A rich Italian Cinema program opens the autumn season of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, designed by Renzo Piano, thanks to the exclusive collaboration – renewed again this year – between Cinecittà and the Academy, the most important film institution worldwide.
“The homage that a global institution like the Academy Museum pays to our most recent cinema is not only an honor but firmly attests to the vitality of our production,” affirms Nicola Maccanico, CEO of Cinecittà, “The films selected by the Academy in ‘New Italian Cinema’ are directed by established filmmakers, awarded at main international festivals and Cinecittà regularly accompanies these films abroad. The Academy Museum’s hospitality and a retrospective dedicated to Maestro Ennio Morricone give us further spur to continue.”
The core of the program is a homage to Ennio Morricone, accompanied by Giuseppe Tornatore and the Morricone family. The screening of Nuovo Cinema Paradiso on October 1st in the ‘Oscar® Sundays’ section and of Tornatore’s 2022 documentary Ennio on October 4th, which closes the ‘New Italian Cinema’ section, are considered the event’s highlights.
Giuseppe Tornatore’s extraordinary documentary on the great musician who won two Oscars (for Lifetime Achievement and The Hateful Eight) is well connected to the exhibition ‘The Soundtracks of a Film Master,’ dedicated to the composer’s genius.
“I am thrilled and extremely honored to participate in this initiative organized by Cinecittà and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in the temple of cinema,” stated Giuseppe Tornatore, “to celebrate Ennio Morricone, a friend, an accomplice, and an unmatched composer, author of all my movies’ soundtracks, starting from Nuovo Cinema Paradiso that will be screened on October 1st, at the opening of a significant review of films he set to music, and to which my documentary Ennio is ideally adjoined, a tribute to his professionalism and his humanity, made possible thanks to our long artistic sharing, but above all to the friendship that bound us”.
From October 6th to November 25th, the exhibit offers an overview of many iconic scores from the Maestro’s multifaceted career. The first appointment is with The Good, the Bad and the Ugly by Sergio Leone, followed by Once Upon a Time in the West by the same director. Then it’s the turn of The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo, The Basilisks by Lina Wertmüller, Theorem by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Fists in the Pocket by Marco Bellocchio, That Splendid November by Mauro Bolognini, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion and A Quiet Place in the Country, both by Elio Petri, Sacco and Vanzetti by Giuliano Montaldo, Two Mules For Sister Sara by Don Siegel, 1900 by Bernardo Bertolucci, The Desert of the Tartars by Valerio Zurlini, Allosanfan by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage by Dario Argento, wrapping it with Once Upon a Time in America by Sergio Leone.
The Oscar® Sundays section – which opens with Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, the beginning of Tornatore and Morricone’s collaboration – lists three more films, Days of Heaven by Terrence Malick, The Untouchables by Brian De Palma and The Hateful Eight by Quentin Tarantino, all set to music by Ennio Morricone.
Italian Cinema, highly appreciated in the USA and awarded with more Oscars® than any other foreign cinema, is also at the center of the ‘New Italian Cinema’ section, which precedes the homage to Morricone on September 6th and features filmmakers such as Gianfranco Rosi, Pietro Marcello, Luca Guadagnino, Alice Rohrwacher, Francesco Munzi, Emma Dante, Laura Bispuri, Adele Tulli. In addition to Giuseppe Tornatore for “Ennio.”
Nine titles produced in the last five years shall be screened, starting from Luca Guadagnino’s remake of the horror classic Suspiria. Other films in review: Happy as Lazzaro, Martin Eden, Daughter of Mine, Notturno, The Macaluso Sisters, Normal, Futura and Ennio.