Cinema Italian Style

Dal 27 al 29 settembre 2024 si è svolta a Mumbai la rassegna Cinema Italian Style - Celebrating Tornatore and the Masters of Italian Cinema, organizzata dall'Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Mumbai in collaborazione con l'ente indiano Film Heritage Foundation e con l'Istituto Europeo di Design. Giuseppe Tornatore, nella sua prima visita in India, ha partecipato alla manifestazione in qualità di ospite d'onore, presenziando alla proiezione delle sue pellicole al Regal Cinema nonché ad altri eventi, fra cui un seminario con gli studenti di cinema. Area del sito di Film Heritage Foundation dedicata alla rassegna e video ufficiale. Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa dal regista italiano a Anushka Halve, pubblicata da The Hollywood Reporter India il primo ottobre 2024: Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore talks about how to love cinema.

Giuseppe Tornatore, Mumbai

Mumbai Film Festival 2023

L'edizione 2023 del Mumbai Film Festival si svolge dal 27 ottobre al 5 novembre. Nel corso della cerimonia d'apertura, Priyanka Chopra consegnerà a Luca Guadagnino il premio Excellence in Cinema (International). Marco Müller presenzierà all'evento. Il 29 ottobre Guadagnino terrà un seminario aperto al pubblico, in compagnia di Anupama Chopra. A seguire, un evento organizzato in suo onore dalla Tiger Baby, la casa di produzione di proprietà di Zoya Akhtar e Reema Kagti. 

RASSEGNA STAMPA/VIDEO (aggiornata al 6 novembre 2023)

- Video ufficiale

- Bellocchio, Rohrwacher e Sollima portano il nostro cinema in India, Cristiana Allievi, Sette, 23 ottobre 2023. Intervista concessa da Anupama Chopra:

'Quest’anno l’impronta italiana sarà forte. A festeggiare 20 anni di vita del festival nella capitale del cinema di Bollywood saranno tre grandi come Marco Bellocchio, Alice Rohrwacher e Stefano Sollima, e non solo: a far parte dello staff di selezione sono due noti professionisti del nostro cinema [Marco Müller e Paolo Bertolini]. (...) 

«In India tutti i cinefili conoscono il cinema di Antonioni, Rossellini, Fellini. E pensando alla generazione successiva, siamo molto legati a Bellocchio, Luca Guadagnino, Nanni Moretti... Il nostro pubblico non ci avrebbe mai perdonato l’assenza di questi registi, quest’anno soprattutto quella di Marco Bellocchio». (...)

Cosa rappresenta un Oscar per il cinema indiano?

«Gli Oscar sono fantastici, (...) ci piace capire come l’Occidente guarda ai nostri film. Ma abbiamo un pubblico enorme e non abbiamo bisogno di conferme, quello che è importante, con vittorie come quella di RRR, è che apre le porte a un’intera industria: in molti iniziano a dire “non sapevo che i film indiani potessero essere così divertenti...”».'

- Mumbai Film Festival Opens With Glamour From Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Honors for Luca Guadagnino and Mani Ratman, Patrick Brzeski, The Hollywood Reporter, 28 ottobre 2023:

'A showreel of Guadagnino’s work - I Am Love, Call Me By Your Name, and the upcoming Challengers, starring Zendaya - was played before Chopra Jonas presented him with a trophy, praising his filmography for its “stunning portrayal of deeply human relationships - the nature of love, identity, and the cinema of desire.” Guadagnino noted from the stage that he was visiting India for the very first time - he had spent the afternoon sightseeing around Mumbai with former Venice and Rome film festival head Marco Müller, also on hand for the event - while hinting that he already felt inspired to try to make a film in the country. “So many arresting images already have come to me,” he said, adding, “I like nuance and I like to see what happens when people interact in a space, so hopefully one day I will be able to achieve that here”.'

27 ottobre 2023

- Luca Guadagnino to be Celebrated at Mumbai Event, Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 28 ottobre 2023: 

'Festival director Anupama Chopra said: “Luca Guadagnino’s oeuvre is extraordinary. As we felicitate him with Jio MAMI Excellence in Cinema Award this year, we’re delighted to host a celebration along with Tiger Baby in his honor. The gathering is a chance for the South Asian talent to engage with him.” (...) The Tiger Baby team said: “We are so delighted to celebrate Luca Guadagnino. We are huge fans of his work and we aren’t the only ones. There are many filmmakers like us in the industry who will get a now have the opportunity to interact with him and let him know that he will always welcomed at Jio MAMI and in India”.'

- Luca Guadagnino had said no to direct Call Me By Your Name: 'I didn't want to do another movie about rich people', Hindustan Times, 30 ottobre 2023.

- Video Filmmaking Masterclass with Luca Guadagnino, Film Companion, primo novembre 2023.

- Nel sito LaScimmiaPensa, il 6 novembre 2023 Carlo Rinaldi riporta alcune dichiarazioni di Guadagnino raccolte da The Hindu: ''Interrogato sul fatto se il cinema indiano abbia influenzato le sue opere, (...) ha risposto: “Guardo molti grandi film, ma la mia formazione nel cinema indiano è quasi classica. Conosco i grandi capolavori e amo alcuni dei film contemporanei. Ma in termini di influenza, se c’è, è probabile che sia inconscia”. Sceglie La moglie sola [Charulata] (...) di Satyajit Ray (...) come uno dei suoi preferiti e lo definisce così: “È uno dei grandi ritratti della solitudine e delle emozioni femminili. È bellissimo”.'

Marco Müller

Tell it like a woman

Tell it like a woman è un film antologico in lingua inglese di produzione italiana e statunitense. Uno degli episodi è ambientato in India, è diretto da Leena Yadav e interpretato da Jacqueline Fernandez. Lo scorso 7 marzo la pellicola è stata proiettata al Los Angeles-Italia Film Fashion and Art Fest, alla presenza di Jacqueline Fernandez.

Festa del Cinema di Roma 2022

La 17esima edizione della Festa del Cinema di Roma si svolgerà dal 13 al 23 ottobre 2022. Vi segnalo, fuori concorso, il premiatissimo documentario All that breathes di Shaunak Sen. In cartellone anche What's love got to do with it?, film britannico diretto da Shekhar Kapur e interpretato, fra gli altri, da Shabana Azmi.

Aggiornamento del 22 ottobre 2022: What's love got to do with it? si è aggiudicato il premio Ugo Tognazzi per la miglior commedia, e verrà distribuito in Italia a partire dal 16 marzo 2023 - grazie a Lucky Red - col titolo What's love?. Trailer. Ricky Tognazzi si è complimentato nel suo profilo Twitter. Shekhar Kapur è attualmente a Roma. Vi propongo di seguito alcune fotografie.

Aggiornamento dell'11 marzo 2023: Lucky Red ha ideato una geniale promozione per il film. Domani, a Roma, si svolgerà l'evento Bollywood Experience, che prevede danze, musica, degustazioni, tatuaggi. La festa si concluderà con una parata che premierà i partecipanti con l'anteprima di What's love? (video).

Shekhar Kapur e Carlo Verdone

Shekhar Kapur, Andrea Occhipinti e Jemima Khan

Sundance Film Festival 2022

L'edizione 2022 del Sundance Film Festival si è svolta dal 20 al 30 gennaio. In cartellone All that breathes di Shaunak Sen, opera che si è aggiudicata il World Documentary Grand Jury Prize. Il 3 febbraio 2022 Film Companion ha pubblicato una lunga intervista concessa dal regista a Sankhayan Ghosh, nella quale Sen, fra l'altro, dichiara: 'I’m deeply interested in the styles of (...) Gianfranco Rosi a lot in terms of how he shoots human, and Roberto Minervini in terms of how he comes out as a kind of hybrid between nonfiction and controlled spaces'. Shaunak Sen on his Oscar-nominated documentary All that breathes.

Aggiornamenti del 26 marzo 2023: All that breathes, in seguito proiettato fuori concorso a Cannes (clicca qui) e a Roma, è entrato nella cinquina dei titoli candidati all'Oscar senza purtroppo aggiudicarsi l'ambita statuetta.

Vedi anche:

- The triumph and tragedy of the Indian documentary, Rahul Desai, Film Companion, 19 febbraio 2022;

- Filming with fire: behind Indian documentary's biggest year, Uday Bhatia, Mint, 26 marzo 2023.

Anurag Kashyap talks about his fight with KJo, meeting with SRK

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Anurag Kashyap a Mayank Shekhar, pubblicata lo scorso 12 giugno da Mid-Day. Il testo include il video dell'intervista integrale. Anurag Kashyap talks about his fight with KJo, meeting with SRK:

'The first time ever that filmmaker Imtiaz Ali saw what a portfolio looked like (...) was that of an actor called Anurag Kashyap. Back then, Ali was in college in Delhi, helping out a local TV serial crew, when Kashyap approached him with his portfolio. "It was 1992. (...) I had just discovered theatre, and was told that you need to get pictures clicked, if you want work. I did, after collecting Rs 3000, which was a big sum then. And I started doing a lot of acting on stage, and I did some films. (...) Also, (...) Imtiaz (...) was my co-star. (...) We don't talk about it. Imtiaz will kill me. (...) The good thing about being a bad actor is you know how to extract great performances," Kashyap tells me later. Which in his case, I'm told, notoriously involves hardly ever saying "action" or "cut" on set. Often, no lines for actors to mug up, let alone extensive rehearsals, before shoot. It's a process only the best can survive. Ali, of course, played the '93 Bombay bomb blast accused Yakub Memon in Kashyap's first release, Black Friday 2007. He played a bigger role in his life, if you consider that Kashyap used to shack up at Ali's place while the latter was doing a post-grad course at Mumbai's Xavier Institute of Communications XIC.

This is also how Kashyap first met his key associate, Vikramaditya Motwane. (...) "I couldn't get into XIC, and was living in Imtiaz's room. Aarti Bajaj, my first wife and permanent editor for both mine and Imtiaz's films, was a year junior. Vikramaditya Motwane was Aarti's classmate. That's how we knew each other. But we really became friends during the shoot of [Deepa Mehta's] Water. Vikram was an assistant, and I was writing dialogues. The shoot got stalled [due to protests], and we spent a lot of time in Benares. Thereafter, I kept meeting him because he was first assistant director AD to Vishal Bhardwaj in his first film called Barf, before Maqbool - that never got made. (...) That was sometime around 2000. Vikram was one of the sound designers on Paanch. And because I was scared of shooting songs, and he had been Sanjay Leela Bhansali's assistant, I asked him to direct the songs. He had two credits in the film - sound designer, and director of songs. It was a first for many people - Bosco-Caesar as choreographer, (...) Aarti Bajaj as editor. Abbas Tyrewala was the lyricist in the film and Vishal Bhardwaj did the music. Both of them, Vikram, I and others, used to hang out together."

"Then, there was Sriram Raghavan (...) and a whole lot of others - part of another gang. Even Tigmanshu Dhulia, Irrfan and others were all close to my brother [Abhinav]. That was the third gang. I was the centre-point, everywhere. And then I had another friends' circle, with (...) Zoya Akhtar and the lot. When I wrote a script, I had way too many boards to bounce off. And that's what we did! I was a huge fan of Sriram Raghavan's Raman Raghav [a docu-drama on a serial killer that Kashyap remade in 2016]. (...) Then a strange thing happened, with a script I wrote officially, for the first time (...) - with Kamal Swaroop Om Dar-B-Dar as director. For that film, I found an actor I was a fan of from Delhi stage, called Manoj Bajpayee. I put the film together. But it never happened. Nobody was showing faith in Manoj. He was going through a hard time and doing Ram Gopal Varma's Daud, which is when Ramuji said he wanted to make a film [Satya] with Manoj. And asked if he knew of a writer for it. Without having seen any of my written works, Manoj took me to Ram Gopal Varma." (...)

But that he's also a liberal raconteur: "Oh, one of my favourite stories is about Mahesh Bhatt. He happened to me, right before Ram Gopal Varma. He got me to write films. And Mukesh Bhatt [his brother, and producer] was very miserly with money. I was struggling for rent. Pooja Bhatt was the nicest and kindest; I would tell her to talk to her dad. Then I just walked up to [Mahesh] Bhatt saab once and said that I'd rather be a carpenter than work in his office. With his brother [Mukesh] around, he didn't say a word. When I was leaving, he came down, said, - Don't ever change. - And he put Rs 10,000 in my hand. That was big money in 1994-1995." Years later, at a post-screening event in a film festival abroad, Kashyap was narrating the first part of the story above. He heard a voice from the audience. (...) "Bhatt saab was sitting in the crowd. I got so emotional. I have had funny incidents like these." (...) "There was a time when Mukul Anand was making Trimurti 1995. I wanted to work with him as an assistant. I would call his house land-line. Every call was a rupee gone. And he was always busy. Third time I said, - (...) [This is producer Subhash Ghai, tell him not to show up on the sets from tomorrow], - and hung up. Now when somebody trolls me on social media, I just remember my time!" 

There is then the moment he randomly landed up at Shah Rukh Khan's bungalow Mannat he mistakenly calls it Jannat on Bandstand: "I was hungry and I walked into his house, using our college connection [both went to Hansraj in Delhi]. I remember him feeding me. He only knew how to make omelette." And then, there are the more famous spats: (...) "Karan Johar gave an interview calling me a psychopath. Till then we had not met. I called him a fat kid, who still thinks he is in school. (...) I also said something about Anil Kapoor in the interview that became a headline. But people always knew I was childlike." (...) He's gone to the extent of rescuing actor Rajpal Yadav from Andheri railway station, since he was returning to his hometown, having given up. That's when, Kashyap says, he first met the nondescript Nawazuddin Siddiqui, standing next to Yadav. (...) Scorsese, (...) after having watched GoW, invited him to be on the jury of the Marrakech film festival. Before Scorsese walked in, Kashyap was smoking outside with the Oscar winning Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, without knowing it was Sorrentino! Both were nervously puffing away. (...) Or this other time, Kashyap was in the same room as Francis Ford Coppola, "Sophia Coppola, his daughter, was with him. He is old. I kept staring at him for so long that he made me sit on his lap and said, now talk to me!".'

Phaim Bhuiyan vince il David di Donatello

Phaim Bhuiyan vince il David di Donatello come miglior regista esordiente per il film Bangla. Alla pellicola era già stato conferito il Nastro d'Argento per la miglior commedia.

Vedi anche: Bangla - La serie, 12 aprile 2022.

Birsa Dasgupta in Italia

Il regista bengali Birsa Dasgupta è in questi giorni in Italia. Nella fotografia a sinistra, Birsa è a Roma in compagnia del regista Tommaso Rossellini. La madre di Tommaso è Isotta Rossellini, figlia di Ingmar Bergman e di Roberto Rossellini, e sorella gemella di Isabella. La nonna di Birsa è la sceneggiatrice Sonali Senroy Dasgupta, compagna di Roberto Rossellini. Sonali lasciò il marito, il documentarista Harisadhan Dasgupta, e il figlio Raja (padre di Birsa), per seguire Rossellini.
Aggiornamento del 2 ottobre 2019: nelle fotografie seguenti, Birsa è in compagnia di Isabella Rossellini e del regista Alessandro Rossellini, figlio del produttore Renzo Rossellini, secondogenito di Roberto e della prima moglie, la sceneggiatrice e costumista Marcella De Marchis.

Kabir Bedi: set in Italia di The Broken Key

Dal 4 al 6 febbraio 2016 Kabir Bedi ha soggiornato all'Hotel MiraMonti di Frabosa Soprana (Cuneo). A Saliceto e alle Grotte di Bossea e del Caudano si sono svolte le riprese del film The Broken Key, diretto dal regista italiano Louis Nero.

Mumbai Film Festival 2012

La 14esima edizione del Mumbai Film Festival si svolgerà dal 18 al 25 ottobre 2012. È prevista una sezione Celebration of Italian Cinema, organizzata da Asiatica Film Mediale sotto l'egida dell'ambasciata italiana in India e con il contributo del regista Italo Spinelli. In cartellone 30 titoli italiani - fra cui alcuni in edizione restaurata - distribuiti dal 1913 ad oggi.

Irrfan Khan in un film di Marco Amenta?

Irrfan Khan interpreterà un film tratto dal saggio Il banchiere dei poveri di Muhammad Yunus, premio Nobel per la pace nel 2006. La pellicola, diretta dal regista Marco Amenta, è una coproduzione fra Italia (Eurofilm), Francia, Germania e India. La sceneggiatura è redatta da Massimo Gaudioso, Sergio Donati e Marco Amenta. Vi segnalo l'articolo Irrfan turns nobel laureate for next film, di Subhash K. Jha, pubblicato oggi da The Times of India: 'Apparently, the makers of the film zeroed in on Irrfan as the real-life hero of the downtrodden after they saw him play (...) in Mira Nair’s The Namesake. Irrfan confirmed the news and said, "I have been in talks for that film for a long time. I have already given my consent." However, he did not divulge any further details for contractual reasons. A friend of the actor said, "The challenge here is to recreate a living character of such distinguished achievement. Irrfan will meet Muhammad Yunus and spend as much time with him as possible. When he played Paan Singh Tomar, he relied on his imagination. But playing Prof. Yunus is a far bigger challenge since he is a much revered living personality. Irrfan will take a few months to get into the character".' Conoscete un modo migliore per rallegrare un piovoso lunedì?

Aggiornamento del 14 giugno 2012: ho contattato l'Eurofilm via email. Niccolò Stazzi conferma la notizia: 'Il film è in fase di pre-produzione. Il regista sarà Marco Amenta e gli sceneggiatori sono Massimo Gaudioso e Sergio Donati. Lo script ha vinto un premio al Tribeca Film Festival. Maggiori dettegli potrò darglieli tra circa un mese'.

Aggiornamento del 10 maggio 2022: purtroppo il progetto non si è concretizzato.

The Pope to watch Pankaj Kapur-starrer Dharm!

Pankaj Kapur in Dharm

Vi segnalo l'articolo The Pope to watch Pankaj Kapur-starrer Dharm!, di Subhash K. Jha, pubblicato oggi da Rediff:

'It's decidedly a first at the Vatican. On Tuesday, May 22, Pope Benedict XVI will be watching a Bollywood film, and that too a film that espouses the teachings of Hinduism and propagates the virtues of secularism by showing its rigid Hindu Pundit hero (Pankaj Kapur) embracing an orphaned Muslim child as his own. We're talking about Bhavna Talwar's Dharm that released in 2007.

So what made the Vatican select this film for a screening?

"I don't know!" says the stunned director. (...) "It was done by an Italian friend, a filmmaker named Franco La Cecla, who is close to the Vatican. He thought Dharm is a work that the Pope and the Vatican should see. I think it is the message of the one-ness of humanity which Franco thought would appeal to the Pope."

A print of the film has been sent to the Vatican following a travel plan that included going through the very rigid rules of entry into Vatican City.

"It wasn't easy getting my film to the Vatican City. But it's now all in place," Bhavna says. 

Unfortunately, she cannot be physically present at the screening as she is down with a slipped disc and unable to move for a month.

"It is sad that I am immovable at a time when I would have liked to be present at this historic event," she says. "For me, the most interesting aspect of this event is the way the custodians of one religion have shown a keenness to appreciate art depicting another religion. Dharm is a very Hindu film. But it also shows that every religion is essentially about tolerance and amity. I see no contradiction in the Pope watching Dharm. To be a small part of that movement towards a universal humanity makes me feel proud and humbled at the same time".'