DC’s film fest runs now until the 21st and features 4 great Italian films:
Shun Li and the Poet
READ ABOUT ANDREA SEGRE AT OPEN ROADS: NEW ITALIAN CINEMA
(Io sono Li)
ANDREA SEGRE
Italy, 2011, 100 minutes, 35mm, Color, official site
Some films just connect with audiences everywhere, and documentarian Andrea Segre’s first fiction film, the perceptive immigrant drama Shun Li and the Poet, is one of them. Winner of major festival awards and audience prizes from Venice to Reykjavik, this is a story, like Kolya or Good Bye Lenin!, at once drenched in regional culture and imbued with an unerring emotional universality. When she’s transferred from a textile factory outside Rome to behind the bar of an oyster joint in the Venetian lagoon, Chinese immigrant Shun Li (Zhao Tao) at first despairs of ever being able to reconnect with the young son she left behind. Over time, she forges a bond with Bepi the Poet (the great Rade Sherbedgia), an equally lonely retired Yugoslav fisherman. But can this bond withstand societal pressure? —Eddie Cockrell
In Italian and Mandarin with English subtitles
Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy
(Romanzo di una Strage)
MARCO TULLIO GIORDANA
Italy, 2012, 127 minutes, digital, Color, official site
This vivid recreation of the 1969 terrorist bombing of a national bank in Milan and its aftermath captures the internecine squabbles among the many political factions that were vying for power in Italy at the time. Detailing the events leading up to the bombing and going deep into the various investigations that followed, Piazza Fontana features many of the leading politicians of the day (including the ill-fated Aldo Moro) and the numerous lesser known characters who were, or weren’t, involved. The deep chiaroscuro lighting helps convey the mood of bitter contrasts among the various players in the political drama. We follow police captain Luigi Calabresi (Valerio Mastandrea) as he tries to make sense of the tangled affair. When suspect Giuseppe Pinelli (Pierfrancesco Favino) dies after suspiciously falling from a window in the police station where he was being questioned, Calabresi has to deal with his own internal crisis. —Dave Nuttycombe
Magnificent Presence
(Magnifica Presenza)
FERZAN OZPETEK
Italy, 2012, 106 minutes
From the director of the charming Loose Cannons (FFDC 2011) comes another humorous examination of how secrets of the past can haunt the present. Young Pietro (Elio Germano) works nights as a baker but dreams of becoming an actor. When he rents a wonderfully rococo old-world house in Rome, he is more than surprised to discover that it is haunted. The large group of ghosts are colorful members of a theater troupe who think that it’s still 1943—which was indeed the last time anyone ever heard from the acting company. As Pietro tries to come to grips with this spooky home invasion and a flailing romantic life, he also learns more about his uninvited guests. The phantom actors offer hard-won advice to the struggling young man, and he in turn takes on their cause—to find another long-lost member of their family. —Dave Nuttycombe
The Lithium Conspiracy
(Breve storia di lunghi tradimenti)
DAVIDE MARENGO
Italy, 2012, 104 minutes
An imaginative, sinewy thriller about international banking corruption and corporate greed, The Lithium Conspiracy taps into global apprehension over financial mergers and exploitation of natural resources to emerge a colorful, tautly entertaining morality play. When his boss is incapacitated by a sports injury, Banco Lario lawyer Giulio Rovedo (Guido Caprino) is entrusted with solving a mysterious “code 37” overseas crisis that intensifies exponentially when the bank is suddenly taken over by a sinister conglomerate, Newlight. Leaving behind a troubled marriage in Torino, Giulio is whisked off to the South American banana republic of Queimada by his beautiful yet cryptic new superior, Cecilia Schwartz (Carolina Crescentini). Once there, he becomes enmeshed in local politics and intrigue revolving around a massive deposit of the eponymous element. Perhaps because it is adapted from a novel, The Lithium Conspiracy is a deliberate and finely-detailed cautionary tale as filling as a good Italian meal. —Eddie Cockrell
I Love Italian Everything 