6.8

Baarìa

2009, Italy, France

• Actors: Francesco Scianna, Margareth Madè, Raoul Bova, Giorgio Faletti, Leo Gullotta, Nicole Grimaudo, Gabriele Lavia, Ángela Molina, Enrico Lo Verso, Nino Frassica, Aldo, Ficarra, Picone, Marcello Mazzarella, Luigi Lo Cascio, Beppe Fiorello, Donatella Finocchiaro, Enrico Salimbeni, Lina Sastri, Gaetano Aronica, Alfio Sorbello, Laura Chiatti, Michele Placido, Vincenzo Salemme, Corrado Fortuna, Paolo Briguglia, Luigi Maria Burruano, Franco Scaldati, Monica Bellucci, Sebastiano Lo Monaco
• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Director(s): Giuseppe Tornatore
• Available languages:
  • Italian Italian.

The film begins in the 1920's, in the Sicilian town of Bagheria (a.k.a. Baaria) where Giuseppe "Peppino" Torrenuova works as a shepherd to financially help his poor family. Over the next 50 years Giuseppe's life, as well as the life of the village, is observed. Giuseppe grows up, joins the Communist Party, marries a local girl (Mannina), has children and forges a political career for himself.

  7.4

Malèna

2000, Italy, USA

• Actors: Monica Bellucci, Giuseppe Sulfaro, Luciano Federico, Matilde Piana, Pietro Notarianni, Gaetano Aronica, Gilberto Idonea, Angelo Pellegrino, Gabriella Di Luzio, Pippo Provvidenti, Maria Terranova, Marcello Catalano, Elisa Morucci, Domenico Gennaro, Vitalba Andrea, Giuseppe Pattavina, Franco Catalano, Daniele Arena, Giovanni Litrico, Gianluca Guarrera, Michel Daniel Bramanti, Giuseppe Zizzo, Totò Borgese, Emanuele Gullotto, Aurora Quattrocchi, Claudia Muzi, Ornella Giusto, Conchita Puglisi, Noemi Giarratana, Paola Pace
• Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance, War
• Director(s): Giuseppe Tornatore
• Available languages:
  • Italian Italian.

On the day in 1940 that Italy enters the war, two things happen to the 12-year-old Renato: he gets his first bike, and he gets his first look at Malèna. She is a beautiful, silent outsider who's moved to this Sicilian town to be with her husband, Nico. He promptly goes off to war, leaving her to the lustful eyes of the men and the sharp tongues of the women. During the next few years, as Renato grows toward manhood, he watches Malèna suffer and prove her mettle. He sees her loneliness, then grief when Nico is reported dead, the effects of slander on her relationship with her father, her poverty and search for work, and final humiliations. Will Renato learn courage from Malèna and stand up for her?

  7.9

La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano

1998, Italy

• Actors: Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince, Bill Nunn, Clarence Williams III, Mélanie Thierry, Gabriele Lavia, Peter Vaughan, Niall O'Brien, Alberto Vazquez, Luigi De Luca, Femi Elufowojo, Nigel Fan, Roger Monk, Leonid Zaslavski, Bernard Padden, Wilson Di Bois, Easton Gage, Cory Buck, Norman Chancer, Sidney Cole, Harry Ditson, Andrew Dunford, Eamon Geoghegan, Steven Luotto, Gianluigi Molteni, Noriko Aida, Vernon Nurse, Bryan Pringle, Ivan Truol Troncoso, Heathcote Williams
• Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Music, Romance
• Director(s): Giuseppe Tornatore
• Available languages:
  • English English.

Shortly after the Second World War, Max, a transplanted American, visits an English pawn shop to sell his trumpet. The shopkeeper recognizes the tune Max plays as one on a wax master of an unreleased recording, discovered and restored from shards found in a piano salvaged from a cruise ship turned hospital ship, now slated for demolition. This chance discovery prompts a story from Max, which he relates both to the shopkeeper and later to the official responsible for the doomed vessel, for Max is a born storyteller. Though now down on his luck and disillusioned by his wartime experiences, the New Orleans-born Max was once an enthusiastic and gifted young jazz musician, whose longest gig was several years with the house band aboard the Virginian, a posh cruise ship. While gaining his sea legs, he was befriended by another young man, the pianist in the same band, whose long unlikely name was Danny Boodman T.D. Lemons 1900, though everyone just called him 1900, the year of his birth. Abandoned in first class by his immigrant parents, 1900 was found and adopted by Danny, a stoker, and raised in the engine rooms, learning to read by reading horseracing reports to his adoptive dad. After Danny's death in an accident, 1900 remained on the ship. Increasingly lured by the sound of the piano in the first-class ballroom, he eventually became a gifted pianist, a great jazz improvisationist, a composer of rich modern music inspired by his intense observation of the life around him, the stories passengers on all levels of the ship trusted him enough to tell. He also grew up to be a charming, iconoclastic young man, at once shrewd and oddly innocent. His talent earned him such accolades that he was challenged by, and bested Jelly Roll Morton in an intense piano duel that had poor Max chewing paper on the sofa in agonies of suspense. And yet for all the richness and variety of his musical expression, he never left the ship, except almost, once, in the aftermath of his infatuation with a beautiful young woman immigrant who inspired the music committed to the master Max discovers in the pawnshop. Max realizes that 1900 must still be on the ship, and determines to find him, and to find out once and for all why he has so consistently refused to leave.

  8.5

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso

1988, Italy, France

• Actors: Antonella Attili, Enzo Cannavale, Isa Danieli, Leo Gullotta, Marco Leonardi, Pupella Maggio, Agnese Nano, Leopoldo Trieste, Salvatore Cascio, Tano Cimarosa, Nicola Di Pinto, Roberta Lena, Nino Terzo, Jacques Perrin, Philippe Noiret, Nellina Laganà, Turi Giuffrida, Mariella Lo Giudice, Giorgio Libassi, Beatrice Palme, Ignazio Pappalardo, Angela Leontini, Mimmo Mignemi, Margherita Mignemi, Giuseppe Pellegrino, Turi Killer, Angelo Tosto, Concetta Borpagano, Franco Catalano, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
• Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
• Director(s): Giuseppe Tornatore
• Available languages:
  • Spanish Spanish.

A famous film director remembers his childhood at the Cinema Paradiso where Alfredo, the projectionist, first brought about his love of films. He returns home to his Sicilian village for the first time after almost 30 years and is reminded of his first love, Elena, who disappeared from his life before he left for Rome.