The art of la Dolce Vita

Published May 16, 2014

Share

Arts writer

SOME OF the greatest directors of all time are being featured as the Labia on Orange celebrates its 65th anniversary with Cinema Italian Style, a romantic tribute to its country of origin, from today until May 29. A fabulous collection of classics from the Labia vaults will be shown during the bumper festival.

Master animator Bruno Bozzetto offers his irreverent tribute to Disney’s Fantasia in Allegro Non Troppo. In a riot of colour and classical music in six episodes, cartoon creatures march, slither and bounce to the classical rhythms of Debussy, Dvorak, Ravel, Sibelius, Vivaldi and Stravinsky. Maurizio Nichetti (of The Icicle Thief fame) stars in the equally wild live-action sequences that introduce each piece.

Nino Manfredi and Anna Karina star in Franco Brusati’s comic yet poignant Bread and Chocolate, the story of an Italian immigrant working odd jobs in Switzerland and trying desperately to fit in.

Ricky Tognazzi’s Canone Inverso(Making Love) is a story of music, passion and destiny in which a violinist stumbles upon the unknown Jewish half of his family. Celebrate youth, friendship and the magic of the movies with Cinema Paradiso (The Director’s Cut).

In City of Women, a Federico Fellini film, Marcello Mastroianni is cast as a modern-day Don Juan, set adrift on the erotically stormy seas of middle age and feminism. Heavyweight Fellini features again on the programme with the unforgettable Satyricon– a spectacle of bizarre characters. Here Fellini again assembles a cast of freaks, royalty and hermaphrodites in scenes ranging from orgies to flagellations and suicides.

Based on a true story and winner of the Golden Globe for best foreign language film, Farinelli (Il Castrato), is an account of the career and tortured private life of the 18th century’s greatest castrato singer.

Ettore Scola’s Le Bal (The Ball) tells the history of 20th century Europe, using music and dance. The soundtrack includes works by Chopin, Irving Berlin, John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

The controversial 1975 Lina Wertmüller film Seven Beauties zooms in on a petty thief who lives off his seven sisters while claiming to protect their honour. When he is sent to a concentration camp his plan is to escape by seducing a woman warder.

Michael Pitt, Eva Green and Louis Garrel star in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers– the erotic story of three young students brought together by their passion for movies.

Another winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and 26 other major international awards, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, centres on the Finzi-Continis who languish in aristocratic splendour on their estate in Italy amid the ravages of World War II.

Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling feature in Liliana Cavani’s provocative classic, The Night Porter. A concentration camp survivor discovers her former torturer and lover working as a night porter at a hotel in post-war Vienna.

l Films are screened in English or with English subtitles. No under-18s. Tickets are R35. To book, call 021 424 5927, or see www.thelabia.co.za

Related Topics: