News

Known as the queen of Italian pop, Mina has sold over 150 million records worldwide and remains a music legend who’s been captivating fans since the ’60s. Her new album, Gassa d’Amante, drops on November 22, and its title — named after an essential sailing knot — represents the solid and yet easily untangled nature of love. Just like the knot, the album explores the twists and turns of love in all of its beauty and complexity. At 84, Mina is still going strong, and she’s as iconic as ever.

Mina, born Mina Anna Mazzini, is one of the most adored pop stars in Italy. She is a cult figure who can be compared to Liza Minelli and Bette Midler; a musical diva who is as great a superstar to the Italians as Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift today. Like a 21st century Greta Garbo, she lives in exile in Lugano, Switzerland,...

Michelangelo Antonioni, the iconic Italian auteur, has been immortalized in cinema history thanks to his acclaimed classics “L’Avventura,” “Blow-Up,” and “The Passenger,” which redefined film grammar.

Yet three years prior to his international breakthrough with “L’Avventura,” which won the Cannes Jury

Prize, Antonioni directed his lesser-known feature “Il Grido.” The 1957 drama is relatively obscure and has rarely been screened stateside; however, the film is an early look at the themes of loneliness and fractured relationships that Antonioni later became synonymous with.

The official synopsis for “Il Grido” reads: “Michelangelo Antonioni crafted his first masterpiece with ‘Il Grido,’ a raw expression of anguish that remains one of Italian cinema’s great under-appreciated gems. Bridging Antonioni’s early, neorealism-inspired work and his hallmark stories of existential rootlessness, ‘Il Grido’ centers on Aldo (Steve Cochran), a sugar-refinery worker in the Po Valley. When Irma (Alida Valli), his lover of seven years, learns that...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. To keep up with our latest features, sign up for the Weekly Edit newsletter and follow us @mubinotebook on Twitter and Instagram.NEWSChicken Run.After earlier claims that they were “not in jeopardy,” the 29-location Landmark Theatre chain now faces foreclosure, though IndieWire reports that may not be such a bad thing.After releasing a trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis that included phony, apparently AI-generated pull quotes attributed to real film critics, Lionsgate has issued an apology and ceremonially fired a marketing consultant.The fast-food chain Chick-Fil-a plans to launch a streaming service, which will apparently include game shows and reality programming.FESTIVALSAhead of its premiere this weekend at the Toronto International Film Festival, we are pleased to share the first poster for Sofia Bohdanowicz's Measures for a Funeral (2024), designed by Charlotte Gosch of studio other types.

It is with great sadness that we report legendary French actor Alain Delon has died at the age of 88. Widely hailed as the most beautiful movie star of all time thanks to his ocean blue eyes and statuesque, sculpted cheekbones, Delon — star of Le Samourai, Plein Soleil, Rocco And His Brothers and much, much more — brought an insouciant cool to cinema on- and off-screen, and an ineffable capacity to convey the depths of a brooding soul in the level of those self-same eyes. Delon passed away at his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and family, on 18 August.

Born on 8 November 1935 to cinema projectionist (and later La Régina cinema director) father François Fabien Delon and pharmacist and cinema usher mother Édith Marie Suzanne Arnold, you could say that the movies ran in Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon's blood. After a turbulent series of school expulsions, spells in prison,...

The legendary, and legendarily handsome, international movie star Alain Delon passed away on Sunday, August 18, 2024. He was 88.

Delon was best known for playing heavies and tough guys, but he had incredible range, portraying all kinds of roles in his 60-plus-year career. Most American film students have experienced the bolt of electricity seeing Delon for the first time in an acclaimed international hit like René Clément's Tom Ripley adaptation "Purple Noon," or Luchino Visconti's "Rocco and his Brothers" (1960) or the same director's massive historical epic "The Leopard" (1963). Delon made several films with Clément, and was often paired with most of the best European directors of his generation, including Michelangelo Antonioni (he was in "L'Eclisse"), Louis Malle ("Spirits of the Dead"), Joseph Losey ("The Assassination of Trotsky"), Agnès Varda ("One Hundred and One Nights"), and even Jean-Luc Godard ("New Wave"). Anyone with a subscription to the Criterion Channel has likely...

Cinema isn’t a beauty contest, but if it were, Alain Delon surely would have won the title of the 1960s’ most handsome actor.

That’s a subjective call, of course, and as such, Delon is the kind of figure about whom writers tend to fall back on the word “arguably” — as in, “arguably the most handsome” — which is kind of a cop-out, as it leaves the argument to somebody else. When it comes to Delon, plenty have made the case. I loved Anthony Lane’s longform analysis of Delon’s allure in The New Yorker earlier this year. And none other than Jane Fonda, who co-starred with Delon in 1964’s “Joy House,” described him as “the most beautiful human being.”

The French star, who died Sunday, made more than 100 movies in a career that spanned 50 years, but for that one transformative decade in film history — beginning with the Patricia Highsmith...

Alain Delon, the striking French leading man known for his uncommonly beautiful, coldly calculating villains in Le Samouraï and Purple Noon, has died. As confirmed by his family to France’s Afp news agency, Delon died Sunday after years of health complications stemming from a 2019 stroke. He was 88.An icon of French cinema,...

Alain Delon, the influential French actor who starred in European cinematic classics like Le Samourai and The Leopard, has died at the age of 88.

The actor’s children confirmed his death Sunday in a statement to Afp (via BBC), “Alain Fabien, Anouchka, Anthony, as well as (his dog) Loubo, are deeply saddened to announce the passing of their father. He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family.”

A box office star and heartthrob actor in his native France and across Europe throughout the Sixties and Seventies,...

Alain Delon, the legendary actor and sex symbol who dominated French cinemas in the 1960s in films like “Le Samouraï” and “Purple Noon,” has died at the age of 88. The news was shared via a statement to Afp. Delon passed away in his longtime home in Douchy, France.

“He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” the statement said. Per Deadline, French president Emmanuel Macron said in a translated statement, “Mr. Klein or Rocco, the Leopard or the Samurai, Alain Delon has played legendary roles and made the world dream. Lending his unforgettable face to shake up our lives. Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument.”

Delon first rose to prominence in the 1959 comedy “Women Are Weak,” which was a major hit in France and frequently screened in America. But his status as a serious actor...

Alain Delon, the French actor most famous for his roles in the films of New Wave director Jean-Pierre Melville, especially “Le Samourai,” has died. He was 88.

“He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” according to a statement released to the Afp news agency by his family.

In addition to “Le Samourai,” Delon also appeared in Melville’s brilliant heist film “Le Cercle rouge” and “Un Flic.”

Some of his other significant films were Rene Clement’s “Purple Noon”; Visconti’s “Rocco and His Brothers” and “The Leopard”; Antonioni’s “L’Eclisse”; Jose Giovanni’s “Two Men in Town”; and Joseph Losey’s “Mr. Klein.”

Although he triggered some controversies during the later part of his life due to his public comments on adoption of children by same-sex parents and affinity with far-right politicians, many prominent figures in France and abroad paid...

Kentaro Miura never held back when it came to contributing to Berserk. Every character and every piece of artwork that constitutes the manga holds a part of him. Inspiration makes artwork better. As a writer, it becomes important to understand each and every character not as a combination of words and images but as a person.

Guts in Berserk

A hero and a villain are both the creations of the same mind. Whether it be through inspiration or understanding, an artist, especially a writer, can think both as an antagonist and as a protagonist. Miura has some of the most complex people in his manga, so it is only safe to assume that his own thinking process was filled with complexities. More than that, so were his surroundings.

Kentaro Miura Found Violence in Envy

In an interview with Yukari Fujimoto (via Mangabrog) Kentaro Miura talked about channeling his inner Guts and Griffith.

Kentaro Miura was a legend with his absolutely breathtaking artwork and storytelling. What he did with Berserk was absolutely impossible for anyone else to do and that is reason enough to justify the pedestal he still stands on. The element of horror combined with one of melancholy, relatability, and the brutality of the world, Miura created a masterpiece worth a thousand words.

Griffith in Berserk | Credit: Dark Horse Comics

When it comes to visually representing realistic elements through unusual perspectives, another name that comes to mind is Tim Burton. Both him and Miura are different in the genres and mediums they worked on, but that is not to say that one cannot have inspired the other. One thing Miura found interesting about Burton’s works, that he had to incorporate in his own storytelling, and that was the dark presentation of humanity.

Kentaro Miura was Inspired by Tim Burton

Kentaro Miura,...

A little over an hour and a half into Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Monica Vitti’s Giuliana visits Richard Harris’s Corrado Zeller at his hotel. “Mi fanno male i capelli” she says, her hair hurts, as do her eyes, her throat and her mouth. Roberta Torre’s Mi Fanno Male I Capelli with a score by Wong Kar Wai’s longtime composer Shigeru Umebayashi takes the sentence as a starting point to investigate time and the mind, memory and the fluidity of identity.

In a bravura performance Alba Rohrwacher interacts not only with her newly found guiding light of identification Monica Vitti, but also with the melancholy screen Marcello Mastroianni of 1961, the Alain Delon of L’Eclisse, Claudia Cardinale, and later Alberto...

A new anime adaptation of Berserk is something that fans have always wanted, and that is not something new. This is because the legendary manga by Kentaro Miura has never truly got what it deserved in the form of anime.

Although the 1997 anime adaptation of the story under the studio named Olm Team Iguchi, did the best they could with the available resources they had, however, the difficult journey of our main character, Guts, his quest for revenge, and his search for peace of mind, were something that has never been fully explored in the anime.

Guts in Berserk

The frustration felt by the fans of Berserk over the lack of a proper anime adaptation of the manga reached a point where they are taking matters into their own hands.

Studio Eclypse Teases Berserk: The Black Swordsman Adaptation with New Artwork

In order to get the best out of the manga in the anime adaptation,...

Audience prize is won by Ukrainian filmmaker Alla Savytska’s graduation film ‘Tutti’, while

Belgian writer-director Emmanuelle Nicot’s debut feature Love According To Dalva was awarded the Grand Prix in the International Competition at this year’s edition of the Molodist Kyiv Film Festival.

Despite the ongoing war with Russia, the Ukrainian festival was held this year at the Zhovten and Krakiv cinemas in Kyiv between 21-29 October.

Nicot’s incest drama, which premiered at the Critics’ Week in Cannes last year and is being handled internationally by mk2, received a large Scythian Deer statuette and a $5,000 cash prize...

The first shot of writer-director Andrea Pallaoro’s “Monica” shows the eponymous heroine (Trace Lysette) in what looks like a tanning bed as the New Order song “Bizarre Love Triangle” plays on the soundtrack. The aspect ratio this movie is shot in is unusually narrow, and this aids the sense that Lysette’s Monica feels both isolated and trapped.

Pallaoro is Italian, and so as we watch Lysette’s Monica in long scenes where she is stuck in compositions behind doors and windows as she makes calls to people who seem to have abandoned her, it feels like Pallaoro is riffing on the movies that Italian maestro Michelangelo Antonioni made in the 1960s with Monica Vitti, especially “L’Eclisse.”

There are times in this early section of “Monica” where the framing can be a little much, particularly when we see Monica behind a door frame with a window that looks like a cross.

The top Iefta (Intl. Film Talent Assn.) award for docs-in-progress at the Cannes Film Market’s documentary-focused industry sidebar Cannes Docs has gone to “Twice Colonized” by Lin Alluna.

The film was developed by the Circle Women Doc Accelerator, a training program for female-identifying documentary filmmakers.

The win marks a hat-trick for Circle since they started their partnership with Cannes Docs in 2020: previous Iefta Docs-in-Progress Award laureates at the industry event include “Beauty of the Beast” by Anna Nemes, produced by Circle 2018 alumna Ágnes Horváth-Szabó, and “Cent’anni” by Circle 2020 alumna Maja Prelog, produced by Rok Biček.

“Twice Colonized” tells the story of renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter who has led a lifelong fight for the rights of her people. When her youngest son unexpectedly passes away, Aaju embarks on a personal journey to bring her colonizers in both Canada and Denmark to justice.

It is produced by Emile Hertling Péronard...

Scandinavia is bringing talent old and new to the Cannes Film Market’s Cannes Docs sidebar this year, with a showcase of five feature length films-in-the-making pitched as part of the Scandinavian Showcase on Saturday.

“Children of the Lowest Heaven”

From Denmark, internationally acclaimed writer-director Birgitte Stærmose Mortensen, who has been working on mini-series for HBO, Starz and Netflix for the past five years, presented “Children of the Lowest Heaven” (“Ønskeliv”), a hybrid doc set in Kosovo.

Inspired by her short “Out of Love” (2009), about a group of children living in poverty in post-war Pristina, it picks up where she left off with the characters, who are now young adults, still fighting to survive in one of Europe’s poorest nations.

It’s about the long-term effects of war, and what it means to live a life in poverty. Poverty is not a moment but a lifelong state of being:...

The solar eclipses of 1961 and 1999, both observable in Serbia, bracket the events explored in the lyrical imagery of Nataša Urban’s debut feature-length documentary. But because life so rarely arranges itself neatly along a defined timeline, they do it imprecisely, blurring over a little at either edge, the way memories do. As a metaphor, too, these astronomical events are evocatively imperfect: Our tiny little moon can occasionally blot out the sun the way an individual’s act of willful forgetfulness can all but obscure massive geopolitical upheaval. But an eclipse passes according to immutable laws of physics; memory and reckoning do not obey a similarly strict orbit. People are far less predictable than planets.

Still, our interpretation of celestial mechanics can be politicized, as the Serbian-born Urban outlines in the contrasting depictions of the two eclipses. In 1961, lovely, scratchy archive footage shows excited Yugoslavs crowding the streets, at the express encouragement of the government,...

Jennifer Rainsford’s documentary looks at the human resilience of the planet.

UK-based company Taskovski Films has acquired world sales rights to Jennifer Rainsford’s documentary All Of Our Heartbeats Are Connected Through Exploding Stars, which has its world premiere at Visions du Reel in Switzerland next week.

In the context of the March 2011 tsunami which devastated the Japanese coastline, the film looks at how people, plants and animals continue to coexist in the aftermath of this tragedy.

All Of Our Heartbeats… is produced by Michael Krotkiewski, Mirjam Gelhorn and David Herdies for Sweden’s Momento Film, in association with...

“The Eclipse” by Nataša Urban has picked up the top Dox:Award at Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival.

It was awarded at a ceremony in the Danish capital, which opened with a homage to Ukraine – where fest organizers announced they would be screening Daniel Roher’s “Navalny” in theaters across the nation immediately after the festival to show “that there is another Russia.”

“The Eclipse” was competing with 11 others for the top award – half of them had their world premiere at the fest, part of no fewer than 76 world premieres during the event.

Focusing on the events of Aug. 11, 1999, when most of Serbia’s population barricaded themselves in their homes and nuclear bunkers in fear of a total solar eclipse, the film uses the rare natural phenomenon as a metaphor for a nation’s unclean conscience about the consequences of its political choices. In the process, Urban’s documentary essay confronts...

Natasa Urban’s ‘The Eclipse’, about ex-Yugoslavia, takes top prize.

Natasa Urban’s The Eclipse, a personal look at the dark past of ex-Yugoslavia, has won the main Dox:Award prize at the 2022 Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Cph:Dox).

The film, which had its world premiere at Cph:dox on March 28, sees Urban turn her analogue film camera on her family in ex-Yugoslavia, looking at how a dark past remains embedded in the present.

Scroll down for the full list of winners

Following what it called “a unanimous decision”, the jury described “a film that affirms a vocation for the moving...

Norwegian filmmaker Benjamin Ree, whose previous film “The Painter and the Thief” picked up a host of awards including Best Storytelling at Sundance, has given Variety exclusive access to his new doc film project, “Ibelin,” at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival.

The film is named after the “World of Warcraft” avatar of Mats Steen, a young Norwegian man who died at the age of 25 from Dmd (Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy), a rare genetic disorder that causes muscle degeneration.

After his death, Mats’ parents discovered that their disabled son, who for the last 10 years of his life had been wheelchair-bound and needed constant medical assistance, has led a rich and eventful life online and made friends around the world on the way.

After acquiring the rights to his story through a book published by Mats’ father and the content of Mats’ blog, Ree decided to recreate Mats’ avatar’s life in...

The duo were speaking at the final Cph: Dox A Morning With… session in Copenhagen on Thursday (March 31).

Riotsville, USA director Sierra Pettengill and The Eclipse filmmaker Natasa Urban discussed the different ways documentaries can use historical archive footage in the final Cph: Dox A Morning With… session in Copenhagen on Thursday (March 31).

US professional archival researcher and filmmaker Pettengill said she felt compelled to make her film, about the full-scale town centre replicas built by the military in the 1960s for riot training, because they are “not part of our historical memory in the USA.”

Initially finding some intriguing...

The sessions are part of Cph:Conference, the industry event running from March 29 to April 1 as part of Denmark’s Cph:dox.

Daniel Roher (Navalny) and Lars Ostenfeld (Into The Ice) are among the leading international documentary filmmakers taking part in Cph:Conference, the industry event running from March 29 to April 1 as part of Denmark’s Cph:dox.

The ‘A Morning With’ discussion strand filmmakers will participate in a session about the contemporary role of leaders and the themes of access and risk in non-fiction filmmaking.

All the sessions will be available to watch live for free via this story from March 29 (see below). Festival accreditation is not required.

Taskovski Films has acquired world sales rights to Nataša Urban’s “The Eclipse,” which has its world premiere in the main Dox:award competition at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Cph:dox).

Focusing on the events of Aug. 11, 1999, when most of Serbia’s population barricaded themselves in their homes and nuclear bunkers in fear of a total solar eclipse, the film uses the rare natural phenomenon as a metaphor for a nation’s unclean conscience about the consequences of its political choices. In the process, Urban’s documentary essay confronts her country’s wartime and criminal past, and the evil that is still on the loose today.

“It took me 25 years to start opening up about my experiences of war,” said the director in a statement. “It is the safety net of my family and life in Norway that allowed me to finally start facing the ghosts from my past.”

“The Eclipse...

The Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (Cph:dox), which runs March 23-April 3, has revealed its conference program. Among the filmmakers taking part are Sara Dosa (“Fire of Love”), Daniel Roher (“Navalny”) and Renzo Martens (“The White Cube”), and Brazilian indigenous cinematographer Tangãi Uru-eu-wau-wau (“The Territory).

The conference program, known as Cph:conference, is presented in partnership with training initiative Documentary Campus. It runs online and in-person March 29-April 1.

The mornings will be devoted to “storytelling, craft, and creative dilemmas of documentary filmmaking at the intersection of art, science and society,” the fest said. Each morning will feature “a thought-provoking conversation” between two filmmakers in the Cph:dox competition program.

The role of leaders nowadays and the themes of access and risk will be discussed by Roher and Christoffer Guldbrandsen (“A Storm Foretold”). Dosa and Lars Ostenfeld (“Into the Ice”) will delve into innovative storytelling, and the intersection between science and documentary filmmaking. The interconnection between past and present,...

The four-day event will run in-person in Copenhagen and online.

Daniel Roher, the Canadian director of Navalny, will be among the speakers at Cph:Conference, the industry event running from March 29 to April 1 as part of Denmark’s Cph:dox.

As part of the ‘A Morning With’ discussion strand Roher will participate in a session about the contemporary role of leaders and the themes of access and risk in non-fiction filmmaking.

He will be joined by Christoffer Guldbrandsen, Danish director of A Storm Foretold, about the role of Trump advisor Roger Stone in the January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol building.

Roher...

The four-day event will run in-person in Copenhagen and online.

Daniel Roher, the Canadian director of Navalny, will be among the speakers at Cph:Conference, the industry event running from March 29 to April 1 as part of Denmark’s Cph:dox.

As part of the ‘A Morning With’ discussion strand Roher will participate in a session about the contemporary role of leaders and the themes of access and risk in non-fiction filmmaking.

He will be joined by Christoffer Guldbrandsen, Danish director of A Storm Foretold, about the role of Trump advisor Roger Stone in the January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol building.

Roher...

The Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (Cph:dox) has announced its full program, which includes some 200 new films and a whopping 76 world premieres.

A dozen documentaries are competing for the top prize in the main Dox:Award competition, a quarter of which were shot in Russia and Ukraine – a testimony to the organizers’ desire for the festival to reflect the times in which we live.

“A documentary film festival is not only a celebration of cinema, it is also an opportunity to critically reflect on reality, to engage in democratic dialogue and to discuss how our views of the world have consequences,” artistic director Niklas Engstrøm says. “Right now, our thoughts are first and foremost with the people in Ukraine, a sovereign European state unlawfully invaded by an autocratic regime. In Kyiv, the great festival Docudays UA was supposed to happen around the same time as Cph:dox. That is no longer possible.

Above: Italian poster for The Girl with a Pistol. Artist: Giorgio Olivetti.Monica Vitti, who died on February 2nd at the age of 90, was an icon of modern cinema—one of its most famous and most beautiful faces—but she is best known outside Italy for just four films, all of which she made for her one-time partner Michelangelo Antonioni. In the original Italian poster for L’avventura (1960), the film that made both their names, her head is tilted to the side, her face barely visible: she is mostly a shock of blonde hair. But in the posters that were created as that film travelled the globe, and in her ensuing posters for Antonioni's La notte (1961), L’eclisse (1962), and Red Desert (1964), she gets her close-up, usually staring into the middle distance or directly at the viewer. Always impassive, never smiling. But of course, in a career that lasted another 25 years there were many more films,...

To cite Monica Vitti as an icon, following her death in Rome this week at 90, is somehow unsatisfying. She could never be summed up as something so inert — she was far too vividly alive. If her sensuality has been called “chilly,” it nonetheless animated every frame she stood in or fast-tapped through in high heels. If the landscapes her greatest creative partner Michelangelo Antonioni directed her across were at times sprawling or forbidding, she always held the eye, whether with a look or a highly kinetic outburst.

To a young film buff crammed into a swaybacked seat at a Manhattan arthouse, beholding her for the first time was to risk a schoolboy crush. She’s been called “Impossibly lovely” on this site, and that’s true enough — impossible, and yet there she is onscreen. The sturdy lips forming a blossom of a mouth, the eyes that seem focused just a...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Monica Vitti in Red Desert (1964). (Courtesy of Janus Films)One of the most captivating presences in Italian cinema, actress Monica Vitti has died at age 90. She started as a stage and television actor before becoming known for her roles in Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (1960), La notte (1960), L'eclisse (1962) and Red Desert (1964). After the end of her professional and romantic relationship with Antonioni (the two would return for The Mystery of Oberwald in 1980), Vitti turned to lighter fare by international directors, including a small part in Luis Buñuel's surrealist comedy The Phantom of Liberty (1974). In the official announcement of Vitti's death, Italy’s culture minister Dario Franceschini wrote, “Goodbye to the queen of Italian cinema.”The groundbreaking artist James Bidgood, whose artistic output spanned from photography and music to films like Pink Narcissus (1971), has also died.

Monica Vitti, the Italian screen icon who starred in numerous 1960s classics, has died. Vitti passed after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease; the actress was 90 years old and had been retired since 2002. Dubbed the "Queen of Italian Cinema," Vitti is known internationally for starring in Michelangelo Antonioni's breakthrough cinematic trilogy, which includes "L'Avventura," "La Notte" and "L'Eclisse." News of her death came from Italian news agency Ansa, citing a tweet from film critic and former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni:

"Roberto Russo, her companion in these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more. I do so with great grief, affection,...

The post Monica Vitti, Icon of '60s Italian Cinema, Has Died appeared first on /Film.

Monica Vitti, the Italian star of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film masterpieces, including his trilogy “L’avventura,” “La Notte” and “L’Eclisse,” has died. She was 90.

Vitti’s death was announced by Walter Veltroni, a former film critic and mayor of Rome, who said that her partner of many years Roberto Russo asked him to communicate the news.

“Roberto Russo, [her] partner of all these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no longer there. I do it with pain, affection, regret,” Veltroni wrote in a tweet.

In Antonioni’s 1960 art-house classic “L’avventura,” Vitti portrayed a woman searching for her best friend along with her friend’s lover after she goes missing on a boating trip. The film and her performance is a moody, detached masterpiece that would define art-house cinema worldwide in the ’60s and made her an international star, even landing Vitti a BAFTA nomination.

“L’avventura” was the first of...

Italian actress Monica Vitti, best known internationally for starring in Michelangelo Antonioni’s breakthrough cinematic trilogy “L’Avventura,” “La Notte” and “L’Eclisse,” as well as in the director’s “Red Desert,” has died. She was 90.

The news of her death was tweeted by former Rome mayor and film critic Walter Veltroni on Wednesday.

Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.

— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022

(Roberto Russo, her companion in these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more. I do so with great grief, affection, and nostalgia)

Vitti, known for her enigmatic, distant beauty — the All Movie Guide termed her the “high priestess of frosty sensuality” — had been retired for more than a decade due to Alzheimer’s.

Vitti and Antonioni had certainly enjoyed a fruitful collaboration, but in...

Monica Vitti, the Italian screen icon known for a string of 1960s classics, died Wednesday at 90, according to reports in Italy.

The news was conveyed by writer, director and politician Walter Veltroni on behalf of Vitti’s husband, Roberto Russo:

Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.

— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022

The feted actress, best known for movies including L’Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964), L’Eclisse (1962) and La Notte (1961), had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for two decades.

Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli on November 3, 1931, in Rome, Vitti acted in amateur productions as a teenager then trained at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts.

The actress shot to global fame following spectacular collaborations with legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vitti starred in L’Avventura as a detached and...

Actors Brandon Grace, Éanna Hardwicke and Paulina Chávez are joining the cast of Fate: The Winx Saga in Season 2, which is now in production in County Wicklow, Ireland.

Grace will play Grey, with Hardwick portraying Sebastian; Chavéz has been cast as Flora.

Fate: The Winx Sagaga is based on Nickelodeon animated series Winx Club, which was created and produced by Rainbow Group’s founder and CEO, Iginio Straffi. The show follows the coming-of-age journey of five unlikely friends attending a magical boarding school known as Alfea. At the school, they must learn to master their magical powers, all the while navigating love, rivalries and the monsters that threaten their very existence.

Brian Young (The Vampire Diaries) returns in Season 2 as showrunner and executive producer. Additional exec producers include Judy Counihan and Kris Thykier of Archery Pictures, as well as Joanne Lee and Cristiana Buzzelli from Rainbow.

The...

Ramin Bahrani, Oscar-nominated writer/director of The White Tiger, discusses a few of his favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The White Tiger (2021)

Man Push Cart (2005)

Chop Shop (2007)

99 Homes (2015)

The Boys From Fengkuei (1983)

The Time To Live And The Time To Die (1985)

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976)

Bicycle Thieves (1948)

La Terra Trema (1948)

Umberto D (1952)

Where Is The Friend’s Home? (1987)

Nomadland (2020)

The Runner (1984)

Bashu, the Little Stranger (1989)

A Moment Of Innocence a.k.a. Bread And Flower Pot (1996)

The House Is Black (1963)

The Conversation (1974)

Mean Streets (1973)

Nashville (1975)

Aguirre, The Wrath Of God (1972)

The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser (1974)

Paris, Texas (1984)

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

Vagabond (1985)

Luzzu (2021)

Bait (2019)

Sweet Sixteen (2002)

Abigail’s Party (1977)

Meantime (1983)

Fish Tank (2009)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Malcolm X (1992)

Nothing But A Man (1964)

Goodbye Solo (2008)

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973)

Dekalog (1989)

The Double Life Of Veronique...

Is Joseph Losey’s elusive, maudit masterpiece really a masterpiece? Stanley Baker’s foolish lout of a writer ruins his life pursuing the wanton Jeanne Moreau, and it’s hard to tell if she’s punishing him or he’s punishing himself. Losey’s directing skills are in top form on location in Venice and Rome for this absorbing art film. Pi’s overdue and very welcome disc sorts out the multiple release versions for the first time, and in so doing finally makes the show critically accessible. Co-starring (swoon) Virna Lisi and James Villiers.

Eve

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1962 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 126 109, 108 min. / Eva, The Devil’s Woman / Street Date October 19, 2020 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Stanley Baker, Virna Lisi, James Villiers, Riccardo Garrone, Lisa Gastoni, Checco Rissone, Enzo Fiermonte, Nona Medici, Roberto Paoletti, Alexis Revidis, Evi Rigano.

Cinematography: Gianni Di Venanzo, Henri Decaë

Film...

Above: The Green YearsPaulo Rocha, the key figure of Portuguese modern cinema, was 28 when he filmed his virtuoso black-and-white debut, The Green Years (1963). It’s a film so mature, with such musical verve and pictorial elegance, we can only marvel at the energy that was in the air in Europe in the 1960s, when the continent’s new waves were taking shape. Rocha’s is a case of maturity arrived at quickly, namely after his cinema studies in Paris, and then his apprenticeships under the masters Manoel de Oliveira and Jean Renoir, as assistant director on Oliveira’s features, The Bread (1959) and Act of Spring and Renoir’s The Elusive Corporal (1962).In The Green Years, two young lovers, a shoemaker, Júlio (Rui Gomes), and a maid, Ilda (Isabel Ruth), are transplants to Lisbon. Though at times nostalgic for their villages, they’re mostly dazzled by the brisk pace, suaveness and...

Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Michelangelo Antonioni's L'eclisse (1962) is now showing April 18 - May 17, 2020 in the United Kingdom.It starts with a breakup, the dissolution of a relationship between two bourgeois Italians taking place in a stifling atmosphere of all-night contention. But by the end of Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse, the ultimate breakdown, which likewise encompasses the cessation of yet another engagement, also strikes a more spacious, reverberating chord, portending the suspension of a fractured society and perhaps the world at large. Released in 1962, following L’avventura (1960) and La note (1961), the kindred features of what has been dubbed Antonioni’s “Trilogy of Alienation,” L’eclisse similarly hosts a congregation of emblematic individuals standing in for their class and culture, as well as embodying an entirely revelatory mode of philosophical and psychological bearing. Though seldom voiced in any explicit fashion—these are films defined by a...

The Video Essay is a joint project of Mubi and Filmadrid Festival Internacional de Cine. Film analysis and criticism found a completely new and innovative path with the arrival of the video essay, a relatively recent form that already has its own masters and is becoming increasingly popular. The limits of this discipline are constantly expanding; new essayists are finding innovative ways to study the history of cinema working with images. With this non-competitive section of the festival both Mubi and Filmadrid will offer the platform and visibility the video essay deserves. The seven selected works will be shown during the dates of Filmadrid (June 8 - 17, 2017) on Mubi’s cinema publication, the Notebook. Also there will be a free public screening of the selected works during the festival. The selection was made by the programmers of Mubi and Filmadrid.L'eclisse LinesA video essay by Hannah LeißA video essay on the...

The Video Essay is a joint project of Mubi and Filmadrid Festival Internacional de Cine. Film analysis and criticism found a completely new and innovative path with the arrival of the video essay, a relatively recent form that already has its own masters and is becoming increasingly popular. The limits of this discipline are constantly expanding; new essayists are finding innovative ways to study the history of cinema working with images. With this non-competitive section of the festival both Mubi and Filmadrid will offer the platform and visibility the video essay deserves. The seven selected works will be shown during the dates of Filmadrid (June 8 - 17, 2017) on Mubi’s cinema publication, the Notebook. Also there will be a free public screening of the selected works during the festival. The selection was made by the programmers of Mubi and Filmadrid.Telefoni NeriA video essay by Hannah LeißAs a reaction to the...

Michelangelo Antonioni's pre-international breakthrough drama is as good as anything he's done, a flawlessly acted and directed story of complex relationships -- that include his 'career' themes before the existential funk set in. It's one of the best-blocked dramatic films ever... the direction is masterful. Le amiche Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 817 1955 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 106 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date June 7, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Eleonora Rossi Drago, Gabriele Ferzetti, Franco Fabrizi, Valentina Cortese, Madeleine Fischer, Yvonne Furneaux, Anna Maria Pancani, Luciano Volpato, Maria Gambarelli, Ettore Manni. Cinematography Gianni De Venanzo Film Editor Eraldo Da Roma Original Music Giovanni Fusco Written by Suso Cecchi D'Amico, Michelangelo Antonioni, Alba de Cespedes from a book by Cesare Pavese Produced by Giovanni Addessi Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

It's time to stop being so intimidated by Michelangelo Antonioni. His epics of existential alienation La notte, L'eclisse and...

Rushes collects news, articles, images, videos and more for a weekly roundup of essential items from the world of film.NEWSThe big news in Hollywood is that "the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has approved a series of major changes, in terms of voting and recruitment, also adding three new seats to the 51-person board — all part of a goal to double the number of women and diverse members of the Academy by 2020. The changes were approved by the board Thursday night in an emergency meeting," Variety reports. A major step, certainly, but we've still to see what the results will be. And certainly Academy membership does little to alter what kinds of movies get produced and by whom.Charles Silver, the head of the Museum of Modern Art's Film Study Center, passed away last week. IndieWire is running an homage by Laurence Kardish, a former MoMA film curator:"Perhaps,...

Flicker Alley's posted a round of essays and interviews in conjunction with its release of its collection of American avant-garde works on DVD and Blu-ray. Discussed here are Stan Brakhage, Bruce Baillie, Lawrence Jordan, Joseph Cornell, Maya Deren, Shirley Clarke and more. Also in today's roundup: Books on Werner Herzog, Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, David Hare and Christopher Isherwood; new Film-Philosophy essays on Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse, Busby Berkeley, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox and Samuel Beckett. And more. » - David Hudson...

Flicker Alley's posted a round of essays and interviews in conjunction with its release of its collection of American avant-garde works on DVD and Blu-ray. Discussed here are Stan Brakhage, Bruce Baillie, Lawrence Jordan, Joseph Cornell, Maya Deren, Shirley Clarke and more. Also in today's roundup: Books on Werner Herzog, Groucho Marx, Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, David Hare and Christopher Isherwood; new Film-Philosophy essays on Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse, Busby Berkeley, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox and Samuel Beckett. And more. » - David Hudson...

Read More: 'By the Sea,' Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's European Marital Adventure, Opens AFI Fest "La Notte" (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961) In the long tradition of art house cinema, including Antonioni's own "L'Avventura" and "L'Eclisse," "La Notte" is an evocative drama built entirely on mood and spiraling feelings. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau play an unfaithful married couple whose relationship deteriorates over the course of a long day filled with temptation from suitors and longing for the connection they once shared. Upon first introduction, the couple seems to have it all; Mastroianni's Giovanni is an acclaimed writer who has recently published his latest novel, while Moreau's Lidia is a sultry beauty. A master of observation, Antonioni fills the picture with long silences and drawn out scenes that expose the ruins of the couple's interior state. As each finds...

Janus Films premieres its Wim Wenders retrospective in New York today, featuring new restorations of such classics as Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire as well as the director's cut of Until the End of the World. More goings on: an Eric Rohmer series in New York with The Marquise of O as its centerpiece; Penelope Spheeris presents her work in Austin; Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse is being revived across the UK; plus new horror in London and French crime thrillers in Vienna. » - David Hudson...