Vittoria’s tales

Death belongs to us and its concept must go back to the very core of life.

The film is divided into three episodes in which a struggle with death is represented in different ways. In the first episode, entitled Holes of Love (Pozzi d’amore), the protagonist Enzo Moscato recites a sort of theatrical monologue.  A long tale in which he speaks about the fear of an imminent death and the anguish related to the forthcoming separation from a beloved one. On the contrary, in the second episode, Upper Left Corner (In alto a sinistra) a young man meditates upon his father’s death.  He recalls how his father had suffered during his terminal illness and, precisely in the name of that reminiscence, he can finally overcome the lacerating pain that accompanied his solitude.
In the last episode, Vittoria’s Tales (Racconti di Vittoria), oncologist Vittoria  has contracted cancer, and from within the disease, she encourages her patients with great courage and dignity  to fight for their lives. The leitmotiv of the film, suffering and death, is viewed from three different perspectives: the theatre, literature and television. The aim of the film is to exorcize death with a myth in the first episode, to ritualize it in the second and finally in the last case, to contend with death by looking it straight in the face.

 

The betrothed

The love story of a couple in which he had been a she.

A testimony of the force of love that binds two people, a present-day betrothed couple.
The narration proceeds as a thriller in which the two protagonists conceal a mystery: visible traces, scars on an arm, details that worm their way into the story until the enigma is revealed. He had previously been a she.
A contemporary metamorphosis made possible by their love.

 

Matilda

Is Matilda a jinx? A black comedy with a surprise ending.

Is Matilda a jinx? After the mysterious accidental deaths of  three boyfriends, Matilda, who is eager to marry, runs a matrimonial ad in the papers, which is answered by dithering Torquato (Silvio Orlando), who cannot resist her charm. Ignoring the misfortunes of her previous boyfriends, he is headed towards a destiny that promises to be lethal. The film is a black comedy with a surprise ending.

It’s not fair

The adult world seen through the eyes of two eleven-year-olds.

Sofia and Valerio, aged 11 and 12, meet by chance in a semi-deserted Naples suffocating because of the summer heat. Both have been entrusted to the care of their fathers, a pair of forty-year-olds afflicted with every sort of sentimental and existential problems, while their mothers are far off, present only in brief telephonic incursions.  The two kids feel continually threatened by the instability and confusion of their families.  “It’s not fair…” they say as they join forces to face the adult world together with detachment and irony, so as to be no longer afraid of it.

 

O sole mio

The history and success of the song ‘O sole mio, a world famous classic.

A tale that peers behind the clichés of Naples, too often defined only as “sole-pizza-amore” (sun-pizza-love). Through the history of the song ‘O sole mio, from its birth in 1898 to its consecration, the film narrates the two faces of Naples: on the one hand the paradisiacal, luminous postcard-city, on the other hand, the dark mysterious Naples of the vicoli (the alleys). A kaleidoscope consisting of evidence ranging from the era of silent movies to our days, with the celebrated interpretations of Mario Del Monaco, Elvis Presley, Luciano Pavarotti, Sergio Bruni, and occasional performers such as Paul McCartney and the Spice Girls.

Maruzzella

The encounter of two solitudes: a transsexual and a young woman in a red-light cinema.

Maruzzella is a transvestite who haunts the corridors of red-light cinemas like a modern Phantom of the Opera, offering his clients very unusual sexual performances until he encounters a young woman, a desolate viewer of hard films, who will radically change the life of our protagonist.

 

Each Chair has its own Sound

I fell in love twenty-six times, I relapsed. As  many were the falls, so many were the poems.
Alda Merini

 

Alda Merini, one of the most important poets of the twentieth century confesses herself without inhibitions, recounting her life of suffering. This portrait alternates conversation with fragments of her poetry interpreted by Licia Maglietta (taken from her theatrical performance Love Delirium/Delirio amoroso).The encounter of these two women and their artistic fusion render for us the fragility and the greatness of a woman who had been overwhelmed by an excess of love.

Angelo Novi, movie stills photographer

A journey into the memoir of our cinema through the words and images of Angelo Novi.

The film is a journey into the memoir of our cinema, from the years after the Second World War to the end of the twentieth century. The photographs Angelo Novi took on the sets of Pasolini, Rossellini, Leone and Bertolucci are commented by the original sound tracks of the films and by the same photographer who describes the precise moment he snapped them. We get to know one of the most important witnesses of Italian cinema through his tales that are full of anecdotes and emotion.

The remains of nothing

It is as if De Lillo and De Medeiros were confronting and chasing after each other until they became a sole person in the throes of a marvelous utopia.
Bernardo Bertolucci

Portuguese noblewoman Eleonora Pimentel Fonseca,  the voice of the 1799 Neapolitan Revolution, together with other young Neapolitan aristocrats, battles for the ideals of equality, liberty and fraternity. All too soon, the blade of the Restoration falls on the founders of the short-lived Republic: their dream, which had briefly become reality, is shattered into thousands of pieces. The remains of nothing…”il resto è niente.”
The film chooses to recount the human and political events of Naples at the end of the 18th century by illustrating the precious hours preceding Eleonora’s death. The camera is set at the center of her soul, to record the suffering, hopes and passions of her entire life. Thus, the portrait of a courageous woman, modern and free, is created through the threads of memory.

Dr. Lucio Fulci’s day-for-night

A classic horror film? But it was I who made the classics!” interview with Lucio Fulci, master of this film genre.

A document/legacy of the great Lucio Fulci, master of the B-movie, whose work has inspired world famous directors such as Quentin Tarantino. Lucio Fulci treats us to a lengthy consideration on his way of doing cinema and his eccentric career, which is fascinating for its sincerity, irony and clearness of mind.