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 7th is: La Seconda Notte Di Nozze (The Secound Wedding Night)"
Admission: Free, but $5 donation requested.
For more information, please call: (619) 238-7559
or visit: www.sandiegoitalianfilmfestival.com
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 7th is: La Seconda Notte Di Nozze (The Secound Wedding Night)"
This is Italy immediately after World War II – Bologna now remnants of fierce battles, churches there being used as large dormitories for those bombed out of their homes, those with homes clinging to the few graces left them, the dishonest slyly stealing those graces.
And in Puglia, hundreds of miles to the south, while olives grow in the sun, mines left behind still threaten children and farmers. So all this is maybe ancient history, but this is Pupi Avati directing, this is Antonio Albanese acting, this is commedia all’italiana, and it is a brilliant commentary on character and culture today in Italy.
In this Bologna a widow Lilliana (Katia Ricciarelli), fallen on very hard times, yet still supporting her adult and crooked son Nino (Neri Marcorè), takes the desperate step of writing her brother-in-law in Puglia Giordano (Albanese) for help, knowing that before she was married, Giordano had a big crush on her. She wavers, knowing that this might not be fair, but her slick son has no such hesitation. Off to Puglia, he says, stealing a car from a trusting soul, heading south with dreams of movie glory growing with every kilometer traveled.
Giordano Ricci, whose late adolescent depression and mental defects have not been helped even with a long series of shock treatments, still invigorates his paese with his main activities – removing explosives from the local fields and helping his aunts make party candies and favors. Giordano is the one who has inherited a beautiful farmhouse and fields, but his sharp-eyed aunts make sure things are well cared for. And everyone, including Giordano, accepts his dangerous anti-mining operations because he is considered disposable, less valuable than others in the area. But even with the exploding fields and beaches, this is a utopia, where with the help of ancient agricultural rhythms, peace and goodness prevail, where the southern Italian life cradles all in slow growth and harmony.
But then comes the worm, and this sweet vision of utopia hangs on a thread. Will the simple, generous and above all innocent Gordano be forced out of Eden? Will the hardworking aunts find themselves enslaved? Will the swindler Nino, nephew of Giordano, lose everything in his movie-inspired ambitions? Will Giordano once again find himself lonely and rejected?
While this movie roots itself in a post-war narrative, its main feature is a penetrating look at the characters, taking the one person who seems most marginalized, Giordano, and imbuing him with virtues that director Avati sees as central to Italian identity – generosity, loyalty, humanity, and a view of work as a social function, not personal advancement.
For most American audiences, used to following the story, the intent of this movie could easily be lost. The story is simple – a robust but child-like man, whose mental development was retarded in his teens by severe shock treatments, invites his widowed sister-in-law and her son to move from Bologna to Torre la seconda no tte di no zze Canne in Puglia. Once arrived the sly nephew schemes to leave with a good portion of his uncle’s money, while his mother, whom Giordano loved when he was very young, cannot decide whether to stay or go, despite her previous life of misery and degradation. Somehow Giordano, with his simple code of doing things right and loving his family, offers himself, and his love, unreservedly, and in this complete surrender, Giordano wins, saving not only himself but those closest to him.
If Avati can be criticized for his sometimes syrupy set-up’s and saccharine view of life, it is nonetheless important to see the long history Avati embodies in his sense of Italian character as aiming for generosity and group salvation instead of personal conquest. With an extraordinary delicacy, this story once again demonstrates Avati’s deep commitment to both his art and what he understands as Italy’s best sensibilities. (Review by Prof. Pasqual Verdiccio, UCSD)
Admission: Free, but $5 donation requested.
For more information, please call: (619) 238-7559
or visit: www.sandiegoitalianfilmfestival.com
