#italian-cinema

#italian-cinema

Trouble is fermenting in the febrile heat of Rome. Violent political struggles are breaking out between militant neo-fascist, far-left organisations and the Italian state. Amid this tense unrest, Federico Fellini makes his opulent masterpiece, Casanova, and Pasolini makes his final film, Salò, an eviscerating and prophetic parable about the dangers of fascism. Olivia Laing's novel The Silver Book is a compelling noir thriller and queer romance, taking us into the heart of Rome's famous Cinecittà studios - Italian cinema's dream factory.

And even as his work has become more personal over the past few years (his two most recent films, the autobiographical Hand of God and the highly metaphorical Parthenope, are odes to his hometown of Naples), Sorrentino hasn't lost his fondness for the surreal, the garish, the epic, the scandalous, or the big colorful sequences pulsing with music and symbolism.