Venice 2019 - Best Documentary About Cinema
Venice continues their tradition of premiering documentaries about classic films and classic filmmakers. This year is no exception. Other Venice sections: In Competition (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls048890799/) , Out of Competition - Fiction, Non-Fiction and Special Screenings (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls090367749/), Orizzonti (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls090336956/), Venice Classics (https://www.imdb.com/list/ls090367437/)
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8 titles
- DirectorEugenio CappuccioStarsChristina EngelhardtGabriella GiorgelliAndrea De CarloEugenio Cappuccio was Fellini's formal assistant director on "Ginger and Fred" in 1985. Then he always followed "The Maestro" in several different projects. This film documentary is a biographical journey into Federico Fellini's magical and enormous cinema and world, from the start of his career until the end of his life.
- DirectorSteve Della CasaStarsDario ArgentoThe documentary consists of footage from 12 erotic documentary films from the Sixties. A dynamic style of editing, sometimes almost hypnotic is accompanied by contemporary music created especially for the documentary by the music composer Federico Badaloni. The voice over of the author blends in perfectly with the music and the footage, showing a Sixties pop influence. At the beginning it starts like this: "Roland Barthes claimed that the real effect of striptease was desexualizing women, a ritual that triggers the idea of sex and at the same time is its catharsis. A sort of strategy to reveal sex and then deactivate it. Before being a proverbial seduction ritual, it is a form of exorcism of sex in which a body generates an appetite but then is devitalized". The documentary takes us on a journey delving into the world of strip-tease and nightlife of the Sixties in Paris, London, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo and other exotic locations that evoke a prohibited universe of desire and nudity in people's imagination. Through the analysis and deconstruction of cultural stereotypes, ethnic discrimination, recurrent characters and visual clichés, the film, with testimonies from the experts, authors of the time, experts, authors of the time, critics and journalists, traces the distance that separates us from that cliché vision on feminine body and the way today it reverses dynamics and relationships that in the past seemed ingrained in the representation of sex. The documentary shows testimonies of cinematographic critics and essayists as Domenico Monetti and Antonio Tentori, and the people that took part in producing and directing the films of the time as Mino Loy, with the collaboration of journalists as Sabina Ambrogi, expert in relationships between media and representation of women and Luana De Vita, therapist, that tells us about the work she does on the use of the body and the seduction game of burlesque with groups of psycho-theatre with the testimony of the famous international performer of burlesque, Albadoro Gala. The ending of the film has a touch of unexpected originality of expressive language, which is created by artists Gianluca Abbate and Virginia Eleuteri Serpieri with computer generated images creating intriguing animations by reworking the stock footage.
- DirectorAnna HeppStarsEdgar ReitzAnna HeppHenry ArnoldEight Hundred Times Lonely is an eighty-four-minute non-commercial art house documentary film about famous 86-year-old German filmmaker Edgar Reitz. Anna Hepp, the young filmmaker of this documentary, meets with Reitz in one of Germany's most famous cinemas: the Lichtburg in Essen. This black and white and partly colored film's main focus is a continuous dialogue between these two people from two different generations and genders: young and old - female and male. Anna Hepp asks the film expert Edgar Reitz about if and how cinema might be fading away from Germany's media culture. They talk about the difficulties of filmmaking and the struggle to survive in this business, then and now. The bottom line of the film is: just as at some point you have to say good-bye to everything in life, friends, family, loved ones, you might also have to say good-bye to cinema culture. Filmmaking is an attempt to preserve memories forever. The film is a declaration of Love for Cinema and Love for Filmmaking.
- DirectorFabrizio LaurentiNiccolò VivarelliStarsAdriano AragozziniPupi AvatiLars BlochThe unbridled life and kaleidoscopic filmography of Piero Vivarelli, who made ltalian B-movies of all genres, wrote hit rock songs and penned the screenplay for Sergio Corbucci's Western 'Django,' adored by Tarantino, are creatively intertwined in a portrait of an unsung postwar provocateur and revolutionary (the only non-Cuban besides Che Guevara to be given a Cuban Communist Party card signed by Fidel Castro) that is also a prism into an unexplored pop culture and its unique vitality.
- DirectorBárbara PazStarsHector BabencoRegina BragaWillem Dafoe"I have already lived my death and now all that is left is to make a film about it." So said the filmmaker Hector Babenco to Bárbara Paz when he realized he did not have much time left. She accepted the challenge to fulfill the last wish of her late partner: to be the main protagonist in his own death. In this tender immersion into the life of one of the greatest filmmakers from South America, Babenco himself consciously bares his soul in intimate and painful situations. He expresses fears and anxieties, and also memories, reflections, and fantasies, in this face-off between his intellectual vigor and physical frailty, which were the hallmarks of his career. From the onset of cancer at the age of 38 until his death at 70, Babenco made of the cinema his medicine and the nourishment that kept him alive. "Babenco - Tell me when I Die" is Barbara Paz's first feature film, but is also in a way Hector's last work: a film about filming so never to die.
- DirectorAlexandre O. PhilippeStarsWilliam FriedkinHikaru BabaYuka NiwaA lyrical and spiritual cinematic essay on The Exorcist, exploring the depths of William Friedkin's mind's eye, the nuances of his filmmaking process, and the mysteries of faith and fate that have shaped his life and filmography.
- DirectorSimone ScafidiStarsNicola NocellaAntonella FulciCamilla FulciThe first biopic about Lucio Fulci. With never seen before footage, photos and interviews.
- DirectorAndrey A. TarkovskiyStarsAndrei TarkovskyThe documentary recounts Tarkovsky's life and work, letting the director tell the story himself, as he shares with us his memories, his view of art and his reflections on the destiny of the artist and the meaning of human existence.