Italian Film Festival Returns
The Italian Film Festival is baaack! It’s a special edition featuring films from the 70th Venice Film Festival (VFF) this year, so if you’re in a mood for an arty and gritty award-winning flick, you know where to go.
Opening the festival is Sacro GRA, the first documentary ever to bag VFF’s top prize, the Golden Lion. Film cinematographer Gianfranco Rosi takes us on his 2-year journey of the Grande Raccordo Anulare – the ring-shaped motorway that encircles Rome – that uncovers life on edges of the ever-expanding city.
First Snowfall
Another gem can be found in First Snowfall (La Prima Neve), which parallels the problems of an Italian boy without a father, and an African refugee who lost his wife. Award-winning director Andrea Segre’s (of Li Shun and the Poet fame) first foray into fiction is well shot and sensitive, albeit with less drama than expected.
Looking for something closer to home? With 410 real Tweets from an anonymous girl as a springboard, director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit creates the world of a contemporary Asian teenager in Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy – expect a healthy dose of (nostalgic) adolescent angst.
The best part of the festival, though, has got to be the screening of La Dolce Vita in it’s digitally restored glory. Federico Fellini’s epic treatise on decadence and redemption changed the face of Italian cinema ever since.
Italian Film Festival, 2-7 April 2014, The Cathay Cineplex and the National Museum of Singapore. For the full line up, see website. For tickets to screenings at the National Musuem of Singapore, see here.
Top Image: La Dolce Vita
Image Credits: Vogue Italy and Cinefatti
