Classici fuori Mostra: screenings at the Cinema Rossini from 2 March to 17 May

From March 2 through May 17 at 7 pm, the Cinema Rossini movie theatre in Venice (Salizzada de la Chiesa o del Teatro, 3997) will host the fourth edition of the film series Classici fuori Mostra. Permanent Festival of Restored Films, organized by La Biennale di Venezia in collaboration with the City of Venice’s Circuito Cinema and the professors of film studies at the Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice and the Università IUAV in Venice.

The programme will present ten film classics recently restored by the major film libraries around the world, in the original language version with subtitles in Italian. Each film will be introduced by an expert and followed by a question-and-answer session with the audience. There will be special discounts for students (reduced student ticket price 3 euro, reduced student pass 30 euro, full price ticket 6 euro).

“It is said that good habits should never be lost – states the artistic director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera – and so, in the wake of the success of the previous three editions, La Biennale once again presents a selection of restored films for a series that is beginning to look like a permanent event. Classici Fuori Mostra offers the valuable opportunity to see perfectly restored films in the best of conditions one could aspire to: an appropriately equipped movie theatre, the attendance of a focused audience of film buffs, the presentation of a critic who will also lead the discussion that follows the screening”.

The first film in the line-up, Thursday March 2^nd at 7 pm, ­is the masterpiece by Bernardo Bertolucci Il conformista (The Conformist, 1970), nominated for an Academy Award for best screenplay and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Stefania Sandrelli, Dominique Sanda, Pierre Clémenti. Adapted from the eponymous novel by Alberto Moravia, written by Bertolucci himself with the masterful cinematography of Vittorio Storaro, Il conformista is the director’s first box-office success and tackles the complex issue of the relationship between fascism and the bourgeoisie in a very personal way. In the film, the desire to be normal transforms Marcello Clerici (Trintignant) into a killer for the regime. He goes to Paris to kill a former professor now in exile, but on July 25^th 1943 he makes a terrible discovery.

“This is the most inventive and freely critical of the films adapted from Moravia, displaying a figuratively refined elegance and a transfixing stylistic invention” (Morando Morandini).

“The Conformist was not only a remarkable intellectual and aesthetic achievement, but one of the most influential films of the first half of the decade. Martin Scorsese found this union of thematic complexity and visual utopia to be a true revelation, a film that was both seductive and repelling”. (Mark Cousins).

Restored by the Cineteca di Bologna/Minerva Film. Introduced by Sara D’Ascenzo.

The titles in the line-up are classics from cinema far and near, which belong in the Pantheon  of the great films in the history of cinema, but are also works that the passing of time invites us to reconsider, given the revision in the hierarchy of values to which all of art history is subject.

Following The Conformist, the line-up will present:

• Wednesday March 8^th  La Maman et la Putain (The Mother and the Whore, 1973) by Jean Eustache
  introduced by Carmelo Marabello
• Wednesday March 15^th  Nostalghia (1983) by Andrei Tarkovsky
  introduced by Adriano De Grandis
• Wednesday March 29^th  Accattone (1961) by Pier Paolo Pasolini
  introduced by Marco Bertozzi and Miriam De Rosa
• Wednesday April 12^th  As Tears Go By (1988) by Wong Kar-wai
  introduced by Marco Dalla Gassa
• Wednesday April 19^th  The African Queen (1951) by John Huston
  introduced by Michele Gottardi
• Wednesday April 26^th  Ordet (Ordet – The Word, 1955) by Carl Theodor Dreyer
  introduced by Giuseppe Ghigi
• Wednesday May 3^rd  The Driver (1978) by Walter Hill
  introduced by Roberta Novielli
• Wednesday May 10^th   Bariera (Barrier, 1966) by Jerzy Skolimowski
  introduced by Elena Pollacchi
• Wednesday May 17^th   In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden (In a Year of 13 Moons, 1978) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  introduced by Marco Contino

Venice Classics is the section that since 2012 has presented at the Venice Film Festival, with growing success, the world premiere screenings of a selection of the finest restorations of classic films completed over the past year by film libraries, cultural institutions and production companies from around the world. Venice Classics is curated by Alberto Barbera with the collaboration of Federico Gironi.

Tickets and passes for sale at the ticket office of the Multisala Rossini and online at ccvenezia.18tickets.it (starting from the second week of February).