#BiennaleCinema2022 - #Venezia79 - The Venice International Film Festival - Favorite Films - Argentina 1985 + Living

Lina Etchesuri  photo - Amazon Studios - La union de los Rios Kenya Films Infinity Films - 

courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

 

The Venice International Film Festival 

Argentina 1985

Santiago Mitre

 

Argentina, 1985 is inspired by the true story of public prosecutors Julio Strassera and Luis Moreno Ocampo, who dared to investigate and prosecute Argentina’s bloodiest military dictatorship in 1985. Undeterred by the military’s still considerable influence within their fragile new democracy, Strassera and Moreno Ocampo assembled a young legal team of unlikely heroes for their David-vs-Goliath battle. Under constant threat to themselves and their families, they raced against time to bring justice to the victims of the military junta.

Stars - Ricardo Darin, Peter Lanzani - Alejandra Flechner, Santiago Armas, Laura Paredes, Carlos Portaluppi.

 

 Ricardo Darin and Peter Lanzani

 

 Director's Statement

Santiago Mitre 

 

"I can still remember the day Strassera closed his indictment: the roar of the courtroom, my parents’ emotion, the streets finally able to celebrate something other than a soccer match, the idea of justice as an act of healing. The trial of 1985 made Argentinean justice acknowledge and deliberate a long overdue claim. As I researched, I stumbled onto unknown aspects: the prosecutors’ backgrounds, the young team with no experience, the region that was still under dictatorships. This story resonated with me and set in motion my desire to make a film about justice, and go deeper into the cinematic and political search than ever in my previous films, this time based on actual events."

 

photograph - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

 

Living

Oliver Hermanus 

Living is the story of an ordinary man, reduced by years of oppressive office routine to a shadow existence, who at the eleventh hour makes a supreme effort to turn his dull life into something wonderful—into one he can say has been lived to the full. 

Cast - Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke. Screenplay - Kazuo Ishiguro.   Bill Nighy    Director's Statement  Oliver Hermanus    "Although it might seem like only a fool would take on the task of re-imagining master filmmaker Kurosawa’s humanist triumph, Ikiru, I instantly jumped at the opportunity. I felt a need to tell a story about life and the value of the simple, incremental footprint we all leave. In a world overwhelmed by instant fame and gratification, an obsession with eternal devotion and adoration, I felt a want of a film like Living. A companion at those moments in time when all one really needs in a film is to be reminded that life is short but beautiful."

 

 

 

 

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Venice - Peggy Guggenheim Collection - Mani-Fattura: The Ceramics of Lucio Fontana

“Between suicide and travel, I chose the latter because I hope to still make a series of ceramics and sculptures that give me 

the pleasure or feeling of still being a living man.” 

Lucio Fontana

Peggy Guggenheim Collection  

Mani-Fattura: The Ceramics of Lucio Fontana

At the Peggy Guggenheim Collection - until March 2 - Manu-Facture: The Ceramics of Lucio Fontana is the first museum exhibition devoted exclusively to Fontana’s ceramic work. Known for his iconic slashed canvases of the 1950s and ’60s, Fontana - 1899-1968 - also created groundbreaking clay pieces - an essential yet lesser-known part of his oeuvre which began in Argentina in the 1920s. Curated by art historian Sharon Hecker, the show offers the first in-depth look at of his ceramic production.

Exhibition View

Featuring over seventy works - many never before exhibited - the exhibition illuminates the full scope of  Lucio Fontana’s sculptural vision in clay. Spanning his early years in Argentina, his return to Fascist-era Italy, and his postwar explorations during reconstruction and the economic boom, the exhibition traces how he transformed clay into a site of radical experimentation. It invites viewers to see Fontana not only as a pioneer of Spazialismo and Conceptual Art, but as a tactile, materially engaged artist whose collaborations with figures like ceramist-poet Tullio d’Albisola and the Mazzotti workshop in Albisola revealed a more intimate and exploratory side of his practice.

Figure Nere - 1931

Giuseppe Mazzotti and Lucio Fontana - Crocodile and Snake - 1936

"An entire petrified and shining acquarium."

"The material was shaken but firm."

Lucio Fontana - 1938

Coccodrillo - 1936-37

In 1927, Lucio Fontana returned to Italy from Argentina to study under Adolfo Wildt at the Accademia di Brera but soon broke from academic conventions. By 1931, he was exhibiting small, raw terracotta sculptures—unglazed, minimalist pieces that balanced figuration and abstraction. Some were flattened like reliefs; others explored volume and depth. With minimal decoration—incised lines, touches of color, or gold—his solemn female heads and abstract forms reveal an early search for expressive simplicity.

Studio di testa - Busto Femminile - Ritratto di Bambina - 1931

Cavalli Marini - 1936

Donna Seduta - 1938 - Nudo Femminile Seduto - 1940

After World War II, Lucio Fontana created intimate ceramic portraits of women close to him. Portrait of Teresita - 1949 - captures his wife with tender intimacy. Portrait of Milena Milani - 1952 - writer, artist, and the only woman to sign his Spazialismo manifesto, reflects both intellect and shared artistic vision. Portrait of Esa -1953 - niece of ceramist Tullio d’Albisola, honors a fellow artisan, marked by the rose-shaped pendant in clay. Together, these works reveal Fontana’s evolving, personal vision of the feminine, blending memory, affection, and artistry.

Ritratto di Esa - 1953

Lucio Fontana’s dynamic crucifixes and depositions from the late 1940s and ’50s blend stasis and movement. Created for Milanese homes during the economic boom, they begin with a simple cross form, yet each Christ is reinvented through abstract shapes and unpredictable glazes. Between repetition and variation, Fontana transforms religious intensity into aesthetic ecstasy, suspending the finality of death.

Exhibition View + Crocefisso - 1955-56

“You had to model and in the modelling you gave all the life, all the form.”

 Lucio Fontana - 1968 

In his final decades, Lucio Fontana’s ceramics embrace the slash gesture as a defining, expressive act. Stripped-down terracotta pieces, often pocked, slashed, or cleaved, reveal the imprint of his hands and primal gestures. Works like the Pane panels and the spherical Nature series evoke beginnings - eggs, seeds, or clay balls transformed through tossing, kneading, and splitting. These late works celebrate the ritual of making, blending matter, gesture, and creation in their simplest, most elemental form.

Exhibition View

Concetto Spaziale - 1962-1963

Concetto Spaziale - 1957

Director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection -  Karole Vail with Sharon Hecker

Art Historian Organizer of the exhibition

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#BiennaleCinema2022 - #Venezia79 - The Venice International Film Festival - Favorite Films - The Banshees of Inisherin + Dead for a Dollar + The Hanging Sun

 

Photograph - Walt Disney Studios - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

 

 The Venice International Film Festival

The Banshees of Inisherin
Martin McDonagh

 

Martin McDonagh who directed and wrote the script of the film  The Banshees of Inisherin is set on a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, it follows lifelong friends Padraic and Colm, who find themselves at an impasse when Colm unexpectedly puts an end to their friendship. A stunned Padraic, aided by his sister Siobhan and troubled young islander Dominic, endeavours to repair the relationship, refusing to take no for an answer. But Padraic’s repeated efforts only strengthen his former friend’s resolve and when Colm delivers a desperate ultimatum, events swiftly escalate, with shocking consequences.

Main cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon, Barry Keoghan

 

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson

 

photograph ASAC - A.Avezzu - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia 

 

Director's Statement

"...I did want to do something a little quieter and less in-your-face than the other movies. It’s definitely less Hollywood. It feels quite sort of European somehow, although that wasn’t in my head when I was doing it. But I knew there was room for the landscapes to be part of it. I wanted it to be as beautiful as any Irish film has been, if possible. So we were always aiming for that, which allowed us to leave more space and quietness I think than in some of the other movies. It’s probably less plotty and more of a character study than any of the others too. But I think it’s equally as funny as the funny bits of the others."

Martin McDonagh

told Alex Ritman of The Hollywood Reporter

Awarded Best Screenplay 

 

Photograph - Walt Disney Studios - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

 

The Banshees of Inisherin

 Colin Farrell 

 

photograph ASAC - A.Avezzu - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia 

 

Coppa Volpi - Best Actor

Colin Farrell

The Banshees of Inisherin

Martin McDonagh receives the prize for Colin Farrell

 

photograph ASAC - Giorgio Zucchiati - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia  

 

Red Carpet

Colin Farrell 

 

photograph ASAC - Giorgio Zucchiati - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia   

 

The Red Carpet 

Martin McDonagh and Brendan Gleeson  

 

Official still - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

 

Dead for a Dollar 

Walter Hill  

 

1897. Dead for a Dollar - directed and screenplay by Walter Hill - follows veteran bounty hunter Max Borlund deep into Mexico where he encounters professional gambler and outlaw Joe Cribbens—a sworn enemy who Max sent to prison years before. Borlund is on a mission to find and return Rachel Kidd, the hostage wife of a wealthy Santa Fe businessman. Discovering that Mrs. Kidd has actually fled from an abusive marriage, Max is ultimately faced with a choice: finish the dishonest job he’s been hired to accomplish or stand aside while ruthless mercenary outlaws and his long-time rival close in... Max and his partner Alonzo Poe have nothing to gain if they resist— nothing save honour.

Main cast:  Christoph Waltz, Willem Dafoe, Rachel Brosnahan, Warren Burke, Benjamin Bratt.

 

photograph ASAC - Giorgio Zucchiati - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia  

 

Director's Statement

"Dead For A Dollar is a small and simple tale, but one that tries to valorise many of the tropes of the traditional western: primitive nobility, ordeals of combat that define honour, nostalgia for the past, and the old hard religion of courage. But simultaneously, it’s an attempt to deal with the modern issues of race and gender that we still struggle with today. It was my good fortune to write and direct the film. Getting it financed was a miracle. Working with the cast, a beatitude.' 

Walter Hill 

 Awarded Cartier Glory to the Filmaker Award 

 

Official still - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia 

 

Dead for a Dollar

William Dafoe 

 

Official still - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia 

 

Dead for a Dollar

 Rachel Brosnahan and Christoph Waltz 

 

 

photographs ASAC - Giorgio Zucchiati - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

 

Dead for a Dollar

 Rachel Brosnahan

 

 

photograph Matteo Gastel - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia

 

The Hanging Sun

Francesco Carrozzini

John is on the run after defying his father, a crime boss. Pursued by his brother, John heads to the far North. He comes to an isolated village, where the sun never sets, with a small community of strict religious conformists: a place that seems to belong to another era. There, he meets Lea, a woman in difficult straits, but showing great strength, and her son Caleb, a curious child with a pure heart. Lea also has her demons: the death at sea of her abusive husband Aaron. As the days go by, the three grow closer. For Lea, John is the first man able to offer her protection, but without depriving her of her freedom; and for Caleb, he is an unhoped-for father figure with whom he can share his world. John also seems to glimpse in this encounter the possibility of redemption and a new life. Inevitably, they begin to feel like a newly-formed family. With John at bay as his brother closes in, and Aaron’s brother setting his sights on Lea, the two must find a way to break the ties to their past and start over.

Main cast: Alessandro Borghi, Jessica Brown Findlay, Sam Spruell, Frederick Schmidt, Raphael Vicas, Peter Mullan, Charles Dance. 

 

Alessandro Borghi and Jessica Brown Findlay 

 

photograph Matteo Gastel - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia 

 

Director's Statement

 

"When I first read Nesbo’s novel Midnight Sun, I was in California, and nothing could have been further from the landscapes described. Yet, I immediately felt passionate about this story of life at the very edge of the world. All the work I subsequently did on myself and consequently on the film meant a bumpy, surprising and cathartic journey, during which I became a father and learned what it means to be a son. Stefano Bises’ writing gave great power to the path, helping to solidify a romantic drama with the cement of noir. And finally, the relationship with these rare, talented actors revealed to me the magic of making cinema, a dream I always had and which has now become reality."

Francesco Carrozzini  

 

photograph Matteo Gastel - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia 

 

The Hanging Sun 

Alessandro Borghi 

 

photograph Matteo Gastel - courtesy La Biennale di Venezia 

 

The Hanging Sun 

Charles Dance 

 

 MORE 

 Favorite Films

https://contessanally.blogspot.com/search?q=argentina+living/ 

 

Please Note 

My Favorite films selection is based on the films I saw - unfortunately I was unable to see all  the films - especially

Tar

Todd Field

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Laura Poitras 

which I look forward to seeing in the near future

  

 

 

 

 

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