Friday, July 5, 2013

Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Awards



I just got home from Bologna, where I attended "Il Cinema Ritrovato" 2013. Here you can have a look at the DVD Awards ceremony.


Gli ultimi (already reviewed here) won as the Best DVD of the year.
Also, Geoff Gardner wrote a nice appreciation of the film:
The Award for Best DVD of the year at the Bologna Cinema Ritrovato to Gli Ultimi. It was made in the Friuli region in 1963 and not long after fell into obscurity. Friuli, a northern province which was Pasolini’s birthplace, has its own Cineteca and it supervised the restoration work and commissioned the 150 page publication, only in Italian, that accompanies the DVD. The film itself is a sensitive story of a young peasant boy growing up in the depression years of the 30s. The son of a farm labourer he tends several sheep, is mercilessly bullied at school and lives with his family in dirt poor surroundings. The family diet is polenta (il cibo della miseria) and vegetables. The village is hollowing out as most of the able bodied men have headed for Belgium to work in the coal mines. Fascism gets only a brief nod via a ranter in the local pub. The black and white photography by Armando Nannuzzi is beautiful to behold. Singling the film out for this attention had one immediate positive effect. Nobody having heard of it there was a run on the available copies being offered at the Cineteca’s book and DVD stall and it sold out quickly.

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