Homage to Luchino Visconti

Luchino Visconti once said: “It is man who is at the heart of all my work”. Man, the human being. In a context of the quickening pace of globalisation, we feel it is essential to emphasise the absolute centrality of being human. It means passion, emotion, feelings, joy, happiness, pain, madness...

Visconti was never afraid to use strong colours when necessary: each frame seems to give us the real smell and flavour of humanity along with the images, all depicted with the passion of someone who has no intention of holding back.
It is in the heat, thick with odours in Il Gattopardo, when the camera does not even shy away from the overflowing spitoons in the ballroom scene; it is the interchange of glances, fears and anxieties that snake through the elegant movement of Ludwig's coronation. It is also the bowl of soup eaten by the desperate Clara Calamai in Ossessione; the simple egg, pierced and sucked avidly by the teacher in Bellissima. Food, the act of eating, takes on different values each time: it is the desirous dream of the poor; the cultural character in La terra trema or Rocco e i suoi fratelli; but it is also the ritual of a class that celebrates its hierarchies at table, when one thinks of the dazzling opening to La caduta degli dei or the excitable laughter of Angelica / Claudia Cardinale during the dinner in Il Gattopardo. It is the explosion of unresolved tensions in Gruppo di famiglia in un interno; and it is always an element that touches the most concrete, real and carnal part of man. The champagne flutes leading us to Ludwig and his knot of tensions and fear; the ripe, juicy strawberries on the sunny, dusty beach in Morte a Venezia. And so, Trailers FilmFest in the World dedicates its heartfelt homage to this food, this taste of visceral and full-blooded humanity, driven by ambitions, fears, love, hopes and desires, a humanity that does not hide itself behind a computer screen, a humanity that wears the colours of the land.