Ugo Piccone

A short TV documentary about the making of Straub-Huillet's 'Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach'

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Explores the complex relationship between the spirit, body, and mind. The film is a nightmare with closed eyes because it counts among the most terrible moments of my life, my second exile, which lasted a very long time. Inspired by an ancient Hindu legend.

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Italian miniseries.

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A familiar Biblical tale transformed into a cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. In expressive, melodic tones, the fraternal pair debate God’s true message and intent for His creations, a conflict that leads their followers towards chaos and sin. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force.

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Straub-Huillet’s first color film, adapts a lesser-known Corneille tragedy from 1664, which in turn was based on an episode of imperial court intrigue chronicled in Tacitus’s Histories. The costuming is classical, and the toga-clad, nonprofessional cast performs the drama’s original French text amid the ruins of Rome’s Palatine Hill while the noise of contemporary urban life hums in the background. Their lines are executed with a terrific flatness and frequently through heavy accents; the language in Othon becomes not merely an expression but a thing itself, an element whose plainness here alerts us to qualities of the work that might otherwise be subordinated.

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Five short stories with contemporary settings. In New York, people are indifferent to derelicts sleeping on sidewalks, to a woman's assault in front of an apartment building, and to a couple injured in a car crash. A man, stripped of his identity, dies in bed with actors expressing his agony. A cheerful, innocent young man walking a city street in a time of war pays a price for this innocence. A couple talks about cinema while it watches another couple talk of love and truth on the eve of one character's return to Cuba. Striking students take over a university classroom; an argument follows about revolution or incremental change.

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The story of a young man who meets his own likeness and uses him to fulfill his dreams.

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A man opens fire on the statue of the Virgin during the 15th August procession. Barricaded in his home with his wife and daughter, he continues to shoot wildly. He refuses to open the door to the carabinieri and he refuses everything he needs, including water.

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Christina Fisher arrives in Sardinia to spend a holiday with her university friend, Francesco. As they are touring the island, they are trapped by mountain terrorists. Francesco is kidnapped, but Christina is permitted to leave. She is determined to contact the police, but is persuaded not to by Francesco's best friend, Gambino. Together they try to find the kidnappers, but she becomes suspicious of everyone including Gambino. Confused and paranoid, she sets out alone to contact the police.

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The life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach as presented by his wife, Anna.

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The lives of three young people in their teens are linked through their experiences in this drama from director Gian Franco Mingozzi. A girl wins a pop singing contest and begins a successful career, at the same time taking on various lovers, discarding them at whim with no regard to their feelings. A curious teenage boy spies on the lonely bachelor who lives across the street and observes that he always has a handful of bills, so the boy decides to rob him. When the boy can't go through with the crime, he seeks out the bachelor to teach him something about life that the teen feels he is missing.

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A behind-the-scenes documentary about director Michelangelo Antonioni as he's shooting his segment of The Three Faces, a vehicle for Soraya, the former empress of Persia. Featuring interviews with Monica Vitti, Tonino Guerra and more.

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Documentary on Palermo people.

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A short film by Gianfranco Mingozzi.

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Filmed in 1962 in Milan, on the Idroscalo: a sometimes affectionate gaze, other biting on a varied and popular humanity, distinct and joyful, that of the Italian economic boom.

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Documentary on a religious practice in the Puglia region of Italy whereby women assert that they have been bitten by a tarantula and dance until they are exorcised of the poison.

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An episodic film based on letters to agony columns, showing the effect of sex on the lives of women.

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