ANTONIONI NON-FICTION FILMMAKER

Very few are aware of the fact or even imagine that Michelangelo Antonioni was a fine and original Non-Fiction filmmaker, in fact throughtout his long carreer he shot 17 documentaries. Chung kuo - Cina, his best known non-fiction film, is a work of incredible value, not only because just to be admitted with a film crew in 1972 China was already an exceptional achievement (rumors has it that the Italian Communist Party had to negotiate a political deal with the Peoples' Republic to allow Antonioni and his crew to enter the country), but especially because of its superbe quality in cinematic terms and the unique nature of the footage. An extraordinary film for which Antonioni leaves behind the metaphisical enchantments of his fiction works and adopts an intimate gaze, on a more human/e scale, to enter the daily life of a Nation known for its absolute closure towards the strangers' eyes and its political adversion for any outside world's intrusion. The same careful and intimate look marks all of Antonioni's documentaries, first of all L'amorosa menzogna (1949), an original film on the popular phenomenon of "picture stories", a theme that Federico Fellini will develop later on in his film Lo Sceicco Bianco (1952).

In a time when most media commemorates the italian Master for his "major" works, common heritage without shade of dubt, we like not to neglect his sublime Non-Fiction production, which is little represented and celebrated, but not less worthwhile and important.

Thus, we like to point out the screening of Sette Canne e un Vestito (1949) on August 14 at the Lagunamovies in Grado (Italy); the film, of which Antonioni is also writer and editor, follows the renewal of the activities of Snia Viscosa, a factory in the North-East of Italy, after the WWII bombings of 1944 and 1945.

We further like to remind that Chung kuo - Cina has been recently released on DVD by Feltrinelli

And, least but not last, we like to publish the list of Antonioni's documentaries. We know they are very hard to find, but just in case someone might get the chance to see any of them we like to hear everything about it:

* Gente del Po, finished in 1947 (1943)
* N. U. - Nettezza urbana (1948)
* Oltre l'oblio (1948)
* Roma-Montevideo (1948)
* L'amorosa menzogna (1949)
* Sette canne e un vestito, restaured by Cineteca del Friuli in 1995 (1949)
* Bomarzo (1949)
* Ragazze in bianco (1949)
* Superstizione (1949)
* La villa dei mostri (1950)
* La funivia del Faloria (1950)
* Chung-Kuo, Cina (1972)
* Ritorno a Lisca Bianca (1983)
* Fotoromanza, music video for Gianna Nannini (1984)
* 12 registi per 12 città: Roma (promotional video for "Italia '90" World Cup) (1990)
* Noto, Mandorli, Vulcano, Stromboli, Carnevale (1992)
* Lo sguardo di Michelangelo (2004)

Here is the beginning of Chung Kuo - Cina by Michelangelo Antonioni


LINKS: Eco and Sontag comment on the Chung Kuo - Cina case

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A TRIBUTE TO THE LOVE GODDESS

As the seasonal celebrations of the 7th Art are en route to Cannes, we like to stop along the way to dedicate a minute of our thoughts to Hollywood's hey-days legend Rita Hayworth, who passed away exactly 20 years ago. Italian Satellite channel Studio Universal (channel 320) devotes to the late actress a cycle of 3 films and a documentary, starting tonight with You'll Never Get Rich (1941) by Sidney Lanfield.

Margarita Carmen Cansino, started her career in 1933 as a dancer. Success strucks in 1941 with You'll Never Get Rich, where she stars cheek-to-cheek with Fred Astaire, and in Strawberry Blond by Raoul Walsh, co-starring with James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland.

Beautiful beyond belief, Hayworth was the perfect incarnation of Gilda by Charles Vidor, the role of a lifetime...in every sense of the word, since she got so close to her on-screen persona to never again being able to walk away from it. Rita is often quoted to have said "Every man I have ever known has fallen in love with Gilda and awakened with me." The quote mirrors the dramatic turns her life took, afflicted as it was by unhappy marriages (Hayworth went in by the church aisle and out by the court door five times, two of which with Orson Welles and Prince Aly Khan, son of the Aga Khan), depression, addiction and, later on, alzheimer that ultimately sealed her fate with death in 1987, at the age of 68. But even the devastating disease, which left her completely helpless, did not tarnish the glorious image of Rita Hayworth, the ever shining film star, the universal symbol of sensualty beaming from the silver screen.

Enjoy the beautiful dance scene with Fred Astaire that made Rita Hayworth a star:

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Berlinale Retrospective 2007: City Girls. Images of Women in Silent Film

A bobbed hairdo, a bold gaze, confident manners and an active working life, all traits defining the stereotyped image of women whose myth persists in the term “New Woman”. This shift in the role of women in society is also the expression of political upheaval and social changes at the beginning of the 20th century. City Girls. Images of Women in Silent Film, the Retrospective of the 57th Berlin International Film Festival reflects the portrayal of this new type of woman on the screen.
“The ‘little shopgirls’ who belonged to the salaried masses mentioned by Siegfried Kracauer, were a new social phenomenon – although their existence was by no means more secure than that of their blue-collar counterparts. True, for the most part, the cinema romanticized their lives; nonetheless, it focused on them with astonishing frequency. The films promised a blissful marriage with a wealthy man – while also depicting day-to-day life prior to the inevitable happy end”, comments Dr. Rainer Rother, head of the Retrospective and artistic director of the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen.
The setting of such female independence, mobility and libertinage is the big city. In its bright lights, these early films reflect different forms of changing values. Through the cinema, role models and clichés of the “New Woman” spread quickly: the demonic seductress of the turn of the century gradually gives way to the jaunty looking modern girl. An Eton crop, narrow hips and a flat chest are en vogue; ladies’ choice and Charleston, à la mode. Flappers flirt to the rhythms of jazz – the city girl takes over screens.

The Retrospective introduces a total of 30 silent films devided in 4 programs titled Working Girls, Flaming Youth, Husbands and Wives, and Fate and Passion. Working Girls features popular actresses playing roles of young salesgirls or office girls: Norma Talmadge is The Social Secretary (John Emerson, USA 1916); Clara Bow, the It-Girl (Clarence Badger, USA 1926/27) with that certain something.

The program Flaming Youth means to depict the radiant lightheartedness that was the theme of many films of the silent era: in Ernst Lubitsch’s turbulent comedy I Don’t Want to Be a Man (Germany 1918) Ossi Oswalda couldn’t care less about social conventions and he's just as impulsively capricious as are the two British serial heroines Alma Taylor and Chrissie White in Tilly’s Party (Lewin Fitzhamon, 1911).

The social changes mirrored in the era's role models mixed things up at the very heart of society: gender roles and the family, pictured in the program Husbands and Wives. The issue is deepened with the screening of films such as Abram Room’s social study Tretya Meshchanskaya (Bed and Sofa, USSR 1927) Carl Theodor Dreyer’s drama about a marriage Du skal ære din hustru (Master of the House, Denmark 1925).

Fate and Passion program brings together films portraying independent City girls, seductive, smart and glamorous. Yet these women are surrounded by the distinctive "fin de siècle" decadence. On screen are Vera Chernova in Yevgeni Bauer’s Sumerki zenskoi dushi (Twilight of a Woman’s Soul, Russia 1913) and Francesca Bertini in Assunta Spina by Gustavo Serena (Italy 1914).

On worldwide screens, the silent era propagated a new type of woman, one which still stands for modernity. In today’s debate of gender roles, many parallels can be drawn to the discussion of emancipation in this era, says Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick.

The Retrospective films will be screened at the CinemaxX on Potsdamer Platz and at the Zeughauskino. Two publications will accompany the series: The book City Girls: Frauenbilder im Stummfilm (Women’s Pictures in Silent Film), with essays by Daniela Sannwald, Annette Brauerhoch, Heike-Melba Fendel, and Fabienne Liptay, and the journal FilmHeft 11, which offers contemporary reviews (in German and English), and detailed information on the Retrospective screenings.


related links: what is "New Woman"? – what is the "Flapper"? – Sigfried Kracauer on book – Clara Bow on wikipedia – Ernst Lubitsch on wikipedia – Carl Theodor Dreyer on wikipedia – Francesca Bertini on wikipedia – SilentLadies.com –

VIDEO: Norma Talmadge The Helpful (?) Sisterhood; Clara Bow It; Ernst Lubitsch To Be or Not To Be, more E.L. on youtube; Carl Theodor Dreyer Vampyr Der Traum des Allan Grey (whole film), more C.T.D. on youtube; Francesca Bertini Il Mercante di Venezia

Love Among Millionaires (1930) by Frank Tuttle, starring Clara Bow

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