The 10th edition of the Los Angeles, Italia Film, Fashion, and Art Festival, housed in the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, took place during the week before the Academy Awards, from February 15th to 21st.
The festival presented 51 Italian and Italian-American films, among classics and the newest works, including a selection of shorts and documentaries.
Despite the entire Italy was represented, a considerable portion of these high-quality movies were directed by filmmakers hailing from Naples or the surrounding areas, while some of the films exposed Camorra and other local plagues to the audience.
To this latter category belongs Fort Apache Napoli – known in Italy as Fortapàsc. It was directed in 2009 by the Milanese Marco Risi, who was honored by this year’s Festival with the screening of five movies from his repertoire. He is the son of Dino Risi, one of the masters of Commedia all’italiana, internationally celebrated for his masterpiece The Easy Life (Il Sorpasso, 1962), and Scent of a Woman (Profumo di donna, 1974).
Marco Risi’s touching, marvelous film unravels the short but courageous life of Giancarlo Siani, the Neapolitan crime reporter, who was murdered by Camorra at age 26 for his compromising investigations, on September 23rd 1985. The movie’s highest merit is its emotional impact, especially during the last climactic act, to such an extent that we feel a genuine anguish for the likeable and innocent protagonist. In fact, despite we know since the very beginning that Siani is going to be killed, we still don’t know when and we fear for his life at every single change of scene.
It is undisputable that Naples and Campania region in general have a long and prestigious tradition in all arts, including cinema.
However, the parameters behind the Festival’s programming, might be found in the “imprint” from its founder and producer, Pascal Vicedomini, a native of Nocera Inferiore, in the province of Salerno. As a matter of fact, the Los Angeles, Italia, Film, Fashion and Art Fest, jointly with Capri in the World Institute and Capri, Hollywood Film Fest – also founded by Vicedomini in 1995 – aims at showcasing the best of Southern Italy’s and, particularly, of Campania’s cinema.
And now, let’s take a look at the different sections of the Festival: the opening screening, Hands Over The City – directed in 1963 by the late Neapolitan Francesco Rosi – was an homage to his illustrious career, from his beginnings in the movie industry as Luchino Visconti’s assistant director after WWII, to his apex in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
Other two legendary figures, both in music and cinema, were honored at the Festival. Frank Sinatra, some of whose music hits were sung by Robert Davi and his jazz ensemble at the opening night, and whose talent for acting was celebrated by screening five of his movies, including the 1953 drama From Here to Eternity by Fred Zinnemann, which earned him the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
The second Italian-American legend, Liza Minnelli – daughter of two other “mythical” figures the likes of Judi Garland and Vincente Minnelli – won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the musical Cabaret (1972). Heavily escorted, she made her appearance on the closing red carpet, causing a delirious crowd, hardly contained by the balustrades. In the following ceremony, she was honored with the Jack Valenti Life Achievement Award.
A special mention is deserved by the film Calibro 10 (2010), directed by Calabrian Massimo Ivan Falsetta. A real “gem” about the ties between local politicians and ‘Ndrangheta – a Mafia-type criminal organization centered in Calabria –, which brilliantly employs voice-over and is filled with refined literary and movie quotations of Q. Tarantino’s and F.F. Coppola’s masterpieces.
Noteworthy was also the son of another past Italian glory, as the above-mentioned Marco Risi: the Roman cinematographer and director Marco Pontecorvo, whose Italian Jewish father was Gillo Pontecorvo. Gillo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) is internationally regarded as a masterpiece, earning him the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and the Academy-Award nomination for Best Director, both in 1969.
Two of Marco Pontecorvo’s latest works were screened during the Festival: the TV movie, L’Oro di Scampia (2014) about the Neapolitan judoka Giuseppe Maddaloni, golden-medalist at Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, and his latest Partly Cloudy (With Sunny Spells) (2015).
The latter was screened as a world premiere, following the opening red carpet with the attendance of Marco Pontecorvo himself, who shared the stage with an array of the actors celebrated this year, such as Luca Zingaretti, Fabio Testi and Sebastiano Somma.
Upon John Landis’ public praise of Gillo Pontecorvo and high expectations for his son’s directorial effort, Partly Cloudy (With Sunny Spells) certainly met those. Apart from the Italian topical subjects and the usual debate between capitalism and communism, the real originality comes from the subplot, narrating the teen romance between one of the protagonists’ son and a Chinese girl, by employing also several Anime scenes.
In the same secondary story, the symbolic defeat of the boy’s father in the Anime, represents not only a natural passage from adolescence to adulthood, but also the struggle that Risi’s son and Pontecorvo’s must have fought and keep fighting to overcome the onerous shadows of their fathers.
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