3rd Annual Italian Film Festival

(Please note that the film for this evening is showing at the The Birch North Park Theatre, not at MOPA in Balboa Park)
The San Diego Italian Film Festival celebrates its third year, starting October 16 through November 7. The festival provides an opportunity for all Italians and lovers of Italian culture to rediscover passion, love, and the best flavors of life in this season’s festival.

This year's San Diego Italian Film Festival features major recently released Italian films by internationally acclaimed award-winning directors. Festival films have English subtitles.

The Festival is made possible through a collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of Los Angeles, the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park, and the Ministero degli Affari Esteri in Rome and independent distributors.

Festival continues until Saturday, November 7

The film for November 6th is: La Verra Leggenda Di Tony Vilar (The True Legend of Tony Vilar)

Italians have poured into every corner of the world. And here we are, immigrants, children of immigrants, grand children of people who left Italy, and we think of ourselves as those who somehow left a home. And yet we seldom dream of how those left behind think of us. Are we still part of them? Is their home still home to us? And then what about all those others who left and didn’t end up with us? Are they somehow part of us, too? Oh such serious questions.

The charm of La Vera Leggenda di Tony Vilar is that it takes these questions and turns them on their heads. Nothing serious here, except for the vast migration of Italians and the desire to track it, not for something academic or selfish but purely to find the creator of beauty. And there is charm. And irony. And a love of all things Italian, even when it shows itself as silly or over the top. The term Italian seems to cover it all.
"A love of all things Italian"

Italians do not make mockumentaries, but Giuseppe Gagliardi has done exactly that. This is an Italian MTV-like take on a simple story, a search for a lost icon, over three continents, tracing the Italian diaspora, but as a long musical joke. And it is so full of bounce that the clichés Gagliardi and co-writer Voltarelli use are never offensive but fun, puppet characters in a young person’s theater of the absurd, a sing-along Punch & Judy show but all based on this extraordinary movement across continents and through cities and into little neighborhoods we all recognize and yell out for: "Hey, I used to go there!"

Of course, if we ask why Italians do not make mockumentaries, we raise very serious questions which we really won’t answer here, but from our perspective (Italians, children of Italians, etc.), it’s because truth may never be as important as the style in which the story is told. It’s not that Italians don’t want the truth, they just don’t want to be bored to death waiting for it.

Here the truths are simple: Italians everywhere love secrets, Italians everywhere have the same drive to connect, and they want to sing in the streets (I wonder if they like "Singing in the Rain?") even if the reality behind all this is foolish, painful or even at times too difficult. It’s no wonder one of the important sayings I learned stresses this: Se non e’ vero, e’ ben trovato: Even if it’s not true, it’s well told. And why’s this? Because the stories we tell are often remembered long after the real moment has passed. (Review by Prof. Pasqual Verdiccio, UCSD)

Admission: Free, but $8 donation requested.



For more information, please call: (619) 238-7559
or visit: www.sandiegoitalianfilmfestival.com