#RomaFF14 | October 22, John Travolta to be the featured guest in a Close Encounter

On Tuesday October 22^nd, John Travolta will be featured in a Close Encounter at the 14^th Rome Film Fest: at 5:30 pm in Sala Sinopoli, the American actor, one of the most beloved and versatile of his generation will review the most significant steps in his fifty-year career that has ranged across cinema, theatre and television. Travolta shot to world fame in 1977 as Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever: he won nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe as Best Actor for his performance. He confirmed his success in Grease by Randal Kleiser. In 1994, he starred in Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino: his memorable portrayal of Vince Vega won him his second Academy Award nomination. Across the decades, Travolta worked with some of the most important contemporary directors such as Oliver Stone, Terrence Malick, Brian De Palma, Mike Nichols and John Woo. For his Close Encounter with the public, Travolta will receive the Special Award conferred by the Rome Film Fest.
The Official Selection of the Rome Film Fest presents three films in the programme for Tuesday October 22^nd.
At 7:30 pm, Sala Sinopoli will host the screening of Judy by Rupert Goold. In the winter of 1960, Judy Garland arrives in London to perform in a series of concerts. It is thirty years since she shot to global stardom in The Wizard of Oz: her voice has weakened, but its dramatic intensity shines increasingly bright. She prepares for the show, charms musicians, and reminisces with friends and adoring fans, as her wit and warmth grow stronger. And yet Judy is fragile. After working for 45 of her 47 years, she is exhausted, haunted by memories of a childhood lost to Hollywood, gripped by a desire to be back home with her kids. A performance worthy of an Academy Award that portrays all the nuances of the great diva.
The same theatre at 10 pm will host the screening of Waves by Trey Edward Shults. “This is a movie about the highs and lows of love: romantic love, familial love, what it means to have a passion for something, and what happens when everything falls apart – explains the director. I was a lot younger when I started thinking about this movie, but it was just images in my head, which at some point morphed into the story of Tyler Williams, a 17-year-old teenager who experiences an unfathomable tragedy. Then it became the story of his younger sister Emily, who is navigating her first true love”.
At 9:30 pm (Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna Sala SIAE) the screening will feature Your Mum and Dad by Klaartje Quirijns. In Czechoslovakia before the upheaval of World War II, Michael Moskowitz’s mother left home at seventeen without knowing if she would ever see her family again. What followed was a lifetime of trauma and dislocation for both her and her son. The film follows Moskowitz’s work with a New York-based therapist named Kirkland Vaughns, one of the few African-American Freudian therapists in the United States, while the director reveals her own family’s devastating trauma.
Two Special Events will take place in Sala Petrassi. At 8 pm, there will be a presentation of Interdependence, the project that arises from a desire for cooperation across different fields and for greater awareness in schools of climate change. The film is an anthology of eleven short films, a series of original stories directed by independent directors from five continents who join forces to raise public awareness about the environment and climate change. The short films are directed by Faouzi Bensaïdi (Morocco), Ása Hjörleifsdóttir (Iceland), Mahamat-Saleh Haroun (Chad), Salome Lamas (Portugal), Bettina Oberli (Switzerland), Nila Madhab Panda (India), Shahrbanoo Sadat (Afghanistan), Silvio Soldini (Switzerland/Italy), Leon Wang (China), Daniela Thomas (Brazil), Karin Williams (New Zealand).
At 10:30 pm, Sala Petrassi will host Nick Drake – Songs in a Conversation by Giorgio Testi. Roberto Angelini and Rodrigo d’Erasmo reveal the emotions that spring from the music of English artist Nick Drake. An artistic inner journey, an absorbing ensemble effort, an experience heightened by the performances of Andrea Appino, Manuel Agnelli, Niccolò Fabi, Piers Faccini and Adele Nigro, as well as the remarkable encounter in the recording studio with John Wood, the sound engineer who recorded three of Nick Drake’s albums. At the end of the screening, there will be a special showcase by Rodrigo D’Erasmo and Roberto Angelini with the participation of Manuel Agnelli, Andrea Appino, Piers Faccini and Adele Nigro.
At the MACRO Asilo at 6 pm, for the “Duel” series, Giona A. Nazzaro and Nicola Giuliano will face off about directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. At 8 pm, for “Loyalties/Betrayals”, the Premio Strega award-winner Edoardo Albinati will comment on the film adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s novel “Wise Blood”, brought to the silver screen by John Huston.
At 4 pm, the Auditorium at the MAXXI Museum will host the screening of Dersu Uzala by Akira Kurosawa, the second film on the theme of spirituality scheduled on the occasion of the exhibition “On the Spiritual Matter of Art”, organized by the MAXXI and open from October 17^th 2019 to March 8^th 2020. In the same venue, at 7 pm, the screening will feature The Birth of the Leopard by Luigi Falorni, a documentary from the “Riflessi” section: when author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa died in 1957, he was penniless. His widow survived by borrowing money. Yet a year later his only novel, “The Leopard”, was published and became a 10 million-copy success story, adapted for the silver screen by Luchino Visconti. Behind the book lies another great story, the love story between the author and his wife, a German woman from the Baltic area, psycho-analyst Alexandra von Wolff-Stomersee.
The daily schedule at the MAXXI will end at 9:30 pm with the screening of Nobody Knows by Kore-eda Hirokazu, a film from the retrospective dedicated to the Japanese director, screenwriter and film editor.
At the Casa del Cinema, there will be a 6 pm screening of The Apartment by Billy Wilder, one of the “Films of Our Lives”, selected by the Artistic Director of the Rome Film Fest Antonio Monda. At 8:30 pm, in the same theatre, the public is invited to attend the screening of Yoshiwara, a film from the retrospective dedicated to German director Max Ophüls.
For the third year in a row, the Rome Film Fest comes to the Policlinico Universitario Agostino Gemelli IRCCS hospital, to the Sala MediCinema movie theatre, with two films from the official line-up reserved for hospitalized patients, their family members, doctors and hospital staff at the Gemelli.
At 4 pm, the series opens with the comedy L’uomo senza gravità directed by Marco Bonfanti, who will attend the screening of the film, which stars Elio Germano, Michela Cescon, Elena Cotta, Silvia D’Amico, Vincent Scarito. On this occasion, actress Rocio Munoz Morales will join MediCinema Italia Onlus as ambassador of the Association, participating in its work, and will inaugurate, in the Sala MediCinema at the Policlinico Gemelli, the official screenings of the Rome Film Fest together with the patients, supporting them and sharing with them a special day to enjoy cinema.
Following the attention and appreciation it garnered at the 2018 Rome Film Fest, “The Magic Chord: Cinema and Jazz” returns for the fourteenth edition of the Fest. The second event in this series will take place at 9 pm with “A Ballad for Clint Eastwood”, with guests Stefano Di Battista (alto sax) and Andrea Rea (piano): the director, a passionate jazz fan since childhood, directed the masterpiece Bird and produced splendid documentaries dedicated to Thelonius Monk, Dave Brubeck and Piano Blues with Ray Charles.
Teatro Palladium, the historic movie theatre in Rome now owned by the Università Roma Tre, will feature the screening, at 8:30 pm, of Le ragazze di Via dell’Archeologia by Stefano Pistolini, Daniele Autieri and Andrea Leonetti Di Vagno. Antonella, Carmen, Asia: three real girls, three stories about drug addiction in Via dell’Archeologia, the street in the Tor Bella Monaca district that for 24 hours a day serves as the greatest heroin supermarket in Rome. Sometimes the drug kills, sometimes it turns into a desperate lifestyle. What never dies is the power of emotions. The young women from Via dell’Archeologia are devastated by heroin, but they have lost none of the intensity that all girls share.
The day offers a rich selection of repeat screenings. The Teatro Studio Gianni Borgna SIAE will feature the screening of two films from the Official Selection: Deux at 3 pm and Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin at 5 pm. At the Frecciarossa Cinema Hall, audiences are invited to see The Irishman by Martin Scorsese (at 4 pm). In the same venue, at 10:30 pm, the screening will feature Waves.
Four other films from the Official Selection are scheduled for repeat screenings at the My Cityplex Savoy: Il ladro di giorni at 3:30 pm, Deux at 6 pm, Trois jours et une vie at 8 pm and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark at 10:30 pm.