The Embassy of Italy in Kosovo and the "Kino Armata" Cinema in Pristina are organising a retrospective on the film director Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the most famous masters of Italian cinema of the last century, from the 25 to the 28 of April 2022.
The review focuses on the so-called "tetralogy of incommunicability", composed - among others - by the films "L’avventura" (1960), "La notte" (1961), "Il deserto rosso" (1964) and “Il Grido” (1957), all interpreted or dubbed by Monica Vitti, the actress and muse of Antonioni, who recently passed away. The screenings always start at 20.30 in the “Kino Armata”. The vision of the movies is in the original language with subtitles in Albanian and English, and the entrance is free.
The tribute to the Italian filmmaker opens on April 25th with the first movie of the tetralogy, "L’avventura" (The adventure), winner of the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The work, inspired by a real event, is the story of a girl who mysteriously disappeared in the Aeolian Islands, and it focuses on the events of a group of friends that belonged to the Roman bourgeois: Anna, a rich and spoiled girl, Sandro, a young architect and Claudia, Anna's friend. The three protagonists take part in a trip to the Aeolian Islands, on an invitation on the yacht of a wealthy builder. During the cruise, the group of hikers disembark on a small rock, where a heated discussion takes place between Anna and Sandro, her boyfriend. With the arrival of a storm, the hikers hurry back to the yacht in order to leave and avoid the storm, but they soon realize that Anna is missing. Claudia and Sandro, left on the rock to look for her, find themselves united by a new romantic feeling.
The Antonioni retrospective continues on April 26th with the movie "La notte" (The night), which was awarded with the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. The protagonists of the film, the writer Giovanni Pontano and his wife Lidia, after a few years of marriage, feel that the love that once used to unite them is worn out due to monotony and an ever increasing lack of communication. During the party of an industrialist, who would like to offer Giovanni an important job, Lidia watches her husband court and then even kiss Valentina, the daughter of the host, and discovers that she is surprisingly not even jealous.
The third movie, presented on April 27th, is "Il deserto rosso" (The red desert), and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. The protagonist, Giuliana, wife of a wealthy industrialist, lives in a state of dissatisfaction and feeling of inadequacy towards the environment that surrounds her, feeling that pushes her so far she attempts suicide. Corrado Zeller, a colleague of her husband, who attracted to Giuliana, tries to help her out of the loneliness that afflicts her. The apparent illness of Giuliana's son, Valerio, which turns out to be an attention-seeking lie, throws her into a new state of despair once again. She then decides to go find Corrado, with whom she had started a relationship, but what she encounters is not what she expected: he is leaving for Patagonia.
The retrospective ends on April 28th with the film “Il Grido” (The scream). This movie is significant in the passage of the Italian director's career, and marks the transition from an experimental period, still linked to neorealist forms, to a period of full maturity, in which the history and the characters take on new, more adherent features to the restless spirit of contemporary man. At the center of the film there is the figure of Aldo, abandoned by his lover and forced to wander with little Rosina, the woman's daughter.
