19/09/2007

The Extra section of the RomeFilmFest (October 18-27) is not just about films: programmed for the second consecutive year by film critic Mario Sesti, the sidebar confirms its experimental bent as a territory exploring contemporary cinema and its defining trends. And while there are fewer titles in the selection (only 28 compared to 40 in 2006), the number of the “encounters” (discussions and Q&As with filmmakers and actors) has increased.

The most highly anticipated one is with Terrence Malick, a filmmaker greatly admired by his renowned peers, notably Martin Scorsese. The Fest has succeeded in get behind the hard-shelled reserve of the director of Badlands and The Thin Red Line, who will be in Rome in the unusual role of an expert of Italian cinema and will show audiences his favourite sequences from Pietro Germi’s Seduced and Abandoned and The Sound of Trumpets by Ermanno Olmi.

There is also great interest in the encounters with Francis Ford Coppola, a “family happening” (his children Roman and Sophia and wife Eleanor will also be onhand); and Bernardo Bertolucci, who before the extended-version screening of 1900 will hold a discussion with the film’s star Gerard Depardieu.

The section features numerous European titles, from the focus on Iceland’s Ragnar Bragason and his diptych Children [+see also:
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While French-language cinema will be represented only by Belgian director Mary Jimenez’s La position du lion couché, produced by the Dardenne brothers, and Spain by Hugo Domènech and Raul Montesinos’s La sombra del iceberg (a documentary that shares more than one analogy with Clint Eastwood’s Flags of our Fathers), the Italian delegation is quite strong.

First up is Guido Chiesa, who with Le pere di Adamo demonstrates the curious similarities between the formations of clouds and social movements; followed by Christina Clausen’s The Universe of Keith Haring, on the celebrated artist; Parole sante by Ascanio Celestini (on the temporary employment of call centres); and Zero – Inchiesta sull’11 settembre by Franco Fracassi and Francesco Trento, which looks behind the supposed truths of 9/11.

All three are vying, along with 12 other documentaries all making their European or international premieres, for the €20,000 CULT Award. They will be flanked, out of competition, by Saverio Costanzo’s Auschwitz 2006, a film on students from Rome visiting the Nazi concentration camp, and Niente è come sembra, the third feature by singer-songwriter-director Franco Battiato, imbued with philosophy and spirituality.

Extra will also screens its titles in film clubs, social centres and arthouse cinemas in and around the city. The full programme of the RomeFilmFest will be announced on September 27.

(Translated from Italian)