Italy
Exclusive: Friar Alessandro, The Voice of AssisiSunday, 07 October 2012
By day, Friar Alessandro Brustenghi lives and works in the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Assisi. In his spare time, he works as a carpenter. But he also has a new career as, in the words of his producer Mike Hedges, “the next Italian... Read more... |
DVD: Corpo CelesteMonday, 10 September 2012
The onset of puberty is difficult, and especially so for girls in art house films. Marta is 12 and has been away from Italy for 10 years. In the days after returning with her mother and sister, she contends with being prepared for her first... Read more... |
DVD: RoGoPaGSunday, 02 September 2012
Even though their names are bound together in the portmanteau title, the directors of the four short films that make up RoGoPaG - Rossellini, Godard, Pasolini and Gregoretti - don't go for any sort of narrative tie-ins. The only thing that links the... Read more... |
Berberian Sound StudioMonday, 27 August 2012
If in space no one can hear you scream, that’s certainly not a problem you’ll experience in a giallo sound studio. Known for their high anxiety and buckets of blood, the Italian giallos of the Sixties and Seventies gave us heinous horror, drenched... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Porretta Soul Music FestivalSaturday, 28 July 2012
Way up in the mountains of northern Italy sits a small spa town called Porretta Terme. For many visitors it is the resort’s healing waters that brings them here. Yet for others it is the healing music – once a year the Porretta Soul Music Festival... Read more... |
The Hawks and the Sparrows/ PigstyFriday, 27 July 2012
The tone of these two new Pier Paolo Pasolini's re-releases couldn't be more different. The Hawks and the Sparrows stars the Italian prince of laughter Totò and one of Pasolini's most popular Calabrian peasant-actors (and lovers) Ninetto Davoli, and... Read more... |
Palermo, Palermo, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsTuesday, 03 July 2012
The curtain rises onto a wall that totally blocks the view. A long silence... then, without warning, the wall collapses – to cheers of delight from the audience. For the rest of the evening, the dancers have to pick their way over rubble strewn... Read more... |
Viktor, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Sadler's WellsThursday, 07 June 2012
It stymies any tourist to sum up for others what they saw abroad. Still more challenging, to create (or recreate) for theatre as a choreographer something more than superficial, more than clichéd about Italy, Japan, Los Angeles, Istanbul, these most... Read more... |
La Cenerentola, Glyndebourne Festival OperaThursday, 24 May 2012
Rossini's La Cenerentola is not an opera that I'd normally recommend to anyone with even half a brain. It takes the simple if mildly nauseating little tale of Cinderella, pads it out with parental abuse and drawn out cliffhangers, and ends in a pass... Read more... |
Shakespeare in Italy, BBC TwoFriday, 04 May 2012
Francesco da Mosto’s two-parter is ostensibly about the Bard and his fascination with the TV historian’s native Italy. In reality, it’s a film about da Mosto and his apparently God-given, below-the-belt hotness. Given the camera’s ceaseless drooling... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Julius Caesar, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 03 May 2012
There has long been a conviction in Italian drama circles that there exists a “Special Relationship” between themselves and il Bardo di Stratford: something to do with the complexities of Elizabethan English syntax and the unusual amount of words of... Read more... |
Corpo CelesteFriday, 30 March 2012
Now here is something genuinely original and genuinely innovative coming out of Italian cinema, a very welcome surprise. Alice Rohrwacher’s debut feature film has a freshness of outlook and a sharpness of overview that could put many of her more... Read more... |
