Highlights PFF62

Pesaro 62
Nuovocinema is now and shall be forever
by Pedro Armocida

The idea remains the same: to try and rede!ne what new cinema is. Then as now. All that we propose is seen through the lens of the now. I’m using the editorial we as, more than ever, it is a heterogeneous team of programmers (whom I thank, along with all the collaborators) that has conceived the Festival #62. For example, even a phenomenon such as Maurizio Nichetti, who wasn’t fully appreciated at the time, is now an auteur who can recount the story of a unique form of Italian comedy, that did not spawn imitators.
Some of our proposals are certainly historicised – for example, the lessons in flm history – but they present the élan of Spanish cinema experimenting with freedom under Francoism in a way that we didn’t think possible. The audience may equally be taken aback by the cinema of Milcho Manchevski, to whom we pay homage by presenting the Pesaro Nuovo Cinema #62 Award and showing Bikini Moon, a film that has never been seen in Italy before and which indeed rede!nes his cinema, if not our perception of it. This is a swerve visible in the Festival’s multiple sections, departing first of all from the Italian directorial debuts: three unidenti!ed objects, namely Masterclass, Oreste, and Punk State, which shout that another, freer Italian cinema is possible. It is perhaps the same cinema that inspired Giandomenico Curi, whose amazing images became the early Italian music videos. These can now be viewed alongside Simone Peluso’s new ones in the ad-hoc Vedomusica section. Photographed, x-rayed, and dreamed images, such as those in the Focuses on extraordinary artists like William Raban and Friedl vom Gröller, which in some ways refer to the experimentalism and lyricism of Alfredo Leonardi.

Thanks to him, we keep coming back to Pesaro. And its history. Back to 1968, the year that first rocked Cannes and then Venice. In-between, the Pesaro Film Festival, the only one that sought dialogue with, and answers for, the student movement. It was here that the five minutes of Può la forza di un sorriso were filmed. An almost never seen film, it features close-ups of a boundless beauty, shot by Leonardi during the general meeting that followed the clashes and arrests of that incandescent June. In the face of repression, the cinema of Leonardi opposes a programmatic title – «Can the Power of a Smile» – that swerves from orthodox reporting. This was the same approach taken by Francesco Leonetti and Arnaldo Pomodoro for their Processo politico, screened precisely at the Festival in 1971 amid much controversy. The film is being shown again to mark the centenary of the great artist hailing from the Montefeltro, who then conceived a new and experimental urban space with his works in Piazza del Popolo. This year, the square will once again welcome artists we cherish.
Not to mention the Focuses on: Italian rock music; the Circus for kids, and Pinocchio, who also liked to swerve from the rules; animation, which is pure cinema; and screen dance, which expands the boundaries of the gaze, just as film-essays do. Last but not least, in a Festival that is always dedicated to Adriano Aprà, the research conducted on our historical archive: Pesaro Manifesto 1965-1970. This is Nuovocinema. Then as now