Film Society of Lincoln Center Presents 'Open Roads: New Italian Cinema'

Always in the vanguard of world film, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will present at the Walter Reade Theater, from June 6 to 12, its eighth annual Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, a leading American showcase of the best in Italian cinema, featuring the finest Italian directorial talent.

This thought-provoking and entertaining festival will offer 13 features and a selection of inventive short films, and several featured directors and actors will attend screenings.

Although Italian films have been in the forefront of world cinema since the days of Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica, to name but two masters, in the past few years a new generation of Italian filmmakers has emerged. These men and women, noted for their spirit of discovery and exploration, demonstrate a variety of genres, indicating their diverse interests and backgrounds.

Opening night features NYU-educated Silvio Soldini's Days and Clouds, starring Margherita Buy (winner of this year's David di Donatello Award for Best Actress) as a woman whose husband (Antonio Albanese) is co-founder of a high-powered company and is edged out. Both encounter a painful, downhill spiral in status from their former upper middle-class position.

Filmmakers Esmeralda Calabria, Andrea D'Ambrosio, and Peppe Ruggiero's Biutiful Cauntri (a play on English words) is a searing indictment of the ongoing problem of illegal waste dumps in Naples and environs. Involved are diverse elements, including politics, the economy, organized crime, and public health. Here, the Film Society's Green Screens environmental film program partners with Open Roads, with a reception following the June 9 screening. An encore screening follows on June 12.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Franco Piavoli's 1982 Blue Planet will receive its New York premiere on June 10. Created by one of Italy's most important experimental filmmakers, the film, which presents the harmony and contrasts between human activity and the physical world, has been praised by noted filmmakers. The Russian Andrei Tarkovsky called it "a poem, journey into the universe … Not a documentary … Truly a different vision." Godfrey Reggio, director of the legendary Koyaanisqatsi," will introduce the screening.

Toni Servillo (R) as Commissario Sanzio and Anna Bonaiuto as his wife in The Girl by the Lake which will screen at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Open Roads: New Italian Cinema film series.

In Andrea Molaioli's compelling murder mystery, The Girl by the Lake, a beautiful young woman is found dead by a lake shore in a small town. The police inspector (Toni Servillo, whose performance won the Pasinetti Award for Best Actor at Venice) ultimately unravels this complex and fascinating case, which involves a number of townspeople from different strata of society.

Francesca Comencini's documentary, In the Factory, dissects the places that were more than just workplaces, helping to define an entire class and transform Italy into a major industrial power. Comencini states: "It's a story of workers' faces … a mosaic of voices and dialects from the southern to northern Italy … an image of Italy."

Concurrently, in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery, adjacent to the theater, an exhibition entitled CliCiak: Photos from Italian Cinema will be shown. Selected from a national Italian competition held by the Town of Cesena Cinema Center, the exhibit features the work of still photographers who have been engaged on movie sets.

Diana Barth writes and publishes New Millennium, an arts newsletter.