6th Italian Film and Food Fest

Get your appetites ready and begin fasting to prepare for our annual feast for the senses: the 6th Italian Film and Food Festival, co-presented by the Richmond Moving Image Co-op, Mamma ‘Zu, Edo’s Squid and 8 1/2, on Saturday, January 31, all day at the event space at Plant Zero Art Center, 0 East 4th Street, off Hull Street just south of the 14th Street/Mayo Bridge.

The Italian Film and Food Festival is a fundraising event for the all volunteer nonprofit Richmond Moving Image Co-op, which promotes and supports independent media arts in Virginia and presents the annual James River Film Festival, Flicker, the new James River Filmmakers Forum and other independent film programs throughout the year. Profits from the event allow RMIC to bring filmmakers to Richmond

All day passes are $45 each and are available in advance at Video Fan, 403 N. Strawberry Street in the Fan or at the door on the day of the event. Tickets for individual films are $15 each and can only be purchased the day of the event. Tickets for all four shows may be purchased anytime after 10:30 a.m., when our volunteers open the box office. All tickets include the movie and mouthwatering Italian fare. Beverages are sold separately.

On Saturday, January 31, we will present four Italian films, in Italian with English subtitles.

11 am-Antony and Cleopatra (Director: Enrico Guazzoni, 1913, 85 min., silent) with live piano score by Dr. James Doering, Department of Music, Randolph-Macon College.
The classic tale of passion and tragedy on an epic scale – shot on location in Egypt and Italy, with stunning sets and a cast of thousands, from the director of Quo Vadis – Antony and Cleopatra is a bona fide superspectacle. In 1914, an American distributor commissioned George Colburn to score the film’s Chicago premiere, and though it was only performed live in selected venues, the composer’s achievement ranks as one of the earliest examples of thematic scoring for a feature film. Dr. Doering has reconstructed the score from surviving sources in the Library of Congress so you can experience it just as American audiences may have in 1914! Dr. Doering premiered this film performance at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC last fall. Don’t miss this rare filmic experience!!! (Piano courtesy of Richmond Piano)

2 pm-Ossessione (Director: Luchino Visconti, 1943, 135 min.) Banned for years in and outside of Italy, and based on American writer James M. Cain’s Postman Always Rings Twice, Ossessione is generally credited as the film that anticipated the ensuing Italian Neorealist films of 1944-51. With the armistice of 1943 signed, Fascist control of the industry relaxed, and director Visconti’s bleak vision of sexual passion and murder set against the stark landscapes of Ferrara was given the OK, but upon its completion was cut by censors to half its running length. Even in its abridged form Ossessione’s importance was assured, announcing the coming of a new kind of Italian cinema – one that would leave the studios for locations in the streets and countrysides to probe the lives of working class Italians in the post-WWII years. Note: this is the restored version!

5 pm-The Icicle Thief / Ladri di Saponette (Director: Maurizio Nichetti, 1989, 85 min.) A major art-house hit here in the U.S. on its release in 1990, The Icicle Thief is one of the funniest comedies ever to come out of Italy. Not merely a parody of DeSica’s masterpiece, The Bicycle Thief, this hilarious loving tribute to Neo-realism, fantasy and vaudeville slapstick careens across the screen like a chandelier balanced on the handlebars of a runaway bicycle. Starring Nichetti as a director forced to enter the fictional screen world to save his creation from crass commercial interests, this gem from the maker of Volere, Volare evokes comparisons to Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr.

8 pm-The Orange Thief (Director: Boogie Dean, Vinnie Angel, Artie Wilinski, 2007, 84 min.) with co-director Vinnie Angel on hand to introduce the film and do a Q&A afterward!! Audacious, dark comic tale of cocky, penniless orange thief who dreams someday of owning a piece of his beloved Sicily – to be a landowner he would do almost anything. When he ends up in jail, his dream gets a breath of opportunity–he’s offered a deal he can’t refuse by his bellicose and philosophical cellmate, Turrido the Smooth Blade. The San Francisco Chronicle called it a “Surprise hit”; “Wildly original”, said the Woodstock Film Festival; the Philadelphia Film Festival pronounced it “Best Film”.