beautiful young woman in the neighbourhood, who becomes the subject of increasingly malicious gossip among the lustful townsmen and their jealous wives. But only her most ardent admirer, our young hero Renato Amoroso, will learn the untold true story of the mysterious and elusive Malena.

Bread and Tulips is a film by Silvio Soldini, that won nine film awards of Italian National Syndicate in 2001. Rosalba, a bored dutiful housewife, finds herself separated from her husband and children. Virtually penniless, she finds a place to stay in a cheap, run-down hotel and makes friendship with a waiter who serves her cold food. This gives her an opportunity to look back to her life and discover herself. Set at the backdrop of beautiful Venice, it is a thought-provoking and eye-opening film.

Gianni Amelio's Lamerica is a haunting story about the realities of mass migration told with documentary-like sweep. Two Italian scam artists try to survive the harsh realities of post-communist Albania, but ends in joining the flood of refugees escaping to Italy.

Sabbir Chowdhury, a film activist, teaches in the Department of English at Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka.