Liliana Cavani

Great Directors

Features conversations with ten of the world's greatest living directors: Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles. The film documents Ismailos' voyage of discovering the creative personalities behind the camera.

Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema

The film consists largely of a series of interviews with female filmmakers from several different countries and filmmaking eras. Some, such as Agnès Varda and Catherine Breillat (both from France), have been making films for decades in a conscious effort to provide an alternative to the male filmmaking model; others, such as Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia) and Carine Adler (England), are relative newcomers to directing, and their approaches seem more personal and less political. The film as a whole manages to cover some important topics in the feminist debate about film -- how does one construct a female gaze, how can one film nude bodies without objectifying the actors (of either sex), what constitutes a strong female role -- while also making it clear that “women’s film” comprises as many different approaches to filmmaking as there are female filmmakers.

Oltre il tempo, l'amore

The encounter between physics and cinema and the terribly topical subject of the end of the world turned the set of Liliana Cavani's The order of time into a kind of Noah's Ark, where cast and crew isolated themselves for five weeks. Flooded by the climate emergency, wars, and the dystopian future, while Cavani holds the helm of the ship and Carlo Rovelli explains the end of time, the film's meteorite becomes in the documentary a metaphor for what happens in the protagonists' real lives.

The Enigmatic Charlotte Rampling

Screen icon Charlotte Rampling has fascinated the world of cinema, fashion and photography with her mysterious and almost inaccessible beauty. A major figure in genre and auteur films, she is unclassifiable: between presence and absence, shyness and audacity, she's always hypnotic, magnetic and fascinating. From her film debut in the mid-1960s in England, to her unconventional career path, through the tragic loss suicide of her older sister that will irremediably mark her acting, this film is a dive into the existential quest of a complex actress, whose every facet is discovered through her roles. Through a conversation with the actress herself, along with personal archives and extracts from her films, this documentary raws a dazzling portrait of her life and career.

Ennio

A portrait of Ennio Morricone, the most popular and prolific film composer of the 20th century, the one most loved by the international public, a two-time Oscar winner and the author of over five hundred unforgettable scores.

A Man Falling

Foreclosed to the future, hope is in the past. Foreclosed the space, hope is inside time. We haven't seen each other again. It was not our mouth and nose that were covered with a mask, but our eyes. We couldn't see each other during the pandemic. The mask was on the eyes like that of the protagonist of Chris Marker's film, La Jetée. Perhaps it is from this film that is so important that one could start looking at the world again,try to figure out how much of what we were has been deposited in the filters of memorial.

Marina Cicogna - La vita e tutto il resto

A documentary about the historic film producer, the first woman to make her mark in a predominantly male environment. A key figure in the great season of Italian auteur cinema between the late 1960s and the 1970s, Marina Cicogna worked with great directors and actors, winning an Oscar with "Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion" by Elio Petri and a Golden Lion with "Belle de Jour" by Luis Buñuel in Venice.

Opera Prima

Opera Prima is a tribute and a journey through the evolution that cinema has had in Italy. Tayu Vlietstra, a pupil of Bertolucci, carries out an investigation on the first work of six of the most authoritative and beloved Italian directors. The result is an unpublished and precious document that reveals the emotions and expectations of directors grappling with their cinematic debut. Mario Monicelli, Bernardo Bertolucci, Lina Wertmüller, Marco Bellocchio, Liliana Cavani and Francesca Archibugi offer a still current evolution on the needs and difficulties of making cinema in our country.

La TV di Liliana Cavani. Un romanzo di formazione

Liliana Cavani, before becoming an established filmmaker in Italy and in the world, was a young and brilliant documentary filmmaker in Ettore Bernabei's Rai. Just graduated from the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, in just five years, from 1961 to 1966, Cavani produced over ten memorable programs, ranging from the editing documentary on the great history of the twentieth century to the investigation into the social, economic and cultural transformations of our country. A little-known image journey with a very high documentary and artistic value that reaches up to the TV film on Francesco d'Assisi, the first of his trilogy on the saint is the trait d'union between her documentary career and the debut of her cinematographic career.

Fascism on a Thread: The Strange Story of Nazisploitation Cinema

Feature length documentary on the cult sub-genre featuring interviews with Dyanne ‘Ilsa’ Thorne, Malissa ‘Elsa’ Longo, filmmakers Sergio Garrone, Mariano Caiano, Rino Di Silvestro, Liliana Cavani, Bruno Mattei, and many more.

Dante Ferretti: Production Designer

The Documentary Dante Ferretti – Production Designer retraces the life and the career of Dante Ferretti, the famous Italian Artist and Production Designer.

What Do You Know About Me

Until the 1970s, Italian cinema dominated the international scene, even competing with Hollywood. Then, in just a few years, came its rapid decline, the flight of our greatest producers, a crisis among the best writer-directors, the collapse of production. But what are the true causes and circumstances of this decline? In an attempt to provide an answer to this question, Di Me Cosa Ne Sai strives to depict this great cultural change. Begun as a loving examination of Italian cinema, the film transformed into a docu-drama that alternates between interviews with the great names of the past and fragments of cultural and political life of the last 30 years. It is a travel diary that shows Italy from north to south, through movie theatres; television-addicted kids; Berlusconi and Fellini; shopping centers; TV news editors; stories of impassioned film exhibitors and directors who fight for their films; and interviews with itinerant projectionists and great European directors.

Marcello, una vita dolce

After shooting to fame with Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960), actor Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) starred in more than 160 films in his nearly half-a-century career. Directors Mario Canale and Annarosa Morri look into the melancholic charm of one of the most famous Italian actors through interviews with his two daughters, Barbara and Chiara; directors Fellini and Luchino Visconti; actresses Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee; and in archival footage of Mastroianni himself. The subject matter ranges from Mastroianni’s passion for kidney-bean pasta and his addiction to the telephone to his famous laziness, humility and talent. Shown in black-and-white, Mastroianni — elegantly holding a cigarette in between his fingers — is undeniably the dandy.

Ulla's Fete

A filmed record of a bizarre garden party organized to pay a fine incurred by singer Ulla for "liberating a chandelier from Harrods."