Renowned Italian film critic, historian, filmmaker, actor, book editor, and teacher, Adriano Aprà, passed away last week on April 15th.Adriano Aprà was an insatiable cinephile who also ran the important Filmstudio in Rome and was an avid proponent of filmmakers “outside of the norm,” including Iranian cinema, Palestinian resistance films, and works by Philippe Garrel, Chantal Akerman, Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, and the New American Cinema of Jonas Mekas and Robert Kramer’s newsreel. He directed significant festivals such as the Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema in Pesaro and organized memorable retrospectives on Kenji Mizoguchi and Howard Hawks. He also acted in Straub and Huillet’s Othon. Serge Daney described him as a “passeur,” someone who walked through and embraced all emerging forms of cinema, averse to the connotation and cultural context of the work. A great responsibility he hoped would be taken over by a younger generation. Especially in digital times, where “anyone can make a film” and there’s maybe consequently “less desire to discover.” A few years before his death, he said, “I’m eighty and I’m tired of being the avant-garde. I hope someone younger than me will come along with the same desire to explore.”Read the full obituary by Kumail Syed on Sabzian.► sabzian.be/news/adriano-aprà-1940-2024
☆"My goal was to make movie theaters a useful tool."☆A straightforward documentary about a beloved figure, composed entirely of archival videos and interviews, is one that already begins with a steep hill to climb. Again, I love documentaries, and some can use this particular tactic wonderfully -- see the brilliant Mike Wallace is Here for a recent example -- with innovation and artistry. However, Adriano Aprà's Rossellini visto da Rossellini ["Rossellini Through His Own Eyes"] struggles to be much more than a clip show appropriate for only the most ardent fans.It's been fantastic watching the three Roberto Rossellini films on this Criterion set. The extras have some interesting inclusions, but much of what I can log from them here hasn't been that special. Add this one to the "underwhelming" group, despite a few moments of excellent archival footage and revealing looks at a legend of cinema.Aprà basically constructs a story of what brought Rossellini to make films, and how quickly he seemed to find his own voice immediately in the aftermath of World War II, reckoning with the role of his homeland and his/its place in the Western world as the rubble still smoldered. (I no doubt will learn more of this when I watch his "War Trilogy" soon.) To do this, he uses pieces of Rossellini's films and interviews, as well as behind-the-scenes footage and candid moments, to better understand the life's arc of this artist. Released in 1993, over 15 years after his death, this hour-long documentary also explores his political ideologies, and how they were expressed in his work. Anyway, I've got three things to log tonight, so I can't say too much more. This was fine. I think a real Rossellini fanatic might like Rossellini Through His Own Eyes, with a few rare clips of the director talking about his life and career, but otherwise it's difficult to watch without just wishing you were seeing a film of his instead.
Cinema relies so greatly on allusion and suggestion that it lacked the power to solve certain problems, so I devised new approaches. I think we can find new subject matter. We have to go out and explore reality, explore what might yield new dramatic material. And the other thing that I think is true and essential in today’s world… is that in general we know very little about the reality of this world we live in. So we have to bring ourselves up to date. And since this world is extremely changeable, in continual unrest, I think we also have to devise ongoing ways of gathering information, so that we can follow, day by day, what’s happening, the changes in structure, vision, policy, etc. So set out in that direction, because I also believe we need to wage a campaign specifically to educate and inform people about the reality of today’s world.
