Event: Cinema Italian Style 2010

On November 17th I went to the Italian Shorts Program at the Egyptian Theatre. These screenings were part of Cinema Italian Style 2010 presented by Cinecitta Luce and The American Cinematheque. What was nice about this night of the festival was that it featured six Italian short films-- each very different from the one before. They screened “Niente Orchidee,” by Simone and Leonardo Godano—where a bar owner makes a deal with the Mafia that proves to be dangerous for those around him, Michaela Cescone’s “As In A Whisper”—which focuses on a strange encounter between a man and a woman, who’s relationship is quite ambiguous at first, “Armandino e il Madre” by Valeria Golino—which features a romance between two teenagers in the MADRE, Naples’ museum of contemporary arts, “The Game” by Adriano Giannini—which explores children’s games in the midst of WWII, and “As It Should Be” by Davide Minnella—where an aging chef, who works in a kitchen that prepares final meals for prisoners about to be sentenced to death, passes on her secrets to a young girl. What struck me the most about “Armandino e il Madre” is that the romance featured in the short is between a French girl studying in Naples and a Gypsy originally from Naples. There aren’t very many references to the boy’s status as a Gypsy but it is mentioned in a joke from his younger brother once; this seemed unnatural to me considering all the tension surrounding Roma at the moment. The film was very sweet and funny but seemed a little idealized. I felt that ‘The Game” was one of the most realistic and poignant films of the night because while the majority of the film focuses on a silly game played by a group of Italian boys on the beach in 1943 the film ends with them looking out at naval tankers in the ocean heading towards the shore. This film shows both the idealized side of Italy-- with its beautiful beaches-- and yet alludes to the fact that the lives of these little boys would no longer be the same once the war reached them. Those were my two favorite films, but overall I was impressed by most of the short films shown. In my opinion short films are the most difficult to produce because so much must be said in such a short amount of time. Overall it was great to see another side of European film.