Four stories set between the 60s and the 70s in Italy. Four personal female adventures crossing the path of Italian history, the struggle for women rights, the liberation of the body, in a country without memory.
Stelvio: Crossroads of Peace
Dix Jours dans la guerre d'Espagne
Chet Baker silently wanders through an Antonioniesque landscape in a Felliniesque state of wonderment as his improvised trumpet solos alternate between earnestly offering the obvious and mocking the artiness of the whole affair.
Im Land des Schamanen
Wie ein Fluss. The Ska faces
I sette contadini
Quando i tedeschi non sapevano nuotare
Benito Mussolini: Anatomy of a Dictator
After the World War I, Mussolini's perspective on life is severely altered; once a willful socialist reformer, now obsessed with the idea of power, he founds the National Fascist Party in 1921 and assumes political power in 1922, becoming the Duce, dictator of Italy. His success encourages Hitler to take power in Germany in 1933, opening the dark road to World War II. (Originally released as a two-part miniseries. Includes colorized archival footage.)
It's a condition known as "hypertrichosis" or "Ambras Syndrome," but in the 1500s it would transform one man into a national sensation and iconic fairy-tale character. His name: Petrus Gonsalvus, more commonly known today as the hairy hero of Beauty and the Beast.
Vita Dolce
Catalin Moise embarks on a dizzying journey in an attempt to answer the title question, wandering through the history of Italy, Germany, and Romania in the 20th century, using as sources "The Anatomy of Fascism" and "Corneliu Zelea Codreanu The Rise and Fall of the 'Captain'."
Ogni volta che il lupo
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
Libere
A history of the political and social repression carried out by the ruthless regime of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco between 1936 and 1975 that focuses on the lives of gays and lesbians during those dark years and the death of the Spanish gay poet Federico García Lorca.
In this filmic comment on Fascist ideology - which uses footage from the recently discovered archives of Luca Comerio - invisible hands push captive animals to fight among themselves.
Johan van der Keuken went against the grain in 1980: from Amsterdam (on April 30 with the coronation riots and squatting actions) via Paris, southern France and Italy to Egypt. He made his personal travelogue in three parts for VPRO television. Later, he fused the three parts into one long movie.
William Friedkin attends an exorcism with Father Gabriele Amorth, as he treats an Italian woman named Cristina for the ninth time. Prior to filming, Cristina had purportedly been experiencing behavioural changes and “fits” that could not be explained by psychiatry, and which became worse during Christian holidays.