No More Fables
Italian Neorealism

May 2 - 30, 2014

“The true function of the cinema is not to tell fables.”
Cesare Zavattini



Roberto Rossellini, one of Italian neo-realism's pre-eminent directors, defined it as, “above all a moral position from which to look at the world”. Coming in the wake of studio-bound melodramas of the Fascist regime –neorealist films demonstrated a new social consciousness, with their emphasis on working class hardship and the daily struggle to get by in post-war Italy, where the shadow of defeat lay over its material conditions of economic hardship in war-damaged cities.

Pera Film, between the dates 2 – 30 May, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Institute of Culture in Istanbul is presenting a striking selection of nine neorealist films of along with two special documentaries.

Italian neorealism made its mark on the international stage with Rossellini's Rome, Open City - an account of life and resistance in Rome under Nazi occupation, which took the Grand Prize at Cannes in 1946. Directors such as Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica, and Luchino Visconti took up cameras to focus on lower-class characters and their concerns, using nonprofessional actors, outdoor shooting, (necessarily) very small budgets, and a realist aesthetic. A direct, unadorned style of filming was typical, notably in long takes.

Cesare Zavattini, who wrote neorealist films such as Shoeshine and Bicycle Thief for the Italian director Vittorio de Sica, laid a challenge to all film makers “to excavate reality, to give it a power, a communication, a series of reflexes, which until recently we had never thought it had.” He declares that the camera “has a hunger for reality,” that the invention of plots to make reality palpable or spectacular is a flight from the richness of real life. The problem, he says, “lies in being able to observe reality, not to extract fictions from it.”

In collaboration

May 2

19:00 Journey to Italy

May 3

14:00 I Vitelloni

16:00 Paisan

19:00 Stromboli

May 4

12:30 History of Italian Cinema

16:00 Banditi a Orgosolo

18:00 Bread, Love and Dreams

May 8

19:00 Rome, Open City

May 9

18:00 Cesare Zavattini

20:00 Banditi a Orgosolo

May 11

14:00 Bread, Love and Dreams

16:00 I Vitelloni

18:00 Stromboli

May 14

16:00 History of Italian Cinema

19:00 Umberto D

May 18

14:00 Paisan

16:00 Rome, Open City

18:00 Germany Year Zero

May 21

19:00 Germany Year Zero

May 24

14:00 Umberto D

May 30

18:00 Cesare Zavattini

20:00 Journey to Italy

Rome, Open City

Rome, Open City

Paisan

Paisan

Germany Year Zero

Germany Year Zero

Stromboli

Stromboli

Umberto D

Umberto D

Bread, Love and Dreams

Bread, Love and Dreams

I Vitelloni

I Vitelloni

Journey to Italy

Journey to Italy

Banditi a Orgosolo

Banditi a Orgosolo

Cesare Zavattini

Cesare Zavattini

History of Italian Cinema

History of Italian Cinema

Program Trailer

No More Fables
Italian Neorealism

Pera Film, between the dates 2 – 30 May, in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Institute of Culture in Istanbul is presenting a striking selection of nine neorealist films of along with two special documentaries.

Midnight Stories: The Soul <br> Aşkın Güngör

Midnight Stories: The Soul
Aşkın Güngör

The wind blows, rubbing against my legs made of layers of metal and wires, swaying the leaves of grass that have shot up from the cracks in the tarmac, and going off to the windows that look like the eyes of dead children in the wrecked buildings that seem to be everywhere as far as the eye can see.

Paris Without End (1959-1965)

Paris Without End (1959-1965)

In the 60s, Alberto Giacometti paid homage to Paris, the city where he lived, by drawing its streets, cafés, and more private places like his studio and the apartment of his wife, Annette. These drawings would make up his last book, Paris sans fin (Paris Without End). 

Cindy Sherman Look At Me!

Cindy Sherman Look At Me!

The exhibition Look at Me! Portraits and Other Fictions from the ”la Caixa” Contemporary Art Collection examines portraiture, one of the oldest artistic genres, through a significant number of works of our times. Through the exhibition we will be sharing about the artists and sections in Look At Me!.