Turtles, Roaches, Hummingbirds, Saints, and a Marxist Oscar Wilde: New Italian Cinema Is Alive at Lincoln Center
This past week was the 22nd year that Cinecittà and Film at Lincoln Center showcased the descendants of Fellini, Pasolini, and Antonioni. Yes, each year “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema” spotlights the best or most promising works of contemporary filmmakers from the Boot: a reflection of sorts to what’s occurring on screen and off. Indeed, here’s an annual visualization of a country’s past, present, and future.
Or as a journalist notes in Gianni Amelio’s Lord of the Ants, a recreation of the demonization of the homosexual Marxist playwright/poet Aldo Braibanti in the late 1960s: “This trial is a mirror of our country in its backward, narrow-minded, criminal aspect. That’s why you must fight.” And the directors featured here do fight, taking on ecological disasters, political corruption, the misogyny of the Church, therapy, and the challenges of being an ophthalmologist in love, often doing so with more than a sliver of absurdist humor.
