Screening of the restored version of Roberto Rossellini's movie, with Giacomo Furia, Marilyn Buferd, William Tubbs, Giovanni Amato, Joe Falletta.
ANOTHER LOOK 2015 מבט נוסף
Another Look 2015THE MACHINE THAT KILLS BAD PEOPLE (1948/52)Screening of the restored version of Roberto Rossellini's movie, with Giacomo Furia, Marilyn Buferd, William Tubbs, Giovanni Amato, Joe Falletta.Following an encounter with a presumed holy man, village photographer Celestino discovers the power of his camera to bring death upon all those whose photographs it captures. Armed with a keen social consciousness, he then turns this new weapon against those village inhabitants, who in his mind, cause injustice and oppression to continue. Soon, however, Celestino finds himself unable to stop his project of social reform, and understands that its success may come at too high a price. Shot in 1948 and released in 1952, The Machine that Kills Bad People is a transitional piece in Roberto Rossellini's career. Viewing realism as "the artistic form of the truth," the famed Italian maestro sought to expand its definition so as to include new stylistic approaches. The Machine that Kills Bad People gave him such an opportunity: to render reality, not through the sober representations of Neo Realism, but through the lightheartedness and fantasy of the commedia dell'arte. Yet this aesthetic shift did not mean, for Rossellini, an abandonment of Neo Realism's commitment to social issues, but rather a novel way of illuminating them. In the landscapes of the Amalfi coast he found both the spirit of fantastic comedy and the proper narrative context-a fishing village on the cusp of modernity. Rather than embody a bucolic idyll, the film's village is characterized mostly by pettiness and cruelty, which are associated with the contemporary ailments of fascist belligerence and capitalist greed. Consequently, under and through the guise of playfulness, Rossellini deploys rural life herein so as to reveal the difficult truths of "a modern uprooted world, structured by an ambiguous ethical discourse, [where] one can no longer tell the difference between a saint and a devil" (Constantin Parvulescu).Black and white, 83', in Italian with Hebrew and English subtitles. Sunday, January 18th, at 21:00, Tel Aviv Cinematheque Monday, January 19th, at 20:30, Haifa CinemathequeWednesday, January 21st, Jerusalem Cinematheque