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THE TRUE LEGEND OF TONY VILAR
2006 by Giuseppe Gagliardi (Italy/Argentina 92mins)
Arriving in Argentina from Calabria as a child, Tony Vilar became one of the most popular South American singers of the post-war period. La vera leggenda di Tony Vilar is an amusing musical mockumentary: a road-movie following in the footsteps of Italians overseas as we follow Vilar's trail from Buenos Aires to New York.
BREAD AND CHOCOLATE
1974 directed by Franco Brusati
(Italy/Switzerland 109 mins)
Nino Manfredi stars as an Italian immigrant struggling to become a member of Swiss society but fails as a writer and even as a chicken plucker. He then becomes involved with a shady wealthy character and tries to hide his Italian identity. He is determined to be Swiss no matter how awful his situation is.
A LUCKY DAY
2002 by Sandra Gugliotta (Italy/Argentina 94 mins)
Buenos Aires in the year 2002: the country is in the grip of an economical depression. Elsa keeps her head above water through several badly paid jobs and the occasional criminal offense with her friends Walter, Laura and Toni. Whilst saving for a ticket to Rome she is fuelled by the stories of her Italian grandfather: an anarchist emigrant who speaks to her of a Europe lost in time.
SOLINO
2002 by Fatih Akin (Italy/Germany 124 mins)
In the sixties Romano Amato, his wife Rosa and their two sons Giancarlo and Gigi emigrate from Solino in Italy to Duisburg and establish the first pizza restaurant in town. Twenty years later the brothers fall in love with the same woman. They break ties with each other in anger and Gigi returns to Solino with his mother. A decade later they both meet again...
ORIUNDI
1999 by Ricardo Bravo (Brazil 97 mins)
In a love story set in Curitiba, Southern Brazil, 93 year-old Giuseppe Padovani, a patriarch and Italian migrant, witnesses the crumbling of his life-long family business at the hands of his descendants. Suddenly his wife Sofia, who died in a tragic plane crash, reappears. Is she the key to this family's happiness and their hope for survival?
CAPE NORTH
2003 by Carlo Luglio (Germany/Norway 103 mins)
Four young men from southern Italy, leave their country in search of a better life to no avail. Faced with the choice between returning or continuing the adventure they choose the latter. In youthful ignorance, at sunrise toward the end of the old millennium they find themselves in the eerie and enchanting landscape of the Far North. A series of tragic and grotesque events will make them grow and take on their first real responsibilities.
THE MAGLIARI
1959 by Francesco Rosi (Germany 132 mins)
When a poor Italian goes to Germany as a door to door salesman trying to sell an inferior cloth as genuine quality fabric he is protected by a friend in the underworld and has an affair with a rich woman. The Magliari explores what happens when his new-found sponsor fails to look after him.
THE THREE WIVES
2001 by Marco Risi (Argentina 105 mins)
One New Year's Day three women are called to the police station to discuss the mysterious disappearance of their husbands who worked in the same bank. Bianca, Billie and Beatrice soon discover that their husbands stole millions and have become fugitives. For different reasons and with different agendas, each of them finds herself in Argentina on the trail of an errant spouse.
MAMBO ITALIANO
2003 by Emile Gaudreault (Canada 88 mins)
Maria and Gino emigrated from Italy to Montreal in the '50s and married after their arrival in "the new world". Their world is shattered when their son, Angelo, decides to get a place of his own. Following the discovery that their son's roommate is actually his lover horror is followed by a general outcry, disbelief is followed by indignation, the battlefield is cleared, and "tutta la famiglia" goes to war!
THE UNDESIRABLES
2003 by Pasquale Scimeca (Italy /USA 94 mins)
It's the summer of '51 in New York and it’s the time of a famous trial against a large group of Italian Americans, accused of being gangsters. The court decides to send them back to Italy by boat, branding them as “undesirables”. Waiting for their return on the pier, along with the other journalists, photographers and curious bystanders, is the reporter Giancarlo Fusco who recognises an old university friend.
CLAY – ARGILLA
1964 by Giorgio Mangiamele, (b/w, 84 mins)
The first Australian film in competition at 1965 Cannes Film Festival. A rainy day in rural Victoria. A criminal (George Dixon) is on the runfrom the police. Mud turns into clay on his way. He is saved by a girl (Janine Lebedew) and her father. The man falls in love with the girl who shelters him but he cannot escape his past.
SHORTS
PAPER AND SAND (Australia 2006, 17 mins) directed by Sotiris Dounoukos
After being released from a detention centre, recent immigrants Samira and Bahram find a small flat near Maroubra beach in Sydney. Confronted by situations which threaten his values and self-esteem, Bahram wants to move to a country town. Samira's experience of life in Sydney is different, until her own aspirations and sense of self appear to contrast with her husband's.
WAITING FOR THE TRAIN (Italy 2003, 12 mins) directed by Catherine McGilvray
An old lady makes coffee, a man sleeps. He wakes up and he runs in vain to catch the train that quickly leaves in front of him. He would like to leave; he should leave. He asks if he can run away. He mimes and repeats the gestures. He attempts suicide again – all part of his obscure illusion. Other trains go by. He does not manage to catch any of them.
SUE AND MARIO (Australia 1979, 12 mins) directed by Phillip Noyce
This short presents an example of the hybridised lifestyles that result from the marriage of two second-generation Australians of different ethnic origins. In this case the woman's family came from England and the man’s from Italy. They live in Griffith, a rural community in New South Wales where more than fifty percent of the population is of Italian descent.
THE TALE OF THE WIND AND THE SEA (Italy 2006, 25 mins) directed by Pier paolo Gandini
Early in the morning the northern winds calm and the intense Sicilian sun beats down on the island of Salina. Salina is for solitary souls, a place where time stops and hearts may heal.
MONA LISA (Australia 2004, 14 mins) directed by Sotiris Dounoukis
In the course of a single night in their small suburban home, widow Helen and her only child George play out a volatile family ritual as they struggle with the intensity and the intimacy of their co-dependent relationship. George wants to go out for the night but his mother, lonely and terrified of the prospect of lifelong loneliness, wants him to stay. Mona Lisa examines the psychological war that ensues and the way in which love, family and identity can come into direct conflict.
HORSLEY PARK MASSACRES (Australia 2005, 7 mins) directed by Linda Mirabilio
Carlo is 16 year old who carries on his family’s traditional practice of raising and slaughtering meat as part of a self-sustaining lifestyle. This documentary uses the different attitudes of city-slicker Linda and her cousin Carlos towards this traditional practice to question the place of family traditions in young people’s lives.
LIVE TO EAT (Australia 2002, 10 mins) directed by Marco Ianniello
The director explores the importance his parents attribute to food and cooking. An Italian family is caught at work in the kitchen. Traditions, old recipes, secrets that must not be disclosed: Marco’s family live to eat.
SCRABABBLE (Australia 2005, 6 mins) directed by Marco Ianniello
With the world championships always in the back of his mind, one of Australia’s top Scrabble players faces some of his most competitive rivals in the quiet south coast region of Ulladulla, in NSW.
BLOODY FOOTY (Australia 2005, 15 mins) directed by Dean Chircop
Brisbane 1975: Vito wants his eldest son to follow family tradition and play soccer like all Italian boys. But Mario desperately wants to play Australian Rules football. It is only with some divine intervention that Vito realizes, if he gives a little, he will gain a lot.
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