The Rome Film Festival also speaks Sicilianthe event dedicated to the Seventh Art which begins tomorrow and will immerse the Capital in the magical and in some ways enchanted atmospheres of celluloid until Sunday 27 October. There are many screenings on the bill and there are plenty to enrich the vast programme three productions linked to the land of Sicily. Two of these are films, «Eterno visionario» and «Paradise on earth», the third, «Miss Fallaci», is a television seriesa format that has now fully entered into the interests of the public and which manages to “churn out” products of excellent workmanship so much so as to deserve its own space also in the prestigious Roman event. As an absolute preview, «Paradise for sale» will be screened at the Rome Film Festival on Thursday, on Saturday it will be the turn of «Eterno visionario», while on Monday 21st it will be the turn of «Miss Fallaci».
The big and small screen undoubtedly represent a vehicle of culture. And the showcase offered by the Roman event is certainly an excellent spotlight for Sicily. In the three productions there are wonderful places rich in history and stories, famous people, established actors. All with a common origin, the Sicilian one.
Eterno visionario tells a part of the life of Luigi Pirandello. Director Michele Placido seems to be the master of an artist’s palette on which he dips his brush to outline the universe of Pirandello the man in his greatness and his anxieties, in his emotional torments. He paints it while he is on the train. And the syncopated pace of the locomotives lends itself well to the rhythmic passage of time, to the gallery of visions that come forward in the writer’s mind. The train is headed to Stockholm, to take him to receive the most coveted prize, the Nobel for Literature.
We are in 1934, and for Pirandello the journey becomes the natural pretext to find himself in front of the milestones of his existence and his literary creations. It is a sort of reflection, an assessment through which the precarious relationship with his wife and children passes, both suffocated by Pirandello’s irrepressible personality, with different consequences and a common epilogue.
Marta also enters the sentimental sphere, the young actress who becomes a muse and for whom the protagonist nourishes a feeling that goes beyond simple artistic interest. And so there is politics, the dictatorship, the fascist regime of Mussolini with which the master establishes a relationship devoid of a univocal dimensionality.
In the role of Luigi Pirandello there is Fabrizio Bentivoglio, while the director Placido is Saul Colin, agent and collaborator of Luigi Pirandello for foreign rights, as well as traveling companion, while Valeria Bruni Tedeschi is Antonietta Portulano, the writer’s wife.
It couldn’t be otherwise that Filicudi, one of the seven pearls of the Aeolian Islands, was chosen as the backdrop for Paradiso for sale. The uncontaminated nature of Filicudi is the scene of a classic Italian comedy. Behind the camera, Luca Barbareschi takes inspiration from a true story that happened in 2015, when in the throes of the economic crisis, the Greek government thought of repaying some debt by putting some Aegean islands up for sale. Once the idea was found, the island of Fenicusa emerged from the screenwriters’ imagination, a new land that emerged in addition to the seven Aeolian islands. This time it is the Italian government that has to repay the debts. And, as if that wasn’t enough, spice is added to the story by identifying the possible buyer in the cousins from beyond the Alps. It doesn’t seem real to the French that they can get their hands on such a precious treasure. They accept the offer and send a delegate to close the deal and bring a breath of French to the Sicilian island.
Obviously, it’s all a flourish of jokes and coup de théâtre. The issues of the bell tower support the comic aspect of the film. The natives get in the way: they really don’t want to know about rules and changes. The banner of attachment to traditions waves proudly as the last bastion of the fight. The rest is done by the magnificent nature of Filicudi/Fenicusa which magnificently interprets itself and rushes to the rescue of its inhabitants. In the cast, Donatella Finocchiaro, Bruno Todeschini and Domenico Centamore.
And after the two feature films, the Sicilian flag is held high at the Rome Film Festival by a daughter of the land of Trinacria. The beautiful and talented Miriam Leone plays the role of journalist Oriana Fallaci in the television series Miss Fallaci. There are eight episodes filmed, and they concern the professional beginnings of the extraordinary reporter. And they are based on events that Fallaci herself recounted in two of her books, “The Seven Sins of Hollywood” and “Penelope at War”.
«Oriana Fallaci was a woman completely out of the mainstream – declared Miriam Leone – sanguine, determined, with an intense love for the truth and a profound blame for hypocrisy. The part of his life that I played in the series captures his beginnings. A period that not everyone knows about and in which the fascinating dream of a girl, of a woman, who wants to be a journalist and wants to make a name for herself shines through.” A courageous and enterprising reporter who is not satisfied with writing about fashion and gossip as is the case with all her colleagues, both in the editorial office and outside, as correspondents and correspondents. He works at the European, in a world that contemplates only the male sex for “hot” issues. Then, here’s the opportunity to seize. The newspaper nominated her sent from the United States and she began interviewing great personalities. He does it with a unique, sagacious, cheeky style. It is the genesis of Oriana Fallaci, the braveheart of journalism that Italian history has given us. But his influential career took a toll on his private life.
«I read his “Useless sex. Journey around the woman” – said Miriam Leone – an investigative book that reflects the female condition in the world, mainly in the East, written in 1961, right between the two texts that inspired the screenplay of “Miss Fallaci”. And I discovered how much he suffered in his private life, also regarding the children he never had…”.
Also in the cast is Francesco Colella, the extraordinary actor from Catanzaro who plays Attilio Battistini.