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The festival to come - Previews of the XXII edition
December 10 – 16, 2012
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| 28/10/2012 |
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With just over 40 days to go, the 22nd edition of the Courmayeur Noir in Festival – directed by Giorgio Gosetti and Marina Fabbri – will feature Alfred Hitchcock (details to be revealed soon!), 2012 Raymond Chandler Award winner and author extraordinaire Don Winslow, a conference on the movies and legends of the Mafia and Anti-mafia, and director Sergio Ferrentino’s theatrical adaptation of Massimo Carlotto’s Il Giardino di Gaia.
Closing night
The festival will close with an audio-drama that blends radio and experimental, technology and the tradition of oral storytelling: director Sergio Ferrentino’s original adaption of Il giardino di Gaia by Massimo Carlotto, one of the Noir Festival’s favorite Italian writers.
The 2012 Raymond Chandler Award recipient: Don Winslow
A formidable author of adrenaline-charged best sellers such as The Savages (which Oliver Stone recently adapted into a film) and The Kings of Cool (soon to be published in Italy), Don Winslow will talk about both projects at Courmayeur, along with his passions, his past as a private detective and expert on organized crime, and his successful relationship with cinema.
“I’ve always believed in a powerful osmosis between noir and cinema,” says Winslow, “and personally I think that my writing style was very much influenced by the big screen. Unconsciously, because I grew up with movies; consciously, because I’ve been contaminated by the works of directors such as Truffaut, Fellini and John Woo. Films like 8 ½ and La Strada encouraged me to take risks with the creative structure of my novels, especially The Savages.”
The prestigious Raymond Chandler Award has been presented by the Courmayeur Noir in Festival for over 20 years to the greatest living noir writers, including John le Carré, John Grisham and Elmore Leonard.
This year’s theme: Noi e la Mafia
Taking place December 13-14, the two-day conference “Noi e la Mafia” (“The Mafia and Us”) – conceived by Marina Fabbri and moderator Gaetano Savatteri – will analyze literary and cinematic representations of the mafia and organized crime, whose existence is as pervasive as it was long-denied, and which has been capable of adapting perfectly to the transformations of Italian society. In a year of anniversaries that sadly commemorate a 30-year battle against the mafia, whose roots are too often contiguous with our national culture, we will examine the unique relationship between film, literature and reality that has taught us about the Mafia and those who fought it in Italy, America, Mexico; and the various approaches used by each medium and how successful they have been. Participants include writer-screenwriters Don Winslow and Evan Wright; Italian authors Marcello Fois and Andrea Purgatori; expert Salvatore Lupo; investigative reporter Lirio Abbate; Confindustria Vice President Ivan Lo Bello; and renowned photographer Letizia Battaglia.
Literature
Besides Don Winslow, two more authors at Courmayeur this year have written about the mafia: Mexico’s Elmer Mendoza, who will present The Acid Test; and journalist-screenwriter Evan Wright, who co-wrote American Desperado with cocaine smuggling lord Jon Roberts (real name: John Riccobono), the model for Brian de Palma’s Scarface, whose story is a classic paradigm of the intrigues between crime and the powers that be in the U.S. in the last 30 years.
Our exploration of literary noir extends to John Katzenbach’s psychological thriller The Wrong Man, set to become another hit film like his previous books, including Hart’s War (2002, with Colin Farrell and Bruce Willis); and the turbid, morbid atmospheres of Victorian Era London in Kate Williams’ The Pleasures of Men. Of course, we couldn’t not include Scandinavian noir, which this year comes from Denmark, in the form of brother-sister duo Soren and Lotte Hammer’s Alting Har Sing Pris.
The Italians will also be out in full force, from esteemed journalist Franco Di Mare and his Neapolitan-set Il paradiso dei diavoli; to Roberto Costantini and Alle radici del Male, the follow-up to his highly successful debut novel; and renowned author Massimo Carlotto (winner of the 2002 Scerbanenco Prize for Il maestro di nodi), who will present his latest novel, Respiro Corto.
Cinema
The complete competition programme will be revealed soon but we can say that of the 10 Italian premieres vying for the Black Lion for Best Film, the big surprise of 2012 is that there are three Italian films in international competition, after a too-long absence from the genre.
We are also particularly proud to present Carl Colby’s documentary The Man Nobody Knew, about his father William Colby, legendary director of the CIA and creator of Stay Behind / Gladio; and to host a special day dedicated to the history of the American terrorist movement the Weather Underground Organization, accompanied by Robert Redford’s new masterpiece The Company You Keep and the rare film Underground (1976) by master documentarian Emile De Antonio.
Noir TV
In partnership with the FOX Crime channel, we once again offer premieres of some of television’s most innovative and high-quality shows, including the premiere of season eight of Criminal Minds and the first two episodes of the new series Awake, a psychological thriller in which police detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs of the Harry Potter saga) wakes up from a car accident that also involved his wife Hannah (Laura Allen, Dirt) and son Rex, to two different realities: one in which only Rex survives, the other in which Hannah is alive and the boy has died.
FOX Crime will also have tie-ins with the Festival in the form of a contest (first prize: a trip to the Festival) and a “manhunt” in Courmayeur for the most enterprising of the fest’s amateur sleuths.
Mini Noir
Now at its ninth edition, the festival-within-the-festival for children and youths has new adventures in store, along with the customary exhibit of works from the students of Milan’s European Institute of Design (IED) and the IED creative workshops for kids. Mini Noir has a new partnership with the Associazione Palentologica A.P.P.I., and together we will present the dinosaur exhibition Dinosauri in carne e ossa - Dai grandi rettili ai dominatori dell’Era Glaciale, along with accompanying films and discussions with artists and paleontologists.
Enzo d’Alò (The Seagull and the Cat) will also reveal the secrets of the “marine monster” that swallowed up both Geppetto and his son in the screenwriter-director’s latest animated film, Pinocchio.
Plus plenty of other film premieres, new literary events and surprise guests! |
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