The 14th annual Italian Film Festival, running from 17-29 November at the Edinburgh Filmhouse,
is the only event in the UK exclusively devoted to
Italian cinema. The festival which tours Edinburgh, Glasgow (at the
GFT), and London takes place comes at a time when Italian audiences are
rediscovering their appetite for big screen films, in particular
home-grown fare.
Among the films screening over the fortnight are teen box office hit Night Before the Exams; Napoleon and Me, a drama set on the Italian island of Elba with French star Daniel Auteuil as the little emperor; and The Lark Farm a romance between an Armenian girl and a dashing Turkish officer in the midst of the Armenian genocide of 1915-17.
The Taviani Brothers (right) who made the latter are provisionally scheduled to appear in Edinburgh to introduce their provocative drama
on 23 Nov 8.30pm.
Other confirmed guests include director Marina
Spada, on 24 November, with her second feature As The Shadow, a drama about a lonely travel agent who takes in an attractive, Eastern European refugee at the behest of her deceitful teacher.
Director Agostino Ferrente whose uplifting documentary The Orchestra
of Piazza Vittorio, looking at the story of how 30 foreign musicians came together in Rome, is in Edinburgh on 27 November at 6pm. Davide
Marengo, director of Night Bus, a film noir set in night time Roma, also appears in Edinburgh on 27 November at 8.30pm.
Continuing in tandem with the festival until 29th November is the retrospective on Leading Ladies
of Italian Cinema, such as Sanda Milo in The
Visitor (1965) on 10 November, Monica Vitti in political comic farce A Drama of Jealousy (1970) on 18 November, and Mariangela Melato in The Seduction of Mimi (1972) on 22nd November.
Screenings are at Edinburgh Filmhouse.