ItalianoFollowing the excellent audience response in previous editions, the screenings organized ahead of the Rome Film Fest opening are back, from October 15th to 17th, at Casa del Cinema and Multisala Barberini theatre, with free admission.
Seventy-five years after the Nazi round-ups in the ghetto of Rome on October 16th, 1943, and eighty years Italy passed its racial laws, Rome Film Fest, in collaboration with Roma Capitale, the Fondazione Museo della Shoah and Istituto Luce Cinecittà, will dedicate three screenings to the theme of the persecutions and the Holocaust.
On Monday October 15th at 9 pm at Multisala Barberini theatre, there will be a screening of 1938 – Quando scoprimmo di non essere più italiani by Pietro Suber. The documentary illustrates, from many sometimes-contrasting points of view, what the racial laws concretely meant in everyday life.
The following day, at 6 pm at Casa del Cinema, the screening will feature Sobibór, 14 octobre 1943, 16 heures, a tribute to the work of French director Claude Lanzmann, who recently passed away. The documentary tells the story of the only victorious revolt by Jews imprisoned in the concentration camps.
At 9 pm, Casa del Cinema will host the screening of La razzia, 16 ottobre 1943, an ensemble work in which the words of extermination camp survivors join those of the few who were able to escape deportation. Against the background, the locations in Rome where the round-up took place.
During Rome Film Fest, the Special Events section will feature a presentation of Who Will Write Our History by Roberta Grossman, produced by Nancy Spielberg: the documentary tells the story of historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who from within the Warsaw ghetto, secretly compiled an archive that proved to be one of the most important for the Holocaust.
The Rome Film Fest Pre-opening events will include preview screenings of four original projects.
On Monday October 15th at 6 pm, Casa del Cinema will host a screening of Dons of Disco by Jonathan Sutak. The first feature-length film by the New York director takes its cue from the revelation by American photographer Thomas Barbey that he was the “secret voice” behind hit songs such as “Future Brain”, “Bad Boy” and “Don’t Break My Heart”, and that Italian singer Stefano Zandri (Den Harrow) sang in playback for decades.
At 9 pm, the screening will feature The Man Who Bought the Moon by Paolo Zucca. “The basic dramaturgical concept was inspired by a newspaper article about an American company that was selling real estate on the moon. A few hundred meters from my house, on the western coast of Sardinia along the sea, is an expanse of limestone, white and dotted with craters, like the moon. And so, I imagined that the moon belonged to me as well. And above all to poets”, explained the director.
Two films are scheduled for October 17th at Casa del Cinema. At 6 pm, Questo è mio fratello by Marco Leopardi, a documentary that leads the viewer into the often-unfathomable world of depression. At 9 pm, the screening will feature Travelling with Adele by Alessandro Capitani, an on-the-road film in which a seventy-year old man suddenly discovers he is the father of a young woman with mental issues, who is “different” from him, from his world and from everything he believes is “normal”.
Never Forget
15 October 9 pm | Multisala Barberini | Free admission while seats last
1938 _ QUANDO SCOPRIMMO DI NON ESSERE PIÙ ITALIANI
by Pietro Suber, Italy, 2018, 78′
The film evokes the events that led from the racial laws to the deportation of Italian Jews, in five stories told by victims, persecutors and witnesses: a family of Fascist Jews slaughtered on Lago Maggiore; a Jew from the Ghetto in Rome who saved himself by flirting with the niece of a collaborationist; Franco Schonheit and his parents, survivors of the extermination
camps; a Jewish woman from Rijeka who hid in the home of a Vatican engraver; a family of presumed informers.
16 October 6 pm | Casa del Cinema | Free admission while seats last
Tribute to Claude Lanzmann
SOBIBÓR, 14 OCTOBRE 1943, 16 HEURES | SOBIBOR –OCTOBER 14, 1943, 4 P.M.
by Claude Lanzmann, France, 2001, 95’
Following the recent death of Claude Lanzmann, the Rome Film Fest wishes to honour his memory with the screening of the documentary Sobibór – October 14, 1943, 4 p.m., an account of the only successful Jewish uprising in an extermination camp. Lanzmann is one of the intellectuals who identified most profoundly with the need to keep alive the memory of the Shoah, a term that literally means “catastrophe”, and which in common usage came to indicate the genocide of the Jewish people after Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah, first appeared.
16 October 9 pm | Casa del Cinema | Free admission while seats last
LA RAZZIA, 16 OTTOBRE 1943
by Ruggero Gabbai, Italy, 2018, 60′
On October 16th, 1943, the Nazi occupying forces arrested over 1,250 Jewish residents of Rome. The victims had to pack their suitcases and leave their homes. On the 18th, they were taken to the Tiburtina train station, loaded onto 28 cattle cars and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps. Only 16 would come home. 75 years after the roundup on October 16th, 1943, this film reconstructs one of the most tragic chapters in Italian history, through the voices of the people who lived through it.
15 October 6 pm | Casa del Cinema | Free admission while seats last
DONS OF DISCO
by Jonathan Sutak, United States, 2018, 84′
In the 1980s, Den Harrow dominated the European hit parades with songs such as “Future Brain”, “Bad Boy” and “Don’t Break My Heart”. Thirty years later came the revelation by American photographer Thomas Barbey that he was the “secret voice” behind these songs, and that Den Harrow sang in playback for decades. A secret that lasted thirty years would explode into a rivalry that never abated between two middle-aged men. What was the key to Den Harrow’s success: the face or the voice?
15 October 9 pm | Casa del Cinema | Free admission while seats last
L’UOMO CHE COMPRÒ LA LUNA | THE MAN WHO BOUGHT THE MOON
By Paolo Zucca, Italy, Argentina, Albania, 2018, 102′
Cast: Jacopo Cullin, Stefano Fresi, Francesco Pannofino, Benito Urgu, Lazar Ristovski, Angela Molina
A Sardinian fisherman has promised the Moon to the woman he loves. And Sardinians keep their promises.
17 October 6 pm | Casa del Cinema | Free admission while seats last
QUESTO È MIO FRATELLO
by Marco Leopardi, Italy, 2018, 80’
Massimo has documented his fight against depression with his video-camera. Marco, Massimo’s brother, starts with these videos and his father’s home movies to reconstruct his story. Massimo’s video-camera was the only friend to whom he could confess his pain. But now his brother stands with him. Marco has decided to accompany his brother, to follow him with the video-camera while he submits to his last attempt to fight depression.
17 October 9 pm | Casa del Cinema | Free admission while seats last
IN VIAGGIO CON ADELE | TRAVELLING WITH ADELE
by Alessandro Capitani, Italy, France, 2018, 83’
Cast: Alessandro Haber, Sara Serraiocco, Isabella Ferrari, Patrice Leconte, Anna Ferruzzo, Elena Cantarone, Achille Missiroli
Adele is a special girl. Free of all constraints and inhibitions, she wears nothing but a pink pajama with rabbit ears, she never leaves her imaginary cat and colors her world with Post-its, on which she writes everything that comes to mind. A cynical hypochondriac, Aldo is a stage actor who, with the support of Carla – his agent, friend and occasional lover – is on the eve of his last great opportunity in cinema. The sudden death of Adele’s mother upsets Aldo’s plans, as he belatedly discovers that he is the girl’s father. With the burden of telling her the truth and the intent to get rid of her, Aldo leaves with Adele from Apulia in an old convertible on a journey towards an uncertain destination: a disgruntled grandmother, a greedy aunt, a mysterious fiancé. Their common solitude and need to be loved gradually and unexpectedly lead them to discover themselves as father and daughter.
#RomaFF13 | “Pre-opening” screenings: a series of screenings tell the story of the persecutions and the Holocaust
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