Italia: Fire and Ashes

Mar 15, 2023

1h 35m

★ 5.5

Overview

The epic and poetic tale of the early years of Italian cinema, from 1896 to 1930: how peplum was born, how the first stars shone, how many daring filmmakers were able to create an original style amalgamating literature, theater, painting and opera; a tale of splendor and decadence.

Genres

Documentary

History

Production Companies

Articolture

Nocturnes Productions

Istituto Luce Cinecittà

Ciné+

Italia: Fire and Ashes Trailers

Cast

Self - Narrator (voice)

Isabella Rossellini

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

6.0

Clawing! A Journey Through the Spanish Horror

Jun 20, 2014

In the late sixties, Spanish cinema began to produce a huge amount of horror genre films: international markets were opened, the production was continuous, a small star-system was created, as well as a solid group of specialized directors. Although foreign trends were imitated, Spanish horror offered a particular approach to sex, blood and violence. It was an extremely unusual artistic movement in Franco's Spain.

8.5

A Life for Movies: Lotte Eisner

Feb 24, 2021

Born in Berlin in 1896, Lotte Eisner became famous for her passionate involvement in the world of both German and French cinema. In 1936, together with Henri Langlois, she founded the Cinémathèque Française with the goal of saving from destruction films, costumes, sets, posters, and other treasures of the 7th Art. A Jew exiled in Paris, she became a pillar of the capital's cultural scene, where she promoted German cinema.

3.0

Locations: Looking for Rusty James

Aug 30, 2013

A personal meditation on Rumble Fish, the legendary film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983; the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, where it was shot; and its impact on the life of several people from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay related to film industry.

5.3

The Imperial Lullaby

Mar 21, 2020

The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.

8.0

End of the Commune?

Jun 5, 1970

A documentary about Fassbinder and the early years of the legendary Antiteater, the group he was a member/leader of. You can here see and hear some of the actors he was going to use in his movies for the next years. The movie shows rehearsals for his play "The Coffeehouse," which also became a television movie, and you can watch unique footage from the 19th Film Festival in Berlin (1969) where "Love is Colder Than Death" was shown. As told in this documentary, his first feature movie was given a cold shoulder by many of the journalists and visitors at the festival. You can in "End of the Commune" watch Fassbinder and actor Ulli Lommel walk out on stage after the opening of "Love is Colder Than Death,” while a man in the audience is shouting "Out with the director!” In this documentary, Fassbinder also talks a lot about his father, who was a respectable doctor.

7.0

Lumière, Le Cinéma!

Nov 22, 2024

In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, lumière, the French word for “light,” was also the last name of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention, the cinematograph, helped to inaugurate the most beloved art form of the last 130 years. Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinema! to guide the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for quotidian and exotic microdocumentaries as well as the first ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not only a glorious re(telling) of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.

No Image

0.0

Omnibus: François Truffaut

Dec 2, 1973

No overview available.

No Image

7.2

Comrades in Dreams

Oct 15, 2006

Four lives that could not be more different and a single passion that unites them: the unconditional love for their cinemas, somewhere at the end of the world. Comrades in Dreams brings together six cinema makers from North Korea, America, India and Africa and follows their efforts to make their audiences dream every night.

0.0

Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin

Jul 16, 2022

The story of French filmmaker Jean Rollin (1938-2010), one of the most singular voices of European cult cinema, deeply misunderstood and widely misrepresented.

6.9

Aznavour by Charles

Oct 2, 2019

In 1948, French singer Charles Aznavour (1924-2018) receives a Paillard Bolex, his first camera. Until 1982, he will shoot hours of footage, his filmed diary. Wherever he goes, he carries his camera with him. He films his life and lives as he films: places, moments, friends, loves, misfortunes.

6.0

Pride & Snide

Jun 5, 1976

A contrast between two kinds of attitudes to gay liberation in Adelaide.

0.0

Actor

Oct 30, 2021

"Actor" is China's first documentary film to explore the virtues and skills of actors. The film takes the "Twenty-Two Big Movie Stars of New China" as the starting point. It will explore the film experience and artistic achievements of the older generation of artists, explore their insights and thinking about the profession of actors for more than half a century, and pay tribute to the century-old Chinese film with the classic film images they created.

6.2

La Cicciolina: Godmother of Scandal

May 10, 2017

The personal and professional story of Ilona Staller, known as Cicciolina, is probably unique: she left communist Hungary and moved to Italy, where she found a fertile environment for a life dedicated to scandal.

6.2

Fellinopolis

Jun 10, 2021

Ferruccio Castronuovo was the only authorized eye, between 1976 and 1986, to film the brilliant Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini (1920-1993) in his personal and creative intimacy, to capture the gears of his great circus, his fantastic lies and his crazy inventions.

7.1

Lost in La Mancha

Feb 11, 2002

Fulton and Pepe's 2000 documentary captures Terry Gilliam's attempt to get The Man Who Killed Don Quixote off the ground. Back injuries, freakish storms, and more zoom in to sabotage the project.

7.6

Becoming Marilyn

Jul 7, 2022

The story of how Norma Jeane Mortenson became Marilyn Monroe (1926-62), a lucid path of self-discovery, from anonymity to stardom: the painful birth of a myth.

0.0

Da Ponte Pra Cá

Feb 1, 2022

No overview available.

8.5

You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story

May 15, 2008

Jack L. Warner, Harry Warner, Albert Warner and Sam Warner were siblings who were born in Poland and emigrated to Canada near the turn of the century. In 1903, the brothers entered the budding motion picture business. In time, the Warner Brothers moved into film production and would open their own studio in 1923.

Italia: Fire and Ashes

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

Italia: Fire and Ashes Trailers