February 18th Pinocchio by Roberto Benigni, 2003, starring Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi, 100 mins, color Ever-curious wooden puppet puts himself in to troubles. Successful adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s classic moral fable, published in late XIXth Century Italy. Set in Tuscany.

February 25th 1860 by Alessandro Blasetti, 1933, starring Giuseppe Gulino and Aida Bellia, 72 mins, Italian with English subtitles, black and white. Sicilian peasants fighting against the Bourbon Army, waiting for Garibaldi to come to “liberate” the South and unite Italy. Partly based on the memoires of Giuseppe Cesare Abba who was one of the Thousands, taking part to the landing in Marsala and the battle of Calatafimi (1860).

March 3rd Senso by Luchino Visconti, 1954, starring Alida Valli and Farley Granger, 117 mins, color. A noble-woman who sympathises with the Risorgimento falls in love with an Austrian officer (partly set in Venice, 1866, based on a novel by Camillo Boito)

March 10th In nome del Papa Re by Luigi Magni, 1977, starring Nino Manfredi and Danilo Mattei, 105 mins. Mons. Colombo, judge of the Supreme Pontifical Tribunal, doubtful of the convenience of the Pope’s secular power, ends up helping a revolutionist in Rome, 1867.

March 17th Amarcord by Federico Fellini, 1973, starring Magalì Noel and Bruno Zanin, 127 mins, Italian with English subtitles, color. Carnevalesque, sad and funny stories involving the family of an adolescent son of a Socialist in provincial Italy during Fascism (set in Rimini, Romagna, 1920’s-30’s)

March 24th La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of San Lorenzo), by the Taviani brothers, 1981, starring Omero Antonutti and Margarita Lonzano, 105 mins, color. Refugees from a Tuscan village trying to reach the Allied front line, in the midst of nazi massacres and the Civil War between fascists and antifascists, (1943-45).

March 31st Mediterraneo, by Gabriele Salvatores, 1992, starring Giuseppe Cederna and Diego Abatantuono, 86 mins, color. Italian soldiers forgotten in a Greek Island get friendly with the inhabitants, during Second World War. Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Film 1992

April 7th Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves), by Vittorio De Sica, 1948, starring Lamberto Maggirani and Enzo Staiola, 90 mins, Italian with English subtitles, black and white. A bill-sticker and his son searching for the stolen bicycle (set in Post Second World War Rome)

April 14th Mamma Roma by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962, starring Anna Magnani and Ettore Garofalo, 102 mins, Italian with English Subtitles, black and white. The relationship between a former prostitute, with strong character, and her son disilluded about life, in subproletarian Rome of the early Sixties

April 21st Strategia del ragno (The Spider’s Stratagem) by B. Bertolucci, 1970, starring Giulio Brogi and Alida Valli, 97 mins., color. A young man of the 1970’s tries to discover how and why his antifascist father died like a hero thirty years earlier (set in the XVth Century village of Sabionetta, near Mantua, based on a novel by Jorge Luis Borges).

April 28th Pane e tulipani (Bread and Tulips) by Silvio Soldini, 2000, starring Lucia Maglietta and Bruno Ganzm 116 mins, color. A housewife from Pescara is forgotten in a motorway bar by her husband and sons, near Venice. She decides to remain in Venice where she finds a job, new friends and her own freedom.

May 5th Palombella rossa by Nanni Moretti, 1989, starring Nanni Moretti and Silvio Orlando, 87 mins, Italian with English subtitles, color. Communist politician is struck by amnesia and attempts to reconstruct his identity and the reasons for his militancy, while playing water-polo (representation of the identity crisis of Communists during the fall of the Berlin Wall)

May 12th Il metalmeccanico e la parrucchiera in un turbine di sesso e politica (The Worker and the Hairdresser in a whirlwind of sex and politics), by Lina Wertmueller, 1996, starring Irene Pivetti and Tullio Solenghi, 104 mins, color. A neocommunist unemployed married worker falls in love with a pro-Lega Nord hairdresser. Set in Milan, 1994