Olimpia to Friends

A young filmmaker advocates the creation of a new type of film, devoid of a traditional plot and composed of blocks of sequences that have no specific interdependence. Subsequently, the theoretical statement leads to practical demonstration: abstract images flow across the screen, accompanied, for the most part, by snippets of conversation on a wide variety of topics.

Made up almost entirely of archival interviews with Italian film director Roberto Rossellini (with audio interviews playing over various behind-the-scene bits and archival footage) the director recalls his early life, how he got into film, his political beliefs and how they were formed.

Trapianto heralds the end of utopia, the death of that underground, but is also the best prologue in Necropolis, which is not by chance found alive. It 's a film that establishes the passage of rolling between two friends, and Brocani Schifano, shared the same passions, and from living the cinema as a challenge urgent and vital, suspended between dream and action.

A man decides to cook for himself and finds a revolver (which may have belonged to John Dillinger) hidden in his kitchen.

A debauched nobleman offers himself to a beautiful woman, but she is repelled by his advances. He dons a mask and tries again, and this time is more successful. But the mask cannot conceal the evil in his soul.

During a Post-Apocalyptic period in the near future the majority of the European population has been wiped out by some sort of undefined plague. Cino and Dora, a young couple, are rounded up by what constitutes the authorities on an isolated temporary base. They are examined and given antibiotics which will protect them for six months, told to pick out a deserted house to live in the area, and use that time to conceive a child.

In this visual essay, renowned film critic and historian Adriano Apra takes a closer look at Bernardo Bertolucci's work with Pier Paolo Pasolini on La Commare Secca and discusses its poetic qualities and visual style; Before the Revolution, which was inspired by the French Nouvelle Vague; Agony, a segment from the anthology film Love and Anger; the politically charged Partner, with Pierre Clémenti, which was filmed during the '68 student riots; and The Spider's Stratagem. Adriano Apra also discusses The Conformist and its unusual color scheme, the camera movement, the lensing, etc. Also included in the essay are clips from a very long interview with the Italian director in which he explains how The Conformist came to exist, and discusses its production history, its script and Alberto Moravia's novel, the casting process, the key conflicts in the film, etc.

Garage owner Angelo and big-time film producer Alberto find themselves occupying neighbouring beds in a Rome hospital after suffering heart attacks. Alberto is a gregarious joker - and chain smoker - who has a strong effect on the impressionable Angelo. However, as one of the men's condition deteriorates, the other becomes more deeply involved in his personal life.

Straub-Huillet’s first color film, adapts a lesser-known Corneille tragedy from 1664, which in turn was based on an episode of imperial court intrigue chronicled in Tacitus’s Histories. The costuming is classical, and the toga-clad, nonprofessional cast performs the drama’s original French text amid the ruins of Rome’s Palatine Hill while the noise of contemporary urban life hums in the background. Their lines are executed with a terrific flatness and frequently through heavy accents; the language in Othon becomes not merely an expression but a thing itself, an element whose plainness here alerts us to qualities of the work that might otherwise be subordinated.

The film is a sort of presentation of Franco Fortini's book 'I Cani del Sinai'. Fortini, an Italian Jew, reads excerpts from the book about his alienation from Judaism and from the social relations around him, the rise of Fascism in Italy, the anti-Arab attitude of European culture. The images, mostly a series of Italian landscape shots, provide a backdrop that highlights the meaning of the text. - Fabrizio Sabidussi

Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.

Sid grew up with his mother Arabella in a cheerful and somewhat naïve Apulian community, which was filled with affection and a great passion for cinema. After years away he returns to the land of his childhood where his mother had created a cinematic arena and this trip in his childhood memories will lead to a better understanding of her human and existential aspects.

People of a volcanic island 'Stromboli' share their memory of beautiful actress Ingrid Bergman starred in Stromboli directed by Rossellini. Their testimonies describe relations around Stromboli . Movie scenes and the island's scenary are crossed, enriching life and art.

From Paolo Brunatto's series "Scheggie Di Utopia".

"The Man With The Golden Eye" tells the extraordinary figure of Marco Melani through a live projection of materials collected in over ten years of research. Found footage, unpublished interviews with cinema and television personalities, fragments of films, extracts from television programs, photographs, readings and interventions by the author, intertwine giving voice to a chorus of precious testimonies.