Art Scene

Félix Rose’s new documentary, La bataille de Saint-Léonard (The Battle of Saint-Léonard), chronicles the language and education protests of the late 1960s that made national headlines for many months. What began as a local dispute soon exploded into a wider political conflict that demanded the intervention of both the provincial and federal governments. The crisis eventually paved the way for…

The year 2020 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Federico Fellini, one of Italy’s, if not the world’s, most celebrated filmmakers. The Italian Contemporary Film Festival based in Toronto marked the occasion by choosing Fellinopolis, Silvia Giulietti’s documentary about the work of the legendary director, as the opening film of its 2020 edition. The film also received the…

Paula Brancati stars in the film From the Vine (2019), directed by award-winning Canadian filmmaker Sean Cisterna. Brancati co-produced the film which also stars Emmy Award winner Joe Pantoliano, veteran Italian actor Marco Leonardi, and Canadian icon Wendy Crewson. Set in Toronto and Acerenza, Italy, From the Vine is based on the acclaimed novel Finding Marco by Kenneth Canio Cancellara. "At its core,"…

Relatively few Canadian writers and artists of Italian heritage openly identify as queer through their writings and in interviews. In some circles, being queer is still taboo. In the forthcoming documentary, Creative Spaces: Queer and Italian Canadian, a group of writers discuss their lives, work, and experiences as members of the LGBTQ+ Italian-Canadian community. The Association of Italian Canadian Writers…

Canadian actor John Cassini has made a name for himself – in Canada and the United States. And he knows the business inside and out. Credited on well over a hundred projects, Cassini says his career was a “natural progression” from place to place, and from role to role. Growing up in Toronto, Cassini felt a calling to be an…

What better way to pay homage to a rich cultural heritage than with a compelling film? Road to the Lemon Grove is exactly that kind of movie for Italian Canadians. Its premise will prompt viewers not only to keep their culture alive, but to make it thrive. Directed by Dale Hildebrand and co-authored by Hildebrand and Charly Chiarelli (who also…

You are the artistic director of the Italian Contemporary Film Festival – by many accounts the largest Italian film festival outside of Italy. Tell us a little bit about the ICFF. First of all, I would like to thank Accenti for this opportunity to talk about our festival. What began as a small group of people, passionate about Italian cinema…

Thirty years ago, René Rozon had “une idée folle.” His crazy idea was this: a film festival dedicated to the arts. During its first year, FIFA (the International Festival of Films on Art) showcased 50 films from 12 countries. The festival lasted five days, and took place in a single theatre, the Cinémathèque québécoise. Since then, FIFA has gone on…

While the FilmItalia contingent at the 33rd edition of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 08) consisted of only seven films out of a total of 312, the movies – to use an old boxing expression – punched well above their weight. From Il Divo – a microscopically satiric look at Giulio Andreotti, one of the grand old men of Italian politics and now a senator for life – and Gomorrah –…

I was going to shoot a totally independent feature, so stubbornly independent that even festivals of independent films would most likely not present it! Some images stay inscribed in the mind. Where they come from, I am not sure. One image I do remember the source, however, is from a scene of La mariée était en noir (1967) by François Truffaut. Near the end of the film,…

In 1972, Francis Ford Coppola's controversial screen adaptation of Mario Puzo's best-selling novel The Godfather opened in theatres across North America to overwhelming critical and popular acclaim. The Godfather's success, like it or not, married, even more solidly, all Italians to the mobster mystique. In Hollywood, an opportunistic film industry followed its success with a slew of spin-off and rip-off…