(September 26th, 2017) Italian cinema invades Flanders. The Ghent Film Festival, which is held in Belgium from October 10th – 20th, is dedicating its 44th edition to Italian cinema, choosing a close-up of an irresistible Claudia Cardinale as the poster image. As Patrick Dynslaegher the artistic director of the Festival, states she “incarnates the Italian cinema we want to represent this year”. Other Italian faces at Ghent 2017 include Aurelio Grimaldi (Chairman) and Greta Scacchi. In this edition, the Festival features an extraordinary section titled “Focus on Italy” in addition to the regular programming, in competition with two other Italian films: “A Ciambra” by Jonas Carpignano, who will be present at the festival, and “Call Me By Your Name” by Luca Guadagnino. Of particular importance is the delegation present in Ghent, with the directors Roberto De Paolis, Fariborz Kamkari, Germano Maccioni, Silvio Soldini, Antonio Piazza, and Fabio Grassadonia. The special retrospective “Focus on Italy” will investigate our mostly civil and socially aware cinema, considering that in the past, as Dynslaegher explains, “Italy launched the most influential movement in the history of cinema with the Neorealist movement. We chose to highlight an important aspect of Italian cinema in the Retrospective of the Festival, which is strongly felt by the modern public in these uncertain and turbulent times, posing questions that still dominate the country: the fracture between the South and the North, the mafia, corruption, the power of the Church, the still unresolved Fascist past, the alternation of power between the Right and Left parties, terrorism, and the disastrous consequences of a consumerist culture”. Ten classic masterpieces will be presented, including the Vittorio De Sica’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis”, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Theorem” under the “Italian Political Cinema” Retrospective, and Bertolucci’s “The Conformist” and “Novecento” and “An Investigation on a Citizen Above Suspicion” by Petri. (Red)
