UMD school of language hosts Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival
School of Language, Literature, and Culture lecturer Valederia Fredici opens day two of the Il Cinema Ritrovato with a teaser and commemoration of the departments involved. (Laura Charleston/The Black Explosion)
The school of language, literature, and culture at the University of Maryland played restored historical movies for the Il Cinema Ritrovato film festival during on-campus screenings from Mar 11 and 12. The department wanted to show world cinema from different points of view.
In collaboration with the film festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, the university’s School of Languages, Literature, and Culture taught the audience how other parts of the world were impacted by war and the measures people would take for love, political unrest, and more. Restored cinema classics such as early silent films, director retrospectives, and other movies are showcased.
“Students have a wonderful opportunity to discover the movies that have been at the cornerstone of current cinema,” said the School of Language, Literature, and Culture lecturer Valeria Federici.
The first day of the on-campus screenings held on Mar 9 featured the 1966 Italian film, “The Battle of Algiers.”
The movie— directed by Gillo Pontecorvo— “is an emotionally devastating account of the anticolonial struggle of the Algerian people and a brutally candid exposé of the French colonial mindset,” said The Conversation.
The second viewing of the day featured the Angolan film, “Sambizanga”— named after one of six districts in Northern Luanda, Angola.
The 1972 film — directed by Sarah Maldoror— “based on a true story Samizanga follows a young woman as she makes her way from the outskirts of Luanda toward the city’s center looking for her husband after his arrest by the Portuguese authorities-an incident that will ultimately help ignite a national uprising,” said The Criterion Collection.
Freshman Business Major and Italian Minor Christina Pannullo reads the Il Cinema Ritrovato pamphlet before day two’s screening of Manila in the Claws of Light.
The second day of screenings on Mar 10 featured the film, Manila in the Claws of Light.
The 1975 mystery— directed by Filipino filmmaker Lino Brocka— according to Criterion Collection, a young fisherman, Julio, journeys into Manila searching for his missing girlfriend. She was lured to the city with the promise of work and education. While living on the streets and searching, Julio witnesses poverty, corruption, death, and exploitation.
“I still have to think about it in terms of what it did to me because I feel it’s very, very violent in that sense…it doesn’t ask you; it just shows you,” said Valentina Rosales, a fifth-year doctoral student pursuing a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.
The department also showed the 1968 movie, “Memories of Underdevelopment”— directed by Tomás Gutiérrez.
The Cuban political drama is about a writer who stayed in Cuba after the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and is skeptical about the change the military group promises.
Federici presented the event to the university when she noticed no historic film festivals like Il Cinema Ritrovto in the mid-Atlantic.
“When I took this position, I thought it could have been a good thing to do here as well,” Federici said.
Rosales said she is fascinated by how the movies were almost lost forever but were brought back and are still relevant today. She also helped with the organization of the festival at this university.
“Kind of like stitching back the cloth of the movie… it makes it possible to come alive in the present…And [the movies] have different questions you can see here; cultural, political, social, global questions that are still important today,” said Rosales.
Having worked at both Il Cinema Ritrovato and Cinetica Di Bologna, Federici knew there were no film festivals like the former and decided to bring it to the mid-Atlantic. She knew it would provide a great insight into the history of cinema and the world.
“Rediscovering them is to fill in the tiles of a puzzle that might never be completed, but it will give us so much in terms of experience and knowledge, along with the full range of human emotions, from the most controversial to the ones that move us to tears,” Federici said.