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New Release Reviews

New Release: Il buco (The Hole)

We often associate progress with height – look no further than the post-World War II boom in skyscrapers. In a pre-credits scene from Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il buco (The Hole, 2021), a group of Italian villagers, huddled around a staticky television outside a café, watch footage of a newsman touring one such building. “We are climbing up […]

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Feature Podcast

The Big Picture Podcast: Me, Myself and I

In this second episode of The Big Picture Podcast, Gabriel and Tom discuss two films that explore the nature of ego and the often fraught journey a person takes from fear and doubt to self realisation. Agnes Varda’s 1962 French new wave masterpiece Cléo from 5 to 7 (Cléo de 5 à 7) and Paolo […]

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Feature Thousand Words

Thousand Words: Investigation of a Cinema Above Suspicion – Italian Political Film of the 1960s and 1970s

When it comes to the golden age, or l’età d’oro, of Italian cinema, there appears these days to be some general discord over when this period actually took place. There is the argument, and perhaps it is a sound one, that the neorealism of the 1940s represents the true quintessence of Italian film at its uppermost heights: […]

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Feature On Location

On Location: My Voyage to Italy (Martin Scorsese, 1999)

Martin Scorsese’s engrossing four hour documentary odyssey through the Italian films that played a large part in his cinematic education expands our own On Location feature into an all encompassing exploration of personal identity, history, ancestry, geography and changing national cultural, political and social climates. Executive produced by Giorgio Armani and recently released for the […]