7:45 pm - Welcoming Remarks

Nicola M. Gentili, Director, Film at International House
Millicent Marcus, Director, Center for Italian Studies
 

8:00 pm - Film Screening

LA CAPAGIRA
Directed by Alessandro Piva, 1999, 75 minutes, B&W, in Italian with English subtitles

Bari is in the last days of a very cold winter. A group of a small-time crooks cruises through the suburbs of the city by day and by night on the look out for a precious package, which was sent from the Balkans but never reached its address. What does the package contain? Important goods for our crooks and a master key with which the audience can open the doors to a surprising urban underworld.

8:00 pm - Film Screening

IL MANOSCRITTO DEL PRINCIPE (THE PRINCE'S MANUSCRIPT)
Directed by Roberto Andò, 2000, 106 minutes, Color, in Italian with English subtitles

Early '50s. A solitary, disappointed, proud and educated old man meets and becomes the teacher of an intelligent, clumsy, middle-class, young would-be writer. An intense working relationship starts: at first, they are drawn to one another, but at the end their liaison becomes quite conflictual. The film is inspired by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's biography and by his meeting, in 1953, with Francesco Orlando. The latter, together with Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, had the privilege to serve an intense apprenticeship with the Prince and, later in life, became an expert in French literature. The film portrays a psychological game in which the passing on of a moral inheritance represents the award, or rather the essential meaning of life. The story is set in Palermo, capital city of an ever increasing corruption: the city is inhabited by a decadent aristocracy that barely survives, in a parasitic manner, and by a greedy, emerging political class ready to sell off the wealth of the past. The heart of the film is represented by the "Prince's lessons" in the library. Lampedusa proposes many literature masterpieces, and during these moments art is confronted with existence itself and the lessons become a vehicle towards a deeper meaning of life. 

7:15 pm - Welcoming Remarks

Nicola M. Gentili, Director, Film at International House
 

7:30 pm - Panel Discussion

Millicent Marcus, University of Pennsylvania
Antonio Monda, New York University
 

8:00 pm - Film Screening

COME TE NESSUNO MAI (BUT FOREVER IN MY MIND)
Directed by Gabriele Muccino, 1999, 88 minutes, Color, in Italian with English subtitles

A large group of teenage activists are occupying their high school as part of a protest against privatized education and efforts for greater standardization among students. One of them, Silvio, is more than a bit preoccupied by Valentina, a pretty girl in his class who unfortunately already has a boyfriend. Silvio makes the mistake of telling his best friend about it. Soon the entire school knows. As things get more complicated for him at school, Silvio finds no respite at home. His parents want to know why they don't talk anymore, his brother needs romantic advice, and his sister has a secret.

8:00 pm - Film Screening

LE FATE IGNORANTI (BLIND FAIRIES)
Directed by Ferzan Ozpetek, 2001, 106 minutes, Color, in Italian with English subtitles

Antonia and Massimo have been married for over a decade. They live in a beautiful house on the outskirts of Rome, and they are happy. Massimo dies suddenly in a car accident. Antonia cannot get over Massimo's death. She lets herself go, does not go to work and neglects her friends and colleagues. She locks herself into her pain. One day she finds out that Massimo had been having an affair for the last seven years of his life. Armed with only a name and an address, she goes to the house of her husband's lover, and instead of finding another woman, she finds a man, Michele. The two of them have a highly charged confrontation, but they also find that they are attracted to one another; after all, they both loved the same man. As they get to know one another better, Antonia and Michele discover that they have a lot in common apart from what they shared with Massimo. The experience Antonia lives through with Michele and his friends not only absorbs her pain but also makes her understand that she has always lived shielding herself from the real world. She finds she is now ready to start over again.

7:00 pm - Film Screening

SOLE NEGLI OCCHI (SUN IN THE EYES)
Directed by Andrea Porporati, 2000, 91 minutes, Color, Italian with English subtitles

Marco murders his father. It is one of the many unexplainable crimes that the press attributes to a "raptus of madness". Marco's life was very similar to many others in the prosperity of northern Italy. Yet there is a fracture in him, kept under the surface of normality, an apparently unexplainable hate for his father, growing day by day, year after year, that explodes in murder. After the murder, Marco finds refuge in a seaside area, in a small hotel, among the tourists on holiday. That is where Rinaldi finds him. Rinaldi is a policeman who suspects him, yet realizes that this isn't an ordinary criminal. Fate would have it that in the room next to Marco's, a young adolescent girl is going through her first love and will never know that the young man next door is a murderer. That small impossible sentiment, so slight and destructive is irresistible to Marco. It is the beginning of a deep crisis, the chance to open his eyes to the real reasons that led him to murder: the mystery of the banality of evil.

ALL EVENTS TAKE PLACE AT THE

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE
3701 CHESTNUT STREET
PHILADELPHIA, PA 19104

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

INFORMATION
215.898.6040
italians@sas.upenn.edu

Center for Italian Studies