The Lavazza Italian Film Festival is back again for its 15th edition, gracing Sydney’s Palace cinemas from 18 September to 12 October, with a diverse lineup of 34 new films plus a special Closing Night screening of a new 4K restoration of Vittorio De Sica’s 1964 classic Marriage, Italian Style.
Amour Fou
Involving a darkly comic retelling of the infamous double suicide in 1811 of author Heinrich von Kleist, Amour Fou is a formally rigorous period piece crafted with exacting precision by Austrian director Jessica Hausner, perfectly evoking the claustrophobia and austerity of the aristocratic circle Kleist ultimately forced his exit from.
Stray Dogs
Tsai Ming Liang’s Stray Dogs is a perfectly realised, distilled-to-its-purest-essence poetic work of tremendous emotional power
Ping Pong Summer
Failing to deliver on its promise as a comedy, Ping Pong Summer is an aggressively forgettable film, for serious 80s diehards only.
Jimmy’s Hall
Based on the real life and times of Irishman Jimmy Gralton, veteran director Ken Loach’s latest film Jimmy’s Hall constitutes a heartfelt if one-sided portrait of a man and his struggle for freedom against the oppression of Church and State.
The Wonders (Le meraviglie)
Alice Rohrwacher’s Grand Prix-winning film comes to the Festival circuit with a very strong reputation, and it impresses as a touching family story that is intimately and masterfully told.
The Salt of the Earth
Wim Wenders’ latest Cannes-selected documentary The Salt of the Earth constitutes a visually arresting and moving portrait of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, co-directed by his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.
China, Hollywood and Spike Jonze’s Her
Spike Jonze’s Her follows in the footsteps of recent films like Looper in shooting major scenes, in this case a large amount of the film, in China. We look at the use of Shanghai’s architecture and skyline here.
Strategies of Representation in Fatih Akin’s Head-On
Fatih Akin’s 2004 film Head-On (Gegen die Wand) defies easy categorisation into a particular film genre, marked as it is by contradiction. For while building a sense of realism and linear drama within the film, Akin simultaneously exposes the artifice of this drama with the frequent employment of Brechtian distancing strategies. Akin has himself acknowledged the particular influence