Cinecitta Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Happy Birthday to Us: Rossellini Pics Being Restored
Filed under: Classics », Foreign Language », Distribution », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
In case you need to start your personal preparations
now, May 8 is Roberto
Rossellini's birthday (or it would be, had he not died almost 30 years ago). What's that? You're not having a party?
Yeah, me either. We're all philistines. It's alright, though, because Italy appears to be throwing a hell of a blowout -
it is, after all, the 100th anniversary of his birth. (And if you only know the man's name because he's Isabella's
dad, do yourself a favor and go rent Open City.)According to Variety, in recognition of the centennial, Cinecitta is going to be restoring and issuing new prints of ten of his films. Using master prints (to which they just recently managed to acquire the rights), the studio will be reissuing such masterpieces as Open City, Germany: Year Zero, Stromboli, and Journey to Italy. Though Variety's report only mentions home video and television distribution, one assumes that the prints will be offered to theaters, as well - maybe it's not totally unreasonable to dream that, next year, a Rossellini retrospective will tour the US, completely with gorgeous new prints.
Italian Film Industry in Trouble, Too
Filed under: Foreign Language », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
The Italian industry has declined significantly since the glory days of Cinecitta, when Roberto Rossellini, Federico Fellini, and Vittorio De Sica were known the world over. Today, only about 3500 people have full-time TV or film jobs in Italy. In an effort to kick-start the
industry, Cinecitta has been producing live TV shows and renting space
to foreign productions: parts of The Passion of the Christ were filmed
there, and HBO's Rome series will be shot entirely at Cinecitta. When
HBO leaves, the studio plans to leave their massive sets in place,
hoping to will attact other productions.Sadly for the domestic industry, Italian audiences clearly perfer to see (dubbed) American films than almost anything made in Italy. Theatrical profits in Italy actually rose 10% last year - the problem is that about 65% of the roughly million euro profit ended up in American hands. In fact, during the past year, more American films (about 150) were exhibited in the country than those made domestically (about 100). I'm ashamed to admit that I don't think I saw an Italian film last year - I have no idea if the films coming out of there are any good at all. Has anybody seen anything new out of Italy lately? What did you think?
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