72nd San Sebastian Festival - 20/28 September 2023
71SSIFF - 22/30 September 2023
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Z365" or "Festival all year round" is the new strategic point of the Festival in which converge investigation, accompaniment and development of new talents (Ikusmira Berriak, Nest); training and cinematic knowledge transfer (Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola, Zinemaldia + Plus, Filmmakers' dialogue); and investigation, disclosure and cinematic thought (Z70 project, Thought and Discussion and Research and publications).
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Agenda
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Getting to Know Bernardo Bertolucci
Films
Films
Bernardo Bertolucci (Agonia) Carlo Lizzani (L'indifferenza) Pier Paolo Pasolini (La sequenza del fiore di carta) Jean-Luc Godard (L'amore) Marco Bellocchio (Discutiamo, discutiamo)
102 min.
Made in 1967 as a part of Vangelo 70, it was finally included as the third episode of the film Amore e rabbia. The other episodes were directed by Lizzani, Pasolini, Godard and Bellochio. Bertolucci worked with the Living Theatre group. " I shut myself away for twelve days in a Cinecittá studio with the company to film Agonia. The most exciting moment for me was when the 40 people from the Living Theatre saw the final version of the film".
Donatella Baglivo
161 min.
A classic television interview that covers the author's childhood right up to the present day, and goes over his life and films in chronological order. Fragments of films, photographs, anecdotes and reflections. From a cinematic viewpoint it is extremely conventional and trite, but what makes it interesting is watching and listening to Bertolucci talking quite frankly about his father, his collaborators, friends and especially his work.
Gianni Amelio
63 min.
While they were shooting Novecento, the young Gianni Amelio followed the director, actors and crew from close up, and captured the best moments from filming. He made a "Making of" well before this practice became popular.
Bernardo Bertolucci
94 min.
A man, a woman, a half-empty house, a love story made out of secrets, silences and pain. This explanation perfectly matches one of Bertolucci's most beautiful films: Last Tango in Paris. However it could also be used, if we add a piano, to define Besieged, the film in which he is reunited with the city of Rome after an absence of seventeen years.
Bernardo Bertolucci
110 min.
The story takes place in Paris in 1938, which was the year in which one of Bertolucci's favourite films, Renoir's La regle du jeu, was shot. The cowardly atmosphere that pervades the pre-war period is revealed through the relations between four characters. A latent underlying fascism becomes evident when one of them is betrayed. "The memory of what cinema is in Il Confomista" (B.B).
Bernardo Bertolucci eta beste 39 errealizadore/Bernardo Bertolucci and another 39 directors/Bernardo Bertolucci y otros 39 realizadores Filmatutako materialaren aukeraketa/Choice of filmed material/Selección del material filmado: Bernardo Bertolucci, Fran
91 min.
A collective film made to mark the burial of Enrico Berlinguer, the historic leader of Italian and European communism and one of the most emblematic figures of the history of the 20th century.
Bernardo Bertolucci
98 min.
Bertolucci was 21 when he shot his first film. It was directly linked with the figure of Pier Paolo Pasolini who wrote the story line and was an undeniable model for the young director. However, in what was his first film, Bertolucci already showed he had his own world. "My biggest problem was bringing these characters closer to my own sensibility. I didn't want to end up trapped in the structure of a detective film" (B.B.).
Bernardo Bertolucci
142 min.
A personal cinematic counterpoint to his previous film, La luna is the result of profound psychoanalysis, - a desire to get closer to the mother figure. The story came out of a memory: "I am sitting in a basket fastened to the handlebars of a bicycle, I have the road behind me and opposite me my mother is riding the bicycle. I look at my mother and see her face; the moon is behind her and I mix up my mother's young face with the old face of the moon". (B.B).
Bernardo Bertolucci
35 min.
Bertolucci isn't interested in politically-committed cinema. That is why he has almost always shied away from making openly political films. However, on this occasion he gave in to a request from the PCI to make a film about public health in Italy. The result is a symbolic film about a period and certain people, rather than about a specific struggle. "This is the only political film I have made" (B.B).
Bernardo Bertolucci
110 min.
Loosely inspired by Borges's short story "Theme of the traitor and the hero", this is one of the most important films in his career. Not only for the undeniable beauty of its images and the complex nature of its narrative structure, but fundamentally because for the first time Bertolucci confronts two great taboos: the Freudian search for the father figure and the demystification of marxist ideology.
Bernardo Bertolucci
110 min.
The last film the director made in Italy before his self-exile. It was very badly received by the critics who were unable to appreciate the tragedy of this man. "Although the film does not aim to be directly political, to a certain extent it is the third act of Novecento. Starting out from an event that is as tragic as the kidnapping of his son, Primo gets something positive out of this, he tries to save the dairy from bankruptcy so he can help the workers". (B.B).
Bernardo Bertolucci
133 min.
Bertolucci usually says, "I don't make documentaries", yet nevertheless, in this case he made a feature that was clearly about the oil world. "I was interested in the pioneer side of the drillers, or the anarcho-individualistic side of the helicopter pilots. I tried to propose a certain degree of narrative tension. It is impossible for me to film reality as it is if I do not manage in some way to unearth the hidden narrative element". (B.B.).
Fernand Moszkowicz
51 min.
A mixture of documentary and fiction. There is no commentary or interviews; there are just little fragments of reflections spoken out loud. There are no extracts to illustrate ideas, but entire sequences from Bertolucci's films treated as if they were fictional elements integrated into the story of the Italian traveller. A game with mirrors in which everyone thinks they recognize their own face in the other's. (F.Moskowicz).
Bernardo Bertolucci
140 min.
This was the last of his exotic films. Little Buddha was misunderstood to a certain extent when it was first released. Considered to be a religious film, Bertolucci dared to do something really difficult: to talk about Buddhism and to do so using simple understandable language. "Buddhists never talk about the soul, which is a religious idea, but they do talk about the mind. The mind is something we need; it is the brain in a word". (B.B).
Bernardo Bertolucci
325 min.
Bertolucci's first historical fresco covering 50 years of Italian life. A spectacle and political commitment; historical memory converted into film images. A century that is born and a period that dies. From innocence to fascism and freedom. De Niro and Depardieu are magnificent. "My intention was quite clear: to make a popular film and communicate with the biggest possible audience. Although I don't think it is a political film, I do think that it is, above all, an ideological film". (B.B).
Bernardo Bertolucci
105 min.
This is Bertolucci's most "Godardian" film: "It's a superficial opinion to say that it was a Godardian film, because it is a long way from the feeling for the present that Godard has always had". It is also the film that is most closely linked with a moment in history: May 68. "It's a very typical film from that year. Although it also corresponds to a very sinister personal stage that I was at. It was an extremist film that matured in neurosis".
Bernardo Bertolucci
100 min.
Bertolucci's first autobiographical film meant that the critics became aware that he was one of the bright young hopes of Italian cinema. "This is the story of the ideological experiences of a young man who thinks he's a Marxist but then discovers that he isn't," the director said at a time that revolutions were being made by the very children of the bourgeoisie. This is a film by, with and for young people, that hasn't lost a single shot of its contemporary relevance despite the fact that nearly 40 years that have gone by since.
Tatti Sanguineti
120 min.
Tatti Sanguineti, one of the most prestigious critics in Italy, proposed to Bertolucci, in 1999, that he should talk about the entire censorship and banning process that the film Last Tango in Paris had to go through, in a television programme. The film was not only banned at the time by the censors but was also sentenced to be burnt at the stake just like in the days of the Inquisition. The film includes statements by Bertolucci, Grimaldi, critics and lawyers.
Bernardo Bertolucci
118 min.
It was a visit to Tuscany that aroused a desire in Bertolucci to shoot a film again in a familiar landscape. As he walked through the woods and roads of this beautiful region, he gradually conceived the basis of the story of a young American girl about to become an adult, who lives among a multinational group of intellectuals and artists. The stolen beauty in the title refers to the countryside as well as to Lucy, the main character played by Liv Tyler.
Bernardo Bertolucci
160 min.
The first of Bertolucci's three great exotic films. The so-called Oriental Trilogy begins with this historical fresco covering sixty years of life in China told through the eyes of Pu Yi, the last emperor. Its visual splendour and meticulous creation of atmosphere, - a spectacle turned into history, won it many Oscars. Bertolucci usually says that this is "the only positive film I've made".
Bernardo Bertolucci
135 min.
Bertolucci discovers Paul Bowles when he is in China. In the pages of The Sheltering Sky he finds the solitude and privacy that the emperor's life prevents him from experiencing. He decides that his next film is to be the story of two characters in a desert context, looking inwards. Bertolucci exposes feelings through the faces of Debra Winger and John Malkovich. They are the story: they are also the film.
Bernardo Bertolucci
126 min.
A mythical film that is romantic in the broadest sense of the term. A reference point for a generation that discovered sex, cinema, passion and pain on the monumental faces of Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider shut up in an empty flat in Paris in winter. "Sex is a new kind of language that the characters try to invent to communicate with each other. Sexual language means the freeing of the unconscious". (B.B).
Bernardo Bertolucci
5 min.
Short film
A short sketch of the setting for what was to be his following film, The Last Emperor.
Enrico Ghezzi
52 min.
On the 7th of October, 1981, the film critic Enrico Ghezzi managed to bring together two leading figures in European cinema in a historic interview: Wim Wenders and Bernardo Bertolucci. The conversation took place in Rome, at Bertolucci's home, and they spoke in French about films, influences and especially about Nicholas Ray, as Wenders's film Lightning over Water had just come out at the time.
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