Film Grain Foundation together with the MA programme in Film Studies of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Malta in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura are pleased to announce that film director Liliana Cavani, often described as the doyenne of Italian cinema, will be a special guest at this year’s edition of Valletta Film Festival.
Cavani is renowned for her rich visual language. With a plethora of titles under her belt, she is best known for her erotic psychological thriller The Night Porter, which created a sensation on both sides of the atlantic when it was released in 1974. The film stars Dirk Bogarde – who, as an aside was in Malta in 1954 to film the war drama They Who Dare – and Charlotte Rampling.
The director will also host an hour-long Master Class on Tuesday 18th June at Valletta Campus Theatre. During this master class Liliana Cavani will discuss the distinctive features of her craft of directing film. The event will be introduced by Prof Gloria Lauri-Lucente and moderated by Prof Gaetana Marrone Puglia. The session will also be open to questions from the audience.
Biography:
Liliana Cavani was born in Carpi (Modena). She graduated in Bologna in Classics and obtained her Diploma at “Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia”. She won a RAI competition but she relinquished her position to work instead as a professional freelancer, launching documentaries and investigations about the political and social scene. She started her filmmaking career in cinema with Francesco d’Assisi (1966), a TV miniseries which would later be re-edited as a feature film (1972).
Liliana Cavani’s films have participated in various Festivals such as Cannes, Venice, New York, Chicago, Berlin and Teheran. In 1979 she directed a number of operas in various European theatres, among which the first Traviata at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, 26 years after the legendary performance by Maria Callas.
She was a member of the jury at Berlin Festival, the Venice Festival and President of the Sochi Russian Film Festival. She was the Winner of Best TV Drama 2010 Prize at European Science for the film Einstein.
From 1996 to 1998 she was appointed Counsellor of Board of Directors at RAI. She received the Laurea Honoris Causa in Science Technology and Communication by Università LUMSA and the David di Donatello Award in 2012 in honour of her exceptional career achievements. In 2013 she was awarded the Premio Pasinetti at Venice Film Festival for the documentary Clarisse. In 2015 she was granted the honorary citizenship of Assisi for her three films based on Francesco. She received the Premio Bresson at the Venice Film Festival 2018.
In 2016, on the occasion of the Spoleto Festival, she directed the first prose work Filumena Marturano and in 2018 Il piacere dell’onestà by Luigi Pirandello.
FILMS
1968 Galileo
1970 I cannibali
1971 L’ospite
1974 Il portiere di notte
1974 Milarepa
1977 Al di là del bene e del male
1981 La pelle
1982 Oltre la porta
1985 The Berlin Affair
1989 Francesco
1993 Dove siete? Io sono qui
2002 Ripley’s Game
MINISERIES
1966 Francesco d’Assisi
2005 De Gasperi, l’uomo della speranza
2008 Einstein
2012 Mai per amore (episode: Troppo amore)
2014 Francesco
