France – Remembering Monica Vitti and Pasolini with the exhibitions by the Centro Cinema Cesena
Two exhibitions by the Centro Cinema Città di Cesena are on display at the Italian Cultural Institute in Marseille.
The first one remembers Monica Vitti, one of the most popular Italian actresses in the world, who passed away on last February 2nd: “The Eclipse” by Antonioni in the photographs by Vittorugo Contino.
The Eclipse marks the third collaboration between Antonioni and Monica Vitti and is the third film of ‘the tetralogy of feelings and of incommunicability’ (The Adventure, The Night, The Eclipse, Red Desert) – all of them featuring Vitti and all about the same theme, as the director himself stated: an existential crisis.
Important photographer of multiple activities, Vittorugo Contino worked on film sets from the late ‘50s to the mid ‘60s (with Rossellini, Rosi, Antonioni ...). Thanks to his photojournalist view, his photos testify not only what was happening in front of the camera, but also what happened before and after the filming.
The second exhibition is a tribute to Pasolini on the centenary of his birth: Pasolini on the set - “Mamma Roma” and “The Hawks and the Sparrows”.
It presents images by Divo Cavicchioli, another important set photographer of Italian cinema who, from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, worked with Pietro Germi, Ettore Scola, Marco Ferreri, and Gillo Pontecorvo –among others.
Mamma Roma (1962) is the second feature film by Pasolini, who had chosen for the leading role Anna Magnani, one of the iconic actresses of post-war Italian cinema. The Hawks and the Sparrows, filmed in 1965, is the film Pasolini considered "the most loved”. The protagonists are Totò – the greatest Italian comedian presented in a new and different role – and Ninetto Davoli – a ‘discover’ by Pasolini.
The images on display –some very ‘famous’ and some unpublished– focus on the crew, the actors, the set, and the context in which the films were shot.
Both exhibitions are curated by Antonio Maraldi. All photographs are from the Centro Cinema Città di Cesena’s archives, whose precious funds are an inexhaustible memory of Italian cinema.