Il cinema per capire

“Cinema is the way my thoughts take shape. If the Lumière brothers had not given us cinema, I would be condemned not to express myself and would either be miserable or in an asylum.”

The extraordinary, overtly autobiographical statement reveals how Liliana Cavani’s entire filmography has been realized through existential processes and experiences stopped on paper. The director of Portiere di notte, Galileo, and San Francesco has never hidden her amphibious nature as an uncomfortable filmmaker attentive to the mutations of contemporary society, filtered, however, by classical studies and in-depth knowledge of ancient myths illuminated in contradictory and unprecedented perspectives, even for twentieth-century modernity.

The present anthology “Cinema for Understanding. Selected Writings 1960 – 2023 “, curated by Fabio Francione, a profound connoisseur of the Emilian director’s work, starts precisely from an intimate need that becomes story and narrative, ethical and civil commitment, political and religious reflection, at the moment when Cavani leaves, above all to the audience and not only to herself, open to doubts and questioning the conclusions.

BY
FABIO FRANCIONE — Journalist and writer, contributes to “Il Cittadino” and “Alias,” cultural insert of “il manifesto.”