ITALIAN CINEMA IN THE FAR EAST
In October 2020, Cineforum Robert Bresson turns twenty years old. Looking good for its age, even though with some aches and pain, tested by the pandemic as everyone else, but as active as ever. Among the many initiatives, Cineforum Robert Bresson promotes once again Italian film and culture abroad, particularly in the countries of the Far East. Thanks to the extraordinary work of our institutional headquarters in Hanoi and Bangkok, to the Ambassadors Antonio Alessandro and Lorenzo Galanti, we will promote the best new Italian cinema of the last years in several Southeast Asian countries. We will be in Thailand, in Chiang Mai, the second most important city in the country, fundamental cultural centre, on October 31st and on November 1st. Then we will be in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh, from November 6th to 8th, and to the Bophana Center in Hanoi, in Vietnam, from November 13th to 17th, and finally in Ho Chi Minh City, also in Vietnam, in the middle of December.
The following films will be projected in those locations, in important venues, rigorously in presence: Carlo Sironi’s “Sole” recently nominated to the EFA Awards, a difficult portrait of an alienation of the soul; Laura Luchetti’s “Fiore gemello”, an intense love story between an immigrant and a young girl, without easy sentimentalisms; “Bangla”, another film that focuses on the immigration issue with irony and sarcasm; Federico Bondi’s “Dafne”, one of the most awarded Italian film abroad in the last two years that deals with the theme of disability carefully and with decency without resorting to a blackmailing approach; Claudio Giovannesi’s “La paranza dei bambini” based on Roberto Saviano’s novel; and Antonio Farisi’s “Quaffer”, an anthropological comedy that tells the story of the first divorce in a town in Irpinia in the 70s, before the tragic earthquake of 1980.
The promotional activities of Italian cinema abroad will be accompanied by the usual activities in Italy. “Through the Looking Glass International Film Festival” second edition will take place in November in Milan, with many projects, conventions, meetings, projections of unreleased films belonging to the fantasy and science fiction genre from the whole world: an event that looks and thinks about the future, in a moment in which the present is so dramatic and distressing. The 17th edition of the “Asian Film Festival” took place from July 30th to August 5th of this year at Casa del Cinema in Rome with great success.
Like fifteen years ago, when Cineforum Robert Bresson was the protagonist of similar festivals in Indonesia in 2006, “Arcobaleno italiano” in Vietnam in 2007, in Thailand and Malesia in 2008 and in India in 2009, this tour is possible thanks to the Italian embassy in Bangkok, the Italian embassy in Hanoi, to the Cambogia Film Commission, to the Cambodian Minister of Culture, to the Vietnamese Minister of Culture, and to the Punya Movie Club in Chiang Mai. A special thank you also to Donsaron Kovitnavitcha, Tonino Mannella and Domenico D’Andrea.
Antonio Termenini
Robert Bresson Cineforum
