Cinema Italia SF, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco and The Italian Consulate General and with the support of The Leonardo da Vinci Society, is proud to present its 6th series of Italian Classic Cinema:
HOMAGE TO LINA WERTMÜLLER
The first woman ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director.
Saturday, September 23, 2017 – Castro Theatre, San Francisco
A day-long cinematic celebration of Lina Wertmüller, the groundbreaking, pioneering woman director and visionary whose fearless, polemical and provocative films have left indelible marks and influence on the international entertainment field.
• 11:00 AM: “Love & Anarchy” (129 min.)
• 1:30 PM: “Behind the White Glasses” (104 min.)
• 4:00 PM: “Swept Away” (115 min.)
• 6:30 PM: “Seven Beauties” (116 min.)
• 8:30 PM: White Glasses Party in the Theatre’s Mezzanine (ends at 10:00 PM)
• 10:00 PM: “The Seduction of Mimi” (112 min.)
Four narrative films in 2K Restoration DCP and one documentary film. All DCPs are provided by
Kino Lorber.
All four narrative feature films star Giancarlo Giannini.
We are excited to welcome to San Francisco Valerio Ruiz, the director of the documentary film “Behind the White Glasses”.
The Director:
Lina Wertmüller was born Arcangela Felice Assunta Wertmüller von Elgg Spañol von Braueich in Rome in 1928 to a devoutly Roman Catholic Swiss family of aristocratic descent. After graduating from school, her first job was touring Europe in a puppet show. For the next ten years she worked as an actress, director and playwright for the stage. During this period she met Giancarlo Giannini, who later starred in many of her films.
Through her acquaintance with Marcello Mastroianni, she met Federico Fellini and, in 1962, Fellini offered her the assistant director position on 81⁄2. The following year, Wertmüller made her directorial debut with The Lizards (I Basilischi). The film's subject matter—the lives of impoverished people in southern Italy—became a recurring motif in her later work. In 1972, Wertmüller achieved international acclaim with a series of four movies starring Giancarlo Giannini.
The last, and best-received of these, was 1975's Seven Beauties (Pasqualino Sette Bellezze), which earned four Academy Award nominations and was an international hit.
Wertmüller was the first woman nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director. JaneCampion, Sofia Coppola, and Kathryn Bigelow are the only other female directors nominated (with Bigelow the first to win). In 1985, she received the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who, through endurance and the excellence of their work, have helped to expand the role of women within the entertainment industry. She is known for her whimsically prolix movie titles. For instance, the full title of Swept Away is Swept Away by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August. These titles were invariably shortened for international release. (She is entered in the Guinness Book of Records for the longest film title: Un fatto di sangue nel comune di Siculiana fra due uomini per causa di una vedova. Si sospettano moventi politici. Amore-Morte-Shimmy. Lugano belle Tarantelle. Tarallucci e vino. That 1979 movie with 179 characters is better known under the international titles Blood Feud or Revenge. Wertmüller has had a prolific career, and still actively directs. She was married to Enrico Job (died March 4, 2008), an art designer who worked on several of her pictures.
(1973 - 129 min. Italy)
In Italian with English subtitles.
Directed by Lina Wertmüller. Screenplay by Lina Wertmüller. Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato, and Eros Pagni. DCP projection.
An epic tragicomedy, Love and Anarchy plumbs the depths of fascist Italy from the perspective of a simple farm boy sent to kill Mussolini. Giancarlo Giannini won the best acting prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his achingly sensitive portrayal of Tunin, a freckle-faced innocent who became an accidental anarchist. His contact in Rome is Salomè (Mariangela Melato), a prostitute with her own sob story. While they prepare for the assassination, Tunin falls in love with Tripolina (Lina Polito), which threatens the entire operation. A film of operatic emotion and subversive comedy, Love and Anarchy is a powerful statement on the terror of fascism and the ignoble fates of those who challenged it.
DCP courtesy of Kino Lorber
Documentary Film (2017 - 104 mins. Italy)
In Italian and English with English subtitles.
Directed by Valerio Ruiz. DCP projection.
Behind the White Glasses offers a deep dive into the groundbreaking life and career of Lina Wertmuller, the first woman ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for her masterpiece Seven Beauties. The documentary spans decades, from the unpublished pictures taken in Cinecitta, when she was Federico Fellini’s assistant director on 8 1⁄2, to the places where her most famous films were set, revealing the artistic and human universe of a woman who, with her unfailing irony and taste for the grotesque, has left her mark in all the fields of entertainment in which she worked: cinema, drama, television, music. The journey is accompanied by many exclusive interviews with the artists who witnessed her intense and constantly evolving career. Among them: Giancarlo Giannini, Marina Cicogna, Sophia Loren, Harvey Keitel, Nastassja Kinski, and film critic John Simon. The film features a long series of unreleased videos, images and songs written by Lina Wertmüller. Behind the White Glasses is a personal poetic portrait by Valerio Ruiz, her longtime assistant director and very close collaborator. It held its World Premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in 2016.
DCP courtesy of Kino Lorber
About Visiting Filmmaker: Valerio Ruiz
Valerio Ruiz was born in Rome in 1986. He has been working with Lina Wertmüller for some years now, including scriptwriter and assistant director of the documentary directed by Lina Wertmüller Roma, Napoli, Venezia… in un crescendo rossiniano (2014). He started working with Wertmüller ten years ago as assistant in organizing the film section of the 2006 Ravello Festival and then went on to cooperate in the staging of two plays: “Il Giornalino di Gianburrasca” (2010) and “Un’allegra fin de siècle” (2013) and has continued through to the present day as assistant director of the TV-movie Mannaggia alla miseria (2009).
In 2012, he contributed to the drafting of Lina Wertmüller’s autobiography “Tutto a posto e niente in ordine” (“Mondadori”). He contributed also in several master classes of acting such as the one held at Taormina Arte (2009) dedicated to the writer Vitaliano Brancati. In 2011 Valerio Ruiz wrote, produced and directed his first short film Piazza Fellini, a tribute to Federico Fellini interpreted by Sandra Milo, who was both actress and muse for some of the masterpieces of the maestro. The short won the 2011 Capri Short Cut Award at the Capri Hollywood International Film Festival and third prize at the XI Villammare Film Festival. The short was then presented at the Los Angeles Italian Film Fashion and Art Fest and in other Italian festivals. In 2010 for the 20th anniversary of the Italy-Albania development cooperation, he was art director of the film festival Italian eyes, promoted by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
(1974 - 115 min. Italy)
In Italian with English subtitles.
Directed by Lina Wertmüller. Screenplay by Lina Wertmüller. Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato, and Riccardo Salvino. DCP projection.
Set against the backdrop of the beautiful Mediterranean, Swept Away is Lina Wertmuller's most famous and controversial film about sex, love and politics. On an elegant yacht cruising off the coast of Sardinia, Raffaella (Mariangela Melato), a rich and stunning capitalist, enjoys tormenting Gennarino (Giancarlo Giannini), a Communist sailor. Fate weaves a different scenario and roles become reversed when the two find themselves stranded together on a deserted island. Raffaella must submit to Gennarino in order to survive, which culminates in a dramatic climax when they are rescued. They must determine if their love can survive the harsh realities of civilization.
DCP courtesy of Kino Lorber
(1975 - 116 min. Italy)
In Italian, German, Neapolitan, and Spanish with English subtitles.
Directed by Lina Wertmüller. Screenplay by Lina Wertmüller. Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Fernando Rey, Shirley Stoler, and Elena Fiore. DCP projection.
Nominated for four Academy Awards® including Best Director, Seven Beauties stars Giancarlo Giannini (Swept Away) as Pasqualino Frafuso, known in Naples as "Pasqualino Seven Beauties." A petty thief who lives off of the profits of his seven sisters while claiming to protect their honor at any cost, Pasqualino is arrested for murder and later sent to fight in the army. The Germans capture him and he gets sent to a concentration camp where he plots to make his escape.
DCP courtesy of Kino Lorber
(1972 - 112 min. Italy)
In Italian and English with English subtitles.
Directed by Lina Wertmüller. Screenplay by Lina Wertmüller. Starring Giancarlo Giannini, Mariangela Melato, Agostina Belli. DCP projection.
The Seduction of Mimi is a raucous sex comedy that brought international fame to director Lina Wertmuller. Giancarlo Giannini gives a wonderfully comic performance as the sad sack Mimi, a Sicilian laborer whose refusal to vote for the Mafia's candidate leads him to lose his job, his wife and his home. At rock bottom, he revives his spirits by falling in love with the beautiful, radical Fiorella (Mariangela Melato), with whom he starts a new life as a reliable husband and father. But the past comes back to haunt him, piling on comical complexities as all his energies surge into defending his honor, an obsession that has horrendous but hilarious consequences. A blistering satire of Italy in the 1970s, The Seduction of Mimi takes aim at a corrupt government, compromised labor leaders and the Neanderthal sexual politics of men in power, with uproarious results.
DCP courtesy of Kino Lorber
Valerio Ruiz wrote and directed the documentary film "Behind the White Glasses" (2015), which was produced by his company, White Glasses Film Srl, in coproduction with Recalcati Multimedia Srl. The film, dedicated to Lina Wertmüller's career, was presented in the 72nd edition of the Venice Film Festival, in the section Venice Classics, and was nominated for the Silver Ribbon as Best Documentary on Cinema. His previous works are divided between cinema, theater and television. His work also includes screenwriting and the assistant directing of the documentary "'Roma, Napoli, Venezia... in un crescendo rossiniano" (2014), directed by Lina Wertmüller and produced by Rai Strategie Tecnologiche e Yanez Film Srl; the documentary-interview "Francesco Rosi, una Carmen nel reale" (2012); the short film "Piazza Fellini" (2011). Along with his activities as director and screenwriter for narrative films and documentaries, Ruiz also directs operas. In 2016, he signed with Lina Wertmüller the new Macbeth production by Giuseppe Verdi, at the Giuseppe Verdi Municipal Theater in Salerno, conducted by Daniel Oren.
Buy Tickets to "Behind the White Glasses" on Sept. 23rd at 1:30 PM