HOLY MOMENTS & HOLY FOOLS:
THE POSTWAR JOURNEY OF ROBERTO ROSSELLINI
This year marks the centennial of the birth of Italian filmmaker and father
of "neorealism," Roberto Rossellini. We celebrated at Flickerings this
past summer with a program featuring
several of Rossellini's films, paired with a series of seminars the notes of
which I now post here. These have been fleshed out from introductions and
discussions with further background and musings woven in. These pieces are
probably better seen as "viewing companions" than proper guides to either
Rossellini or the films at hand (and so there will be occasional "spoilers,"
not that it matters much with this sort of film). I've still got some notes
for an introduction and conclusion for the whole series, which I'll get
around to finishing and posting eventually. For now, I just wanted to get
these up while it was still the centennial year, and the opening this week of
the Rossellini retrospective at the Museum
of Modern Art in New York seemed like the perfect occasion. Here's
hoping that this long-overdue retrospective makes it to Chicago, or at least
gets turned into DVD releases. It would be nice to have more people to talk
with about these films, because I can't seem to finish with them myself. For
the past year, they've been a sort of Lectio Divina to me, or in this
case a Kino Divina — a matrix for reflection and contemplation.
The films listed here are the
ones we screened at Flickerings, in the order we screened them — which
had less to do with chronological order than a progression that worked better
with the seminars. If you have any comments, write me at the address below;
if Rossellini captures you like he has me, I'll be surprised, but I'd like to
hear about it.
Buon Compleanno, Roberto. I don't always know what to make of you but
I'm very grateful for the ways in which your journey has enriched mine. Grazie and RIP.
— Mike Hertenstein, 11-15-06
INDEX
— Introduction: Holy Moments & Holy Fools
— Germany: Year Zero
— The Flowers of St. Francis
— Europa '51
— The Miracle
— Stromboli
— Voyage to Italy
— Conclusion: Kino Divina — A Cinema of Love
| 
