Enjoy twelve Italian films—dramas, comedies and documentaries during the 2022 Italian Film Festival's Spring Edition being held online from March 11 through April 3, 2022. All films are shown in Italian with English subtitles. The Italian community in St Louis thanks Barbara Klein for organizing this yearly event. All online screenings are free. 

Links and codes to the screenings are sent to everyone who has subscribed to the email list of the Italian Film Festival. To sign up, please send an email to info@italianfilmfests.org. For further information on the film festival, make sure to visit: www.italianfilmfests.org


DOCTOR ON CALL - UNA NOTTE DA DOTTORE 

Director, Guido Chiesa, Comedy, 2021, 98 min.
March 11, 2PM CST until March 12, 2AM CST - available 12 hours
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Pierfrancesco is a 65-year-old doctor who makes house visits during the nightshift. He’s a grumpy man, full of aches and pains and very rough with his patients. One night he’s involved in a road collision with Mario, a thirty-year-old rider for a food delivery service. Mario is uninjured, but his bicycle is destroyed. The accident also causes Pierfrancesco sciatica to flare up, making it impossible for him to drive. Both of their jobs are in jeopardy, but the doctor has an idea that could help them both: “remotely guided” by Pierfrancesco via a wireless headset, Mario visit his patients, and they’ll also carry out Mario’s delivery in Pierfrancesco’s car. After a range of daring (mis)adventures, they will learn to support each other, and the night will end with their lives both changed for the better.


​THOU SHALT NOT HATE - NON ODIARE

Director, Mauro Mancini, Drama, 2020, 95 min.
March 12, 2PM CST until March 13, 3AM CST - available 12 hours

Simone is an established surgeon with a satisfying life. During canoe training, he witnesses a car accident and, as a doctor, he intervenes to save the victim. When he discovers a Nazi tattoo on his chest, he hesitates, leaving the man to his fate. In the following days, Simone, tormented by guilt, starts investigating and finds the victim's family in a working-class neighborhood.

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WINE ROADS - SULLE STRADE DEI VINI

Director, Paolo Casalis, Documentary, 2021, 60 min.
March 13, 2PM CST until March 14, 2AM CST - available 12 hours

A group of friends vacation along the bike paths of South Tyrol becomes an opportunity to tell the stories of a land and culture through its wines. Nell'era del turismo lento e di prossimità, Sulle strade dei vini è un viaggio nella regione più bike-friendly d'Italia: quasi 500 chilometri di piste ciclabili, il sogno di ogni cicloturista. Director Paolo Casalis, who also gave us the film Barolo Boys, returns to tell the world of wine through a trip of winery visits, meetings with more than twenty wine producers, toasts and tastings. Biodynamic and resistant vineyards, international grapes and autoctone varieties, tradition and innovation. if it is true that the world of wine can take a wide variety of different paths, even the less traveled or ones that others will only take in the future.. here they are really trying it all with courage and determination. Whether we like it or not.


VITTI D'ARTE, VITTI D'AMORE

Director, Fabrizio Corallo, Documentary, 2021, 80 min.
March 18, 2PM CST until March 19, 2AM CST - available 12 hours

A documentary focused on one of the best-known female faces in Italian cinema, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. Monica Vitti is a name that immediately refers to the great cinema, that of Antonioni, of which she was his muse, and of Monicelli, with whom she collaborated several times. But there were many other filmmakers who wanted her in front of their camera, from Dino Risi to Luciano Salce, up to the surrealist Buñuel. It is a tribute to her career and her life. It traces the artistic rise of a star, divided between cinema and TV, where she has not only acted in TV series but was also a guest in various programs. Inevitably, one cannot fail to mention the private life of this woman, capable of being defined as sunny and at the same time introverted. Many people, from friends and colleagues, to critics and writers, and costume experts, share their memories. Despite being forced by her illness to avoid the stage and the spotlight, Vitti remained an international movie star until her death February 2, 2022.


​3/19

Director, Silvio Soldini, Drama, 2021, 120 min.
March 19, 2PM CST until March 20, 2AM CST - available 12 hours

The life of Camilla, a successful lawyer with a young adult daughter, is upset on a rainy night in Milan. A traffic accident in which she is involved causes the death of a young immigrant and pushes her to an investigation that will bring her far from places and situations she is most familiar with. While on this journey, she will meet Bruno, and with him she will rediscover herself.


STRACCI

Director, Tommaso Santi, Documentary, 2021, 52 min. 
March 20, 2PM CST until March 21, 2AM CST - available 12 hours

Stracci is a documentary that starts from Prato and travels around the world, addressing the issue of the environmental impact of the fashion industry. The heart of the documentary is the story of an extraordinary, ancient and highly topical circular economy experience: that of the recycling of wool by the textile industries of the Prato district, an example to follow.


ARIAFERMA - THE INNER CAGE

Director, Leonardo di Costanzo, Drama, 2021, 117 min. 
March 25, 2PM CST until March 26, 2AM CST - available 12 hours

An old prison built in the 19th century, located in a remote and unspecified part of the Italian territory, is being decommissioned. As a result of bureaucratic holdups the transfers have been blocked and a dozen inmates are left, along with a few guards, waiting to be sent to new destinations. In a suspended atmosphere, the rules that keep them separate are slackened and new forms of relationship emerge among the remaining men.

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MOMENTI DI TRASCURABILE FELICITA' - ORDINARY HAPPINESS

Director, Daniele Luchetti, Comedy/Drama, 2019, 93 min.
March 26, 2PM CST until March 27, 2AM CST - available 12 hours

One morning Paolo hops on his scooter off to work. For his daily bravado he crosses an intersection with the red lights on, gets hit by a truck and dies. What if for a miscalculation in Paradise, you get an extra hour and a half to live after death trying to achieve what really counts in life...being with the people you care your partner, your children, your friends and with them enjoy just little things! How to cram happiness in an hour and half?

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PUPUS

Director, Miriam Cossu Sparagano Ferraye, Documentary, 2021, 33 min.
March 27, 2PM CST until March 28, 2AM CST - available 12 hours

Borgo Vecchio, Palermo: we are in the great universe of the Puppets’ Opera from the Sicilian tradition, we are in the small theater-laboratory of the Mancuso family. Carmelo, son of a master puppeteer, lives in this place full of fantasy and imagination. He plays with the verses he has heard so many times during the shows: trying to imitate the grown-up tone of his father’s voice, he gives life to the puppets with arcane dexterity. His eyes shine in that fairy tales’ world, where raw pieces of wood take shape to narrate, as in an eternal return, the chivalrous stories of love and war. Here’s how a young man just at the beginning of a great knowledge makes his way towards his future.


PROGRAMMA DI CORTOMETRAGGI - SHORTS PROGRAM

April 1, 2PM CST until April 3, 2PM CST - available 48 hours 

Seven recent short films will be presented in one short film program lasting approximately 115 minutes. Each short is preceded by a director video. The audience will vote on their favorite short favorite short.


IL BAMBINO NASCOSTO - THE HIDDEN CHILD

Director, Roberto Ando', Drama, 2021, 110 min. 
April 2, 2PM CST until April 3, 2AM CST - available 12 hours

Gabriele Santoro lives in a working-class district of Naples and is a professor at the Conservatorio San Pietro a Majella, where he teaches piano. One morning, while he is shaving, the postman sounds the buzzer to tell him a parcel has arrived. He presses the button to open the door and, before going to pick it up, stops to wash his face. In that brief span of time, a ten-year-old boy sneaks into his apartment and hides. “Il maestro”—that is what they call him in the neighborhood—will not discover the boy until late in the evening. When he does, he recognizes the intruder as Ciro, who lives with his parents and siblings in the top floor of the same building. Asked to explain the reason for his flight, Ciro does not talk. Nonetheless, the maestro, acting on instinct, decides to let him hide in his apartment, embarking on a singular, and tenacious, defiance of Ciro’s enemies. Based on the novel “Il bambino nascosto” by the director, Roberto Andò.


​FORMAGGI D'AUTORE - ARTISANAL CHEESES

Director, Marco Leopoldi, Documentary, 2018, 33 min.
April 3, 3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time til 3:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on April 5
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This documentary tells the story of small dairymen and cheesemakers of the Alta Val Brembana, an Alpine area near Bergamo. Our journey starts in the stables and production facilities during winter. Then we travel to the storage areas where the cheese is kept to age. The dedication, antique traditions and love for cheese is extraordinary and the results are the famous cheeses of the area—Agrì, Stracchino all'Antica and others—along with local culinary specialties, such as polenta taragna and nosècc, that you will want to try next time you're in Italy!

Favolacce (Bad Tales), directed by Damiano and Fabio D’Innocenzo, is a dark tale of relational dynamics in a small community of families. The movie is set in a suburban area, south of Rome, an isolated space where everything feels trivial and monotonous. At the center of the story is the family of Bruno (Elio Germano), Dalia (Barbara Chichiarelli) and their twelve-year-old diligent children. This apparently normal and peaceful family portrait hides an uncomfortable restlessness. Their lives and relationships remain in a precarious equilibrium, like a house of cards. Victims of the guilty passiveness of their parents, the kids are left with a deep anxiety and discomfort that transforms into anger. They are bound to an ideal life desired by their parents, who do not understand that happiness is not artificially constructed.

Presented by our friends at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. Reserve access to the screening at this link:
https://www.mymovies.it/ondemand/iic/movie/10963-favolacce/

Favolacce, diretto da Damiano e Fabio D'Innocenzo, è una favola dark che racconta le dinamiche dei rapporti umani in piccola comunità di famiglie e i loro figli adolescenti. L’ambientazione è quella di una periferia meridionale di Roma, uno spazio suburbano isolato, dove ogni cosa è banale e monotona. Protagonista della storia è una famiglia composta da Bruno (Elio Germano), Dalia (Barbara Chichiarelli) e i loro diligenti figli dodicenni. Questo normalissimo e tranquillo ritratto di famiglia nasconde un'irrequietezza per nulla confortante. La loro vita e i loro rapporti rimangono in piedi in un equilibrio precario, come un castello di carte. Vittime della passività colpevole degli adulti, i ragazzi sentono una profonda angoscia e uno sconforto che si tramuta in rabbia. Sono incastrati nella vita ideale voluta dai genitori, che non hanno capito che la felicità non si può costruire artificialmente.

​Registrati oppure accedi per prenotare:
https://www.mymovies.it/ondemand/iic/movie/10963-favolacce/

We’re hosting an OPEN HOUSE for our Best of Italy Tour in September 2022 and we’d love to see you there.

WHEN: February 14, 2022 at 6:30 PM
WHERE: The Gelateria Coffee Company
3197 South Grand Boulevard, St. Louis, Missouri 63118

Join us for an open house at The Gelateria Coffee Company to meet your tour guides Jack Baumann of Guidester Travel and Michael Cross for their BEST OF ITALY TOUR in September 2022. Jack and Michael will be there to answer your questions, enjoy some delicious espressos with you, and speak to you personally about this once in a lifetime trip which will take you to Rome, Tuscany, Florence, and a surprise extension trip to Bologna, our sister city!

ABOUT THE TRIP | PRICE $4,100

On your 10-day inclusive tour experience stunning architecture, rich history, vibrant culture, and world-class food as we make our way through two of the most beautiful and historic areas of Italy. Spend 5 nights in Rome as we explore the winding cobblestone streets and top highlights of the Eternal City. Take a private tour of the Vatican and Colosseum, walk down the streets of the ancient forum, have dinner in a local home, sip wine on a rooftop bar, and get to truly live like a Roman. Enjoy a day trip outside the city to the famous Castelli Romani, "Roman Castles", and the quaint village of Tivoli. Spend 4 nights in Siena, the heart of Tuscany, exploring hilltop villages, dramatic landscapes, and historic vineyards all while being treated to first-class foods and top-notch wines. We will visit the famous villages of Montepulciano and San Gimignano including a special lunch and wine tasting, plus a guided tour of Florence and the Accademia Gallery, which houses the famous Statue of David.

HOTELS

Expertly selected 4-star accommodations and private transfers to and from the airport. In case you wish to book pre or post tour hotel accommodations, the tour manger can assist with those arrangements. Hotel Genio, Rome, is a perfectly situated 4-star property with a prestigious location in the historic heart of Rome. The location just opposite the famous Piazza Navona Square makes it the ideal base to explore the city with countless landmarks just minutes away. From the modern and elegant Hotel NH Siena, a short walk takes you into the heart of Siena, with its wealth of historical landmarks, Gothic architecture and pavement cafés.

WHAT'S INCLUDED
 
-A small, friendly group of just 15-20 – less than half the size of most tour groups
-9 nights at 4-star historic accommodation (based on double room rates, single room supplement will apply)
-Full-time services of expert tour host Jack Baumann with over 15 years of travel experience.
-All transportation by luxury motor coach with driver and tour director
-Professor of Italian at St Louis Community College, Michael Cross will join the tour and share his insights of Italian history, culture, and language throughout the trip
-Personal Guidester travel guide that will help you explore in your free time
-Airport transfers to and from hotel on arrival and departure
-13 meals (9x breakfast, 2x lunch, and 2x dinner)
-Dinner in local Roman home
-Private walking tour of Rome
-Private tour of Vatican Museums, St. Peter's Basilica, and Sistine Chapel
-Private tour of the Colosseum and Roman Forum
-Private walking tour of Siena
-Full day Tuscany tour including visits to hilltop villages and historic wineries
-Private walking tour of Florence
-Private skip-the-line tour of Accademia Gallery and The David
-Private tour of San Gimignano including lunch and wine tasting
-Ticket wallets, and portfolio of travel documents

For more information, please see the following links:
https://www.guidester.com/italy-tour-2022/

This spring, the annual Paul and Silvia Rava Memorial Lecture at Washington University in St Louis is honored to present Professor Frank Snowden from Yale University. Now in its 25th year, the first Rava lecture was given by Franco Fido, and has been honored by leading lights in Italian literature, history, art history, and culture studies over the years.

Professor Snowden received his Ph.D. from Oxford University in 1975. His books include Violence and Great Estates in the South of Italy: Apulia, 1900-1922 (1984); The Fascist Revolution in Tuscany, 1919-1922 (1989); Naples in the Times of Cholera (1995) and The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962 (2006). Conquest was awarded the Gustav Ranis Prize from the MacMillan Center at Yale in 2007 as “the best book on an international topic by a member of the Yale Faculty,” the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize by the American Historical Association as the best work on Italy in any period, and the 2008 Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine.

Please mark your calendar for February 24th, 2022 from 4-6pm CST. A word of gratitude to Rebecca Messbarger, PhD for putting this lecture together.