Tribute to David Cronenberg
the complete retrospective of the Canadian Director’s films and three international exhibitions
Jeremy Irons, Terry Gilliam, Alfonso Cuarón, Matteo Garrone, Roberto Nanni at the Lucca Film Festival and Europa Cinema 2015
From the 15th to 22nd of March 2015 retrospectives, film classes and conversations with international authors
Grand finale with the third edition of Lucca Effetto Cinema Notte
Jeremy Irons, Terry Gilliam, Alfonso Cuarón and Matteo Garrone will be the guests of honor of the 11th Edition of the Lucca Film Festival, which will take place in the Tuscan city and in Viareggio from Sunday 15 March to Sunday 22 March 2015. The festival will pay tribute to each guest with screenings of their works, film masterclasses and gala evenings. This year’s edition of the festival celebrates Canadian director David Cronenberg who will be unable to attend in person due to personal matters but who will be present via Skype at several encounters. The tribute encompasses a complete retrospective of his films, three exhibitions and a concert in which some of his films’ most beautiful soundtracks will be performed. Among the scheduled events, a tribute to Roberto Nanni, the Italian experimental cinema director and a day dedicated to Italian filmmaker Mario Monicelli to celebrate the centennial of his birth and the acclaimed International Short Film Contest. The festival will close with Lucca Effetto Cinema Notte, a night where city becomes a real outdoor movie set. Events taking place in Viareggio are part of the initiatives organized by Europa Cinema, which this year has joined forces with the Lucca Film Festival.
The Lucca Film Festival and Europa Cinema directed by Nicola Borrelli, is one of the key events organized and sponsored by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca. The exhibits dedicated to Cronenberg are organized in collaboration with the Comitato Nuovi Eventi per Lucca in collaboration with the festival and with the support of Banca Pictet and Société Générale. The Festival also enjoys the support of MiBACT (the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism), the Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lucca. Gesam Gas & Luce SpA, Banca Generali Private Banking, the Region of Tuscany, the City of Lucca with the collaboration of the Province of Lucca, the Fondazione Sistema Toscana, the Fondazione Giacomo Puccini and Puccini Museum – Casa Natale, the Fondazione Centro Arti Visive, CG Entertainment and the Photolux Festival. Thanks are also due to Trenitalia Tuscany Regional Management for their collaboration.
International guests in Lucca: Gilliam, Cuarón and Irons
British director and screenwriter Terry Gilliam, the well-known member of the Monty Python comedy troupe, will inaugurate the 11th Edition of the Lucca Film Festival on Sunday, March 15 at 9 p.m. at the Cinema Moderno in Lucca. During the gala evening, the Festival will pay tribute to Gilliam with a Lifetime Achievement Award and screen his latest work The Zero Theorem, starring Oscar winning actor Christoph Waltz. Film critic Francesco Alò will introduce the evening. On Monday, March 16 at 11 a.m., Terry Gilliam will hold a film masterclass at the Teatro del Giglio with the participation of film critic Francesco Alò, Nicolas Condemi and Federico Salvetti, the Artistic Director of the Lucca Film Festival and Europa Cinema.
Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, director of films such as Gravity and of Y tu mamá también will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award on Thursday, March 19 at 9 p.m. at the Cinema Moderno in Lucca. The award ceremony will be followed by the screening of Children of Men, the science fiction thriller film directed and co-written by Cuarón, starring Clive Owen and Julianne Moore. Film critics Andrea Fornasiero and Claudio Bartolini will introduce the evening. In addition to a retrospective of the Mexican director’s films, on Friday 20 March at 11 a.m., Cuarón will hold a film masterclass at the Teatro del Giglio with the participation of Nicola Borrelli, Alessandro Romanini, Andrea Fornasiero and Claudio Bartolini.
The Gala evening dedicated to English actor Jeremy Irons will be held on Friday, March 20 at 9 p.m. at the Cinema Moderno in Lucca. After presenting Oscar winning actor with a Lifetime Achievement Award the evening will continue with the screening of M. Butterfly, one of the two films directed by David Cronenberg in which Jeremy Irons stars. On Saturday 21 March at 11 a.m., Irons will hold a film masterclass at the Teatro del Giglio, with the participation of film critic Claudio Carabba, Nicola Borrelli, Alessandro Romanini and Manrico Ferrucci, Director of the Teatro del Giglio of Lucca. That same day at 3 p.m. actress Sinéad Cusack will introduce the film Eastern Promises.
Guests in Viareggio: Matteo Garrone and Francesco Munzi. Tribute to Mario Monicelli
Events in the Tuscan seaside resort of Viareggio feature Francesco Munzi and Matteo Garrone as special guests.
Munzi will be at the Cinema Centrale in Viareggio on Friday, 20 March with his film Anime Nere (Black Souls) and on Saturday, 21 March at 11 a.m., the Italian director will hold a film masterclass at Villa Paolina. Garrone will be at the Cinema Eden in Viareggio on Sunday 22 March, at 8.30 p.m. where he will receive a Lifetime Achievement Award and present his L’imbalsamatore (The Taxidermist). The evening will be introduced by journalist Gabriele Rizza and by Giulio Marlia, the Artistic Director of the Lucca Film Festival and Europa Cinema.
On the centennial of his birth, the festival has organized a tribute to the great Italian director and screenwriter Mario Monicelli. On Tuesday, 17 March two of the Maestro’s great masterpieces will be screened at the Cinema Centrale in Viareggio: La grande guerra (The Great War, 1959) and I compagni (The Organizer, 1963).
Tribute to David Cronenberg: film retrospective, exhibitions and a musical concert between Lucca and Viareggio
The Lucca Film Festival and Europa Cinema dedicates a complete retrospective of all films, as well as of five shorts, to David Cronenberg, director of cult films such as The Fly and Videodrome. In addition to the film tribute, visitors will be able to enjoy four international exhibitions, three in Lucca and one in Viareggio, which will be open to the public until Sunday, May 3rd 2015.
In a national premier, the Festival presents Evolution featuring more than one hundred original artifacts from Cronenberg’s film sets, props, video interviews, film clips, never seen before movies and rare photographs from behind the scenes that follow his filmmaking career. The exhibition was created by the Toronto International Film Festival, curated by Piers Handling (TIFF CEO) and by Noah Cowan (former Artistic Director of Tiff Bell Lightbox) and is hosted by the Fondazione Ragghianti of Lucca. Also in Lucca, at the Puccini Museum – the Maestro’s Birthplace, a separate detached section of Evolution is dedicated to M.Butterfly, the Canadian director’s film set in Beijing that revolves around the famous opera by Puccini. The State Archives of Lucca hosts Red Cars, a multimedia installation dedicated to Ferrari and to the car-racing world curated by Domenico De Gaetano, director of the cultural association Volumina, and by Alessandro Romanini. This exhibit is inspired by the Canadian director’s screenplay for a movie that was never made, narrating the rivalry between the two Formula One drivers: Phil Hill and Wolfgang von Trips. The story unfolds through images, words and video in an atmosphere that evokes abstract painting and pop art. In Viareggio, the GAMC Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art) hosts Chromosomes. The exhibition curated by Domenico De Gaetano and Alessandro Romanini and created by Volumina features 70 still frames chosen by the Canadian director from his most famous films. The frames were then captured in the laboratories of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (the Experimental Cinema Centre), digitally processed by Volumina’s team of graphic experts under Cronenberg’s supervision and finally printed on canvas using innovative techniques, bringing the images to a new life beyond the movie screen.
Not being able to attend the Festival in person, David Cronenberg will participate via Skype on Wednesday 18 March at 9 p.m. at the Cinema Centrale in Lucca. The Canadian Maestro will hold a film masterclass (via Skype) on Saturday 21 March at 5 p.m. once again at the Cinema Centrale. Claudio Bartolini, Domenico de Gaetano, Nicola Borrelli and Stefano Giorgi Artistic, director of the Festival, will also be present.
The Tribute to David Cronenberg continues on that same day, Saturday 21 March, at 6.30 p.m. with a concert held at the Church of San Francesco, featuring a selection of music from the Canadian director’s films. Young musicians from the Conservatorio Luigi Boccherini of Lucca conducted by Maestro Gianpaolo Mazzoli (Director of the Conservatory) will perform scores from many of Cronenberg’s works including M.Butterfly, Ringers and Eastern Promises.
The homage to Cronenberg also includes a fourth exhibition entirely dedicated to posters, fliers and rare playbills that retrace the Canadian director’s career throughout his filmography. The exhibition is curated by writer and collector Paul Zelati, one of the leading Italian critics of horror cinema and will be hosted from at the auditorium Fondazione Banca del Monte Lucca from Sunday 8 March to Sunday 22 March.
The cinema of Roberto Nanni
Lucca Film Festival has always reserved special attention to experimental cinema; and the 11th edition features a comprehensive retrospective of filmmaker Roberto Nanni, from his early works until the last film shot in 2014. Nanni has worked with nearly all formats and has delved into the technique of found footage, using existing video material, which is decontextualized and reedited to create a new product. This while working on the synthesis between audio and visual languages. In his thirty-year career, Roberto Nanni has collaborated with musicians and filmmakers such as Steven Brown and Tuxedomoon, Derek Jarman, Gabriele Panico and Oren Ambarchi. All films in the section dedicated to Nanni will be shown in a new digital format made by the author specifically for the Lucca Film Festival stemming from the original materials in various film formats, analog and digital video. In addition to the retrospective, the tribute to Roberto Nanni includes a concert during which the composer Gabriele Panic will perform live music he composed for three works by the Italian filmmaker. The concert will take place on Wednesday 18 March at 10 p.m. at the Sala degli Affreschi of the Complesso di San Micheletto.
International Short Film Contest
The international contest features twenty-six short films in competition. Among the selected filmmakers Alessandro Amaducci, the well-known Italian video artist from Turin and Nicolas Provost, the internationally renowned Belgian director and visual artist. This section will also focus on Korean experimental cinema, with a series of animated short films. Academy-Award nominee Graham Greene stars in the short film directed by Ray Arthur Wang. The International Jury is composed by Mason Shefa, a young American experimental filmmaker, by Cynthia Tompkins, a professor at Arizona State University, by Francesco Alò, Italian journalist and film critic and by Antoni Pinent, the Spanish filmmaker who has competed in the Festival several times. The Award Ceremony will be held at the Cinema Moderno on Friday, 20 March at 9 p.m.
Lucca Effetto Cinema Notte (Saturday, 21 March)
The third edition of Lucca Effetto Cinema Notte will take place on Saturday 21 March and mark the end of the 11th edition of the Lucca Film Festival. Lucca will be transformed entire into an outdoor movie. The Tuscan city will be divided into ten areas, each with its own theme inspired by different movie genres. The 43 locations will be set up to reflect the reference film. The project is created by Stefano Giuntini for Fondazione Banca del Monte di Lucca.
Tickets: Single-day Ticket (including film masterclasses and gala evening): € 10 / reduced € 7; Full Festival Ticket (including film masterclasses and gala evenings): 25 € / reduced € 20; Single film masterclass or single gala evening: 5 € / reduced 3 €; Viareggio single-day ticket for 16, 17, 20 and 22 March 5 €.; Concerts 1,5 €.
Information www.luccafilmfestival.it
Press Office Lucca Film Festival (Antonio Pirozzi +39-3395238132; Olimpia De Meo +39-3200404080 and +39-3392439292 Francesca Corpaci) English: Tessa Wiechmann; Davis & Franceschini – Lea Codognato / Caterina Briganti – tel. +39-(0)552347273 (info@davisefranceschini.it); External Relations Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca: Marcello Petrozziello (+39-(0)583472627; +39-340 6550425); communication@fondazionecarilucca
