Art House celebrates a week of Italian films

By Wayne Harada
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

A dinner reception featuring Italian-inspired food will precede the opening tonight of a week-long Italian Film Festival at the Art House at Restaurant Row.

The Friends of Italy Society of Hawai'i will host the reception, 5-6:45 p.m. today at Sunset Grill. The menu includes bruschetta, salmon with capers, New York strip steak, grilled vegetables and more. Tickets are $20 for Friends of Italy Society members, $25 for others.

A related antipasti-biscotti-gelati reception, 5-7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, is open to those with a movie ticket.

The slate of films:

• A new version/director's cut of "Cinema Paradiso," a revisit to the 1990 best foreign film Academy Award winner, about a famous film director who learns that the projectionist at Cinema Paradiso has died, and how the magic of movies has enriched the life of the director.
• "Marcello Mastroianni: I Remember," a humorous and self-deprecating look at the life of the 72-year-old film icon, in his own words, with anecdotes and scenes from his stage and movie career.
• "The Turandot Project," a documentary about renowned conductor Zubin Mehta and celebrated Chinese film director Zhang Yimou as they collaborate on a production of Puccini's opera in Florence with a largely Italian crew. The production was staged in its original setting in the Forbidden City of Beijing.
• "Italian for Beginners," a film of understated beauty and eloquence, where every character has a naive, heartbreaking honesty, and every line communicates the simplicity of basic human longing. The film is more about real life's hardships and hope than a quest to learn Italian.
• "The Son's Room," Nanni Moretti's drama about a once tight-knit happy family adjusting to a devastating loss. Moretti not only directs, but appears as Giovanni, the happily married man and father of two whose life takes a tragic turn. Winner of the Palme D'Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
• "Rocco and His Brothers," a film by Luchino Visconti, featuring a young Alain Delon as Rocco, the son of a widow. who moves to Milan with his three older brothers. A fifth brother, Vincenzo, already lives in Milan; their complex lives lead to friction among them.
• "Pizzicata," depicting a peasant agrarian life as a family adapts to include an Italian-American pilot shot down in World War II. The pilot speaks the native dialect and camouflages himself as a cousin, amid atmospheric local folk songs.