Fancy watching some free movies on a balmy summer’s evening in one of Florence’s most picturesque piazzas? Head over to piazza Santissima Annunziata to see the highlights from the various festivals held this year (including the 50 Days of Cinema festival). Apriti Cinema! centres on a retrospective of Terry Gilliam’s work as well as offering some premieres and recent ‘old’ favourites. Most films are in English with Italian subtitles. Showings start at 9.30pm.
Terry Gilliam
Inspired lunacy, dark eccentricity, madcap adventures and bizarre narratives mix with stunning originality and style in this maverick director’s impressive body of work.
Essential open-air summer night viewing.
TIME BANDITS (1981) ««««
July 12
A little boy goes up to bed one night and is astounded when a horseman gallops through his bedroom wall. He joins a band of six dwarfs on an odyssey through history, time and space, encountering Robin Hood, Napoleon, King Agamemnon, and the Titanic. ‘Gilliam fills the screen with bizarre images, and directs with a breathless ingenuity’ (Time Out).
BRAZIL (1985)
July 16
A bureaucrat in a retro-future world tries to correct an administrative error and himself becomes an enemy of the state. The dystopian darkness of Orwell, Huxley and Kafka is blended with Monty Pythonesque humour in a unique and memorable, but somewhat plotless, absurdist fantasy. Probably Gilliam’s masterpiece.
THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988)
July 19
Extremely unreliable narration undermines the realism and lends it some dazzling magic in this wildly imaginative romp through impossible adventures – on the moon, inside a volcano, inside a whale. All true: a triumph of imagination over rationality. Delights in the pleasure of lying for effect and deceiving its audience in surprising ways.
THE FISHER KING (1991)
July 23
Romantic parable delving deep into the nature of love and loss, of guilt and redemption, of character and tragedy. ‘A modern epic that fuses myth with hard-edged reality, it’s a one-of-a-kind, thoroughly engaging experience’ (Washington Post). ‘A disorganized, rambling and eccentric movie that contains some moments of truth, some moments of humor, and many moments of digression’ (Roger Ebert).
TWELVE MONKEYS (1995)
July 26
Penal colony prisoner James Cole must travel back in time from the year 2035 to find the cause of a virus that killed five billion people in 1997. ‘Fierce and disturbing, with a plot that skillfully resists following any familiar course. The film’s hero fears that he’s half-crazy, and for two hours Mr. Gilliam artfully keeps his audience feeling the same way’ (New York Times).
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS (1998)
July 30
Psychotropic, psychedelic escapades as a gonzo journalist and psychopath lawyer hit the road sustained by the trip and the trips. ‘It is as deeply satisfying as only the yowling, primal trashing of several rental cars and hotel rooms while in the grips of a hopelessly depraved ether jag and several sheets of blotter acid can be… A cinematic masterpiece’ (Salon.com).
TIDELAND (2005)
August 2
Due to the scurrilous neglect of her irresponsible, demented parents, a young girl is left alone on a decrepit country estate and survives inside her fantastic imagination. Gilliam is much darker and edgy in this unsettling and somewhat disturbing story, which wasn’t well received. ‘A misconceived washout of a darkly gothic story of madness, addiction and child abuse made all the more unpleasant by Gilliam’s trademark intense visual style’ (Hollywood Reporter). ‘The misanthropic nadir of the director’s crash-and-burn career’ (Salon.com).
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT WORLD (2010)
July 15
Director Tamra Davis pays homage to her friend in this definitive documentary, but also delves into Basquiat as an iconoclast. His dense, bebop-influenced neo-expressionist work emerged while minimalist, conceptual art was the fad; as a successful black artist, he was constantly confronted by racism and misconceptions. Much can be gleaned from insider interviews and archival footage, but it is Basquiat’s own words and work that powerfully convey the mystique and allure of both the artist and the man (Sundance Film Festival).
UNFINISHED SPACES (2011)
July 22
In 1961, three young, visionary architects were commissioned by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to create Cuba’s National Art Schools, but as the dream of the Revolution quickly became a reality, construction was abruptly halted and the architects and their designs were deemed irrelevant in the prevailing political climate. Forty years later the schools are in use, but remain unfinished and decaying. Castro has invited the exiled architects back to finish their unrealized dream. An object lesson in a regime’s uses and abuses of artists… Classy mounting, an original subject, solid interviews and fine research (Variety).
AI WEI WEI: NEVER SORRY (2012)
July 29
A documentary that chronicles artist and activist Ai Wei Wei as he prepares for a series of exhibitions and gets into an increasing number of clashes with the Chinese government. ‘Sometimes, as a film-maker, you just need to be in the right place at the right time. Alison Klayman, an American freelance journalist working in China, was Johnny on the spot, and her documentary about artist-activist Ai Weiwei has, through Ai’s own rocketing international profile, become an essential portrait of a key contemporary figure’ (The Guardian). ‘The film is a good start, but such an important artist deserves a more rigorous portrait’ (Variety).
THE MAN BEHIND THE THRONE (2013) (VINCENT PATERSON – AD UN PASSO DALLE STELLE)
July 13
Director Kersti Grunditz: I met Vincent in 2001, read his bio and realized I had seen all his work, but never heard of him. After a good deal of persuasion he let me into his life and allowed me to make this intimate documentary. This is the man who got Michael Jackson crotch grabbing, did wonders for Lars Von Trier and Madonna and has the honour of being called Satan by the Pope for his choreography on her Blond Ambition tour.
Stop Making Noise!
SHUT UP AND PLAY THE HITS (2012)
July 17
Documentary about frontman James Murphy’s decision to disband LCD Soundsystem and their epic final gig at Madison Square Garden in 2011. ‘Can be pretentiously introspective, but also profoundly poignant’ (Total Film).
ANDREW BIRD – FEVER YEAR (2011)
July 24
Filmed during the culminating months of the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s most rigorous year of touring, Andrew Bird crosses the December finish line in his hometown of Chicago – feverish and on crutches from an onstage injury. Is he suffering hazards of chasing the ghost of inspiration? Or merely transforming into a different kind of animal “perfectly adapted to the music hall?”
MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS (2005)
July 18
Stephen Frears’ musical drama with Judi Dench playing the upper class widow who buys a London theatre and stages nude revue shows to keep up spirits during the Blitz. ‘An absolute delight from start to finish’ (Hollywood Reporter). ‘A shameless crowd-pleaser’ (Newsweek).
CLOUDBURST (2011)
July 21
Geriatric lesbian couple Stella and Dot escape from their home and head for Canada to get married. Along the way they pick up a young hitchhiker. Olympia Dukakis excels as Stella, the potty-mouthed dyke with a heart of gold. ‘Cloudburst has everything you could want from a film. Love. Laughter. Passion. Tears. Joy. And balls’ (The Independent Critic).
THE BEAVER (2011)
July 25
A troubled husband and executive adopts a beaver hand-puppet as his sole means of communicating. ‘This flawed but heartfelt movie has the power to sneak up and floor you’ (Rolling Stone). ‘The story lacks honesty. For a film about the real problem of mental illness, it never feels authentic. Depression is not something neatly tied up. If this is meant as an allegory, it’s vague and unconvincing’ (USA Today).
GONZO: THE LIFE AND WORK OF DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON (2008)
August 4
Portrait of the gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson. ‘A biographical documentary doesn’t get any better than this’ (Hollywood Reporter). ‘Johnny Depp, who paid for the 2005 funeral in which Thompson’s ashes were fired out of a cannon, narrates with just the right mix of awe and impertinence’ (Rolling Stone). ‘It seems to celebrate him more for his attitude, his fashionably leftist politics, his fame and his friendships than for any meaningful accomplishment’ (Washington Post).
