The Italian Cultural Institute in New York is pleased to welcome iconic Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani for a Round table discussion focused on her three films dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi: Francesco d’Assisi (1966), Francesco (1989) and Francesco (2014).
The initiative is part of “Celebrating Liliana Cavani’s Life and Films” a whole week of activities (film screenings, seminars with students, lectures) organized with – and co-sponsored by – Princeton University, from March 27 to 31.
Liliana Cavani began her professional career making historical documentaries between 1961 and 1965, which included “History of the Third Reich”(1962–1963) “The Stalin Years”; “The Woman in the Resistance” (1965),”Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy”, winner of the Golden Lion at Venice film festival in 1965 in the documentary section.
Her first full-length feature is “Francis of Assisi”, actually the first film made by RAI television in 1966. Acclaimed as the most controversial film of the year, the movie – which got an extraordinary success with about 20 million viewers, presents the charm and complexity of the figure of Francesco.
Numerous other films by Cavani would follow, including “Galileo” (1969), “The Cannibals” (1968), “Milarepa” (1973), “The Night Porter” – the film that gives her international recognition – “The Skin” (1981), “The Berlin Affair” (1985), the second “Francesco” (1989), “Ripley’s Game” (2002) and the third “Francesco” (2014) a miniseries made for the television.
Liliana Cavani has also directed several operas (Verdi, Puccini, Gluck) and plays (Pirandello, Eduardo De Filippo). She is currently editing “The Order of Time”, inspired by the book by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli.
About the speakers:
Millicent Marcus is Sarai Ribicoff Professor of Italian Studies at Yale University. Her specializations include medieval literature, Italian cinema, inter-relationships between literature and film, and representations of the Holocaust in post-war Italian culture.
Maria DiBattista Charles Barnwell Straut 1923 Professor of English at Princeton University, has written extensively on modern literature, popular and pulp fiction, and filmHer work on film includes essays on Hitchcock, Lubitsch, and a study of American screwball comedy, Fast Talking Dames.
Flavia Laviosa is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Italian Studies at Wellesley College. Her research interests are in Italian women filmmakers. She is the founder and Editor in-Chief of the Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies and the book series Trajectories
Gaetana Marrone-Puglia, professor of Italian Studies at Princeton University, specializes in modern Italian literature and postwar Italian cinema. She is the author of several books, including The Gaze and the Labyrinth: The Cinema of Liliana Cavani (2000. She has just published a new book, The Cinema of Francesco Rosi (Oxford UP, 2020), awarded the Premio Internazionale Flaiano 2021 and the Premio “Letteratura” 2020-22 by Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Napoli. She is currently working on Eleonora Duse’s American tours.
Information
Date: Friday, March 31, 2023
Time: From 4:00 pm To 7:00 pm
Organized by : IIC-NY
Entrance : Free
