Liliana Cavani

Liliana Cavani

Born: January 12, 1933
in Carpi, Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
Liliana Cavani (born 12 January 1933, Carpi, Italy) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. She belongs to a generation of Italian filmmakers from Emilia-Romagna that came into prominence in the 1970s, including Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellocchio. Cavani became internationally known after the success of her 1974 feature film Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter). Her films have historical concerns. In addition to feature films and documentaries, she has also directed opera.

While attending film school, Cavani won a competition at RAI, Italy's national television network, and took a job there as a director of historical documentaries in 1961. Her professional career thus began making documentaries for RAI between 1961 and 1965, which included Storia del III Reich, (History of the Third Reich) (1962–1963), which chronicles the rise of the Nazi regime. It was the first historical investigation of German totalitarianism to appear on television. Other documentaries are: L'età di Stalin ("The Stalin Years"), an investigation into the Soviet leader's years; La donna nella Resistenza (1965); Philippe Pétain, processo a Vichy, winner of the Golden Lion at Venice film festival in 1965 in the documentary section. In this period she also made Il giorno della pace, a four-hour documentary on immigration south-to-north within Italy.

Cavani made her first full-length feature film in 1966 with Francis of Assisi (Francesco d'Assisi). Made for television and aired in two parts, it was deeply influenced by the style of Rossellini and the atmosphere typical of the films of Pasolini. Made in a period of political unrest, it was to become a kind of manifesto of dissenting Catholicism. The film was a great success, but also triggered many negative reactions. It was called " heretical, blasphemous and offensive for the faith of the Italian people". It was the first of many polemical reaction to Cavani's work.

Cavani was not well known beyond Italy until she made the 1974 film The Night Porter (Il portiere di notte), which remains the film for which she is best remembered. The plot, set in Vienna in 1957, follows an SS camp guard and a former concentration camp survivor engaging in a sadomasochistic relationship after meeting again by a chance encounter. A deeply controversial film, it starred Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling.

Cavani currently lives in Rome. Carpi, her hometown, has established the Associazione Fondo Liliana Cavani, where her films are preserved and made available for consultation.

Description above from the Wikipedia article Liliana Cavani, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Movies for Liliana Cavani...

The Enigmatic Charlotte Rampling
Title: The Enigmatic Charlotte Rampling
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: June 18, 2023
Type: Movie
Screen icon Charlotte Rampling has fascinated the world of cinema, fashion and photography with her mysterious and almost inaccessible beauty. A major figure in genre and auteur films, she is unclassifiable: between presence and absence, shyness and audacity, she's always hypnotic, magnetic and fascinating. From her film debut in the mid-1960s in England, to her unconventional career path, through the tragic loss suicide of her older sister that will irremediably mark her acting, this film is a dive into the existential quest of a complex actress, whose every facet is discovered through her roles. Through a conversation with the actress herself, along with personal archives and extracts from her films, this documentary raws a dazzling portrait of her life and career.
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Ennio
Title: Ennio
Character: Self
Released: February 17, 2022
Type: Movie
A portrait of Ennio Morricone, the most popular and prolific film composer of the 20th century, the one most loved by the international public, a two-time Oscar winner and the author of over five hundred unforgettable scores.
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A Man Falling
Title: A Man Falling
Released: October 27, 2021
Type: Movie
Foreclosed to the future, hope is in the past. Foreclosed the space, hope is inside time. We haven't seen each other again. It was not our mouth and nose that were covered with a mask, but our eyes. We couldn't see each other during the pandemic. The mask was on the eyes like that of the protagonist of Chris Marker's film, La Jetée. Perhaps it is from this film that is so important that one could start looking at the world again,try to figure out how much of what we were has been deposited in the filters of memorial.
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Marina Cicogna - La vita e tutto il resto
Title: Marina Cicogna - La vita e tutto il resto
Character: Herself
Released: October 15, 2021
Type: Movie
Profile of one of the first female film producers, not just in Italy but in the entire world.
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Opera Prima
Title: Opera Prima
Character: Self
Released: September 28, 2021
Type: Movie
Opera Prima is a tribute and a journey through the evolution that cinema has had in Italy. Tayu Vlietstra, a pupil of Bertolucci, carries out an investigation on the first work of six of the most authoritative and beloved Italian directors. The result is an unpublished and precious document that reveals the emotions and expectations of directors grappling with their cinematic debut. Mario Monicelli, Bernardo Bertolucci, Lina Wertmüller, Marco Bellocchio, Liliana Cavani and Francesca Archibugi offer a still current evolution on the needs and difficulties of making cinema in our country.
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La TV di Liliana Cavani. Un romanzo di formazione
Title: La TV di Liliana Cavani. Un romanzo di formazione
Released: October 1, 2020
Type: Movie
Liliana Cavani, before becoming an established filmmaker in Italy and in the world, was a young and brilliant documentary filmmaker in Ettore Bernabei's Rai. Just graduated from the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia, in just five years, from 1961 to 1966, Cavani produced over ten memorable programs, ranging from the editing documentary on the great history of the twentieth century to the investigation into the social, economic and cultural transformations of our country. A little-known image journey with a very high documentary and artistic value that reaches up to the TV film on Francesco d'Assisi, the first of his trilogy on the saint is the trait d'union between her documentary career and the debut of her cinematographic career.
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Partigiane 2.0 - La libertà ha sempre vent'anni
Title: Partigiane 2.0 - La libertà ha sempre vent'anni
Character: Sè stessa
Released: April 25, 2020
Type: Movie
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Fascism on a Thread: The Strange Story of Nazisploitation Cinema
Title: Fascism on a Thread: The Strange Story of Nazisploitation Cinema
Character: Self -Director
Released: June 25, 2019
Type: Movie
Feature length documentary on the cult sub-genre featuring interviews with Dyanne ‘Ilsa’ Thorne, Malissa ‘Elsa’ Longo, filmmakers Sergio Garrone, Mariano Caiano, Rino Di Silvestro, Liliana Cavani, Bruno Mattei, and many more.
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Dante Ferretti: Production Designer
Title: Dante Ferretti: Production Designer
Character: Self
Released: September 10, 2010
Type: Movie
The Documentary Dante Ferretti – Production Designer retraces the life and the career of Dante Ferretti, the famous Italian Artist and Production Designer.
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What Do You Know About Me
Title: What Do You Know About Me
Character: Self
Released: October 16, 2009
Type: Movie
Until the 1970s, Italian cinema dominated the international scene, even competing with Hollywood. Then, in just a few years, came its rapid decline, the flight of our greatest producers, a crisis among the best writer-directors, the collapse of production. But what are the true causes and circumstances of this decline? In an attempt to provide an answer to this question, Di Me Cosa Ne Sai strives to depict this great cultural change. Begun as a loving examination of Italian cinema, the film transformed into a docu-drama that alternates between interviews with the great names of the past and fragments of cultural and political life of the last 30 years. It is a travel diary that shows Italy from north to south, through movie theatres; television-addicted kids; Berlusconi and Fellini; shopping centers; TV news editors; stories of impassioned film exhibitors and directors who fight for their films; and interviews with itinerant projectionists and great European directors.
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Great Directors
Title: Great Directors
Character: Self
Released: May 19, 2009
Type: Movie
Features conversations with ten of the world's greatest living directors: Bernardo Bertolucci, David Lynch, Liliana Cavani, Stephen Frears, Agnes Varda, Ken Loach, Todd Haynes, Catherine Breillat, Richard Linklater and John Sayles. The film documents Ismailos' voyage of discovering the creative personalities behind the camera.
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Marcello, una vita dolce
Title: Marcello, una vita dolce
Character: Self
Released: May 21, 2006
Type: Movie
After shooting to fame with Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” (1960), actor Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) starred in more than 160 films in his nearly half-a-century career. Directors Mario Canale and Annarosa Morri look into the melancholic charm of one of the most famous Italian actors through interviews with his two daughters, Barbara and Chiara; directors Fellini and Luchino Visconti; actresses Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee; and in archival footage of Mastroianni himself. The subject matter ranges from Mastroianni’s passion for kidney-bean pasta and his addiction to the telephone to his famous laziness, humility and talent. Shown in black-and-white, Mastroianni — elegantly holding a cigarette in between his fingers — is undeniably the dandy.
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Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema
Title: Filming Desire: A Journey Through Women’s Cinema
Character: Self
Released: July 9, 2000
Type: Movie
The film consists largely of a series of interviews with female filmmakers from several different countries and filmmaking eras. Some, such as Agnès Varda and Catherine Breillat (both from France), have been making films for decades in a conscious effort to provide an alternative to the male filmmaking model; others, such as Moufida Tlatli (Tunisia) and Carine Adler (England), are relative newcomers to directing, and their approaches seem more personal and less political. The film as a whole manages to cover some important topics in the feminist debate about film -- how does one construct a female gaze, how can one film nude bodies without objectifying the actors (of either sex), what constitutes a strong female role -- while also making it clear that “women’s film” comprises as many different approaches to filmmaking as there are female filmmakers.
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Ulla's Fete
Title: Ulla's Fete
Released: June 6, 1974
Type: Movie
A filmed record of a bizarre garden party organized to pay a fine incurred by singer Ulla for "liberating a chandelier from Harrods."
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Che fine hanno fatto i sogni?
Title: Che fine hanno fatto i sogni?
Released: December 31, 1969
Type: Movie