In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Italian writer, Nobel Prize laureate Luigi Pirandello, the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto and the Italian Cultural Institute in collaboration with the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto, present Pirandello 150, a Film and Lecture Series.
George Ignatieff Theatre – 15 Devonshire Pl, Toronto, ON M5S 2C8
17 October, 6:00PM
Manuela Gieri (Università della Basilicata), presents TU RIDI, directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, starring Antonio Albanese (1998, Italian with English Subtitles, Colour, 99 min.)
Tu ridi (You Laugh) is the second film adaptation based on short stories by Luigi Pirandello directed by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. The film has two segments: in the first one Felice, a baritone who has had to give up his career because of a heart condition and now works as an accountant at the Opera, inexplicably spends his nights laughing in his sleep. In the second segment, two kidnappings in Sicily, the second of which took place a century before the present one, are compared.
Manuela Gieri is Associate Professor of Film History and Theory at the University of Basilicata, and she is the coordinator of a Master Degree in Modern and Classical Philology in the Department of Human Sciences. From 1989 to 2007, Prof. Gieri was Associate Professor of Italian and Film Studies at the University of Toronto. Amongst her publication, it is worth mentioning Cinema. Dalle origini allo studio system (Carocci, 2009), Contemporary Italian Filmmaking: Strategies of Subversion. Pirandello, Fellini, Scola, and the Directors of the New Generation (University of Toronto Press, 1995), and La strada. Federico Fellini, Director (Rutgers, 1987). Professor Gieri has also published extensively in learned journals and edited volumes on Italian cinema, film history, Pirandello, and contemporary Italian women’s writing. Professor Gieri is presently working on the second volume of her film history, and she is co-editing a volume entitled Twentieth Century Italian Filmmakers.
