23 songs shot in 21 days would be the skinniest premise for an otherwise very passionate musical journey by John Turturro into the cultural alleys and pathways of a very special city – Napoli. Trailer I attended the film uptown opening, at The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s new state-of-the-art Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center [...]

As Italy celebrates its 150th year of unification (aka Risoregimento) this year, the Lincoln Film Society in New York chose to include this masterpiece by Alessandro Blasetti as part of their current festival: Open Roads: New Italian Cinema. I attended the screening and here are some of my impressions. Carmelo and Rosuzza his wife reunited [...]

If you think what made Neorealism successful; a genuine blend of non-professional actors, shots on location, themes of social hardships and “objectively” journalistic camera – served to post-war Italian audiences that must have said “yea this is exactly what we’ve gone through!” and then went on garnering a worldwide admiration. Then, when you think of [...]

When you think about what makes a film a masterpiece, beyond the usual suspects like clever script, believable acting or memorable soundtrack – what I believe worked extremely well for post-war Italian cinema is the historical context. For the neorealism genre it supplied ample stories of hardships told by non-professional actors in actual locations with [...]

First time’s a charm may be an old cliché, but there is something fresh and original to creating something for the first time that is clean from preconceptions and risk of repetitions. Not always. Yet, this charmingly sensitive film, which marks the debut of Gianni Di Gregorio as a director, represents one of the pleasant [...]