18/10/2007

After much success in the US (including a standing ovation at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles) The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio [+see also:
trailer
film profile] has come home to Italy.

Agostino Ferrente’s documentary, which has picked up awards throughout the world, will not only screen at the RomeFilmFest as part of the European focus of New Cinema Network (NCN), it will also be accompanied by the world premiere (in the Extra sidebar) of Diari del ritorno, a series of documentaries on the individual members of the multi-ethnic ensemble.

Entrusted to some of Italy’s most prominent documentary filmmakers, the project (supervised by Ferrente, Mariangela Barbanente and Alessandro Rossetto) is made up of medium-length films (approximately 30 minutes long) that follow each musician’s return visit to his or her country. The first two – Raul and Houcine – will be presented to festival audiences on October 19, followed, as has become tradition, by the performance from the entire orchestra.

The former was shot in Argentina and directed by Rossetto, who was at Locarno last year with the documentary Feltrinelli, never distributed in Italy despite winning much acclaim on the international festival circuit, which was edited – like Raul – by Jacopo Quadri.

Houcine (set in Tunisia) was directed by Leonardo Di Costanzo, a filmmaker active above all in France, where he often works to find funding even for his Italian-set documentaries, such as A scuola (on the problems of schools on the outskirts of Naples) and Odessa (on an abandoned Russian textile factory in the port of Naples).

While the Diari del ritorno follow their course, at the NCN Ferrente and Giovanni Piperno will also present a new project, Le cose belle. A sequel, the film revisits the subjects of Intervista a mia madre, a documentary the two co-directed in 2000, which won an award at the Turin Film Festival.

(Translated from Italian)