They say that Italians are all about family. Elysia Zeccola, the manager of this year’s Lavazza Italian Film Festival, jokes about the all-enveloping nature of her father’s “big Italian family, who made it impossible for her English mother to avoid adopting the culture and learning the language." Even work is a family affair for Zeccola, who has spent the last eight years organising the festival alongside her father, Antonio (the managing director), who actually proposed the original vision for an Italian film festival eight years ago.
“Back then, we saw how well the French one was doing and we just thought, ‘Why isn’t anyone organising an Italian festival?’ It seemed strange, because Italy has got such a long established and well respected film industry and so many fantastic films, so we decided to start organising one ourselves,” she reflects, “In the first year we picked up a selection of films and screened them only in Melbourne and Sydney, and pretty much from the second year onwards we’ve just expanded, because there seems to be such a demand and people just enjoy those films so much. We’re getting more and more films and also expanding at each individual location. In Perth it was just at Paradiso initially, and it’s moved to Paradiso and Luna on SX.”
Zeccola makes no claims to understand the festival’s ever-growing popularity, but she does emphasise the particular power that film can have over Italian migrants living in Australia. “So many Italian films touch on immigration themes – and whether they’re talking about immigration to Canada or America or Australia, they’re looking at experiences that all migrants can sort of connect with,” she stresses. “Even for second or third generation migrants, these are films about people who have moved from small villages and travelled across the world to live in another country, and as you watch them you realise that that’s what your parents have also done and it’s quite interesting.”
Zeccola herself certainly used film as a means to connect with her own Italian identity. From the age of 11 she worked a foreign film cinema and reflects fondly upon the days of “sitting up the back watching the film, once you’ve ripped everyone’s tickets.” It was in this dark space that Zeccola first tasted Italian celluloid, and quickly found herself hooked. “I’d definitely watch a lot of these films, and slowly it became so important for me to learn Italian,” she remembers, “because after I saw all these Italian language films I felt very much that I had such a strong connection with the country.”
This year, the film festival programme presents a wide range of Italian films, all of them united in box office success. “They aren’t all blockbusters, but they are all films that have reached a certain level of success and have gained good reviews in Italy,” Zeccola explains. “It’s a combination of factors. Some of them have stars and actors that people are interesting in seeing, while some are just films that have really succeeded in touching hearts through their themes.”
There is certainly a diverse range of subject material on offer. Personally, Zeccola recommends Manual of Love 2 (Manuale D’Amore 2), the sequel to Italy’s record breaking romantic comedy, that returns once again with four more interconnecting love stories. She also speaks highly of One Hundred Nails (Centochiodi), the final fiction film from Palme D’Or winning director, Ermanno Olmi, who has decided to from now on only produce documentaries. This film delves into the heavy themes of theology, love and friendship, after a country librarian awakes to find 100 rare manuscripts nailed to his library floor.
“They’re all so varied! There’s such a great mix there because Italians are always churning out so many great films, which makes my job easy,” Zeccola laughs. “People say that Italian films are always about passion and infidelity and adultery, and there certainly is a lot of that going on, but there’s also so much more to it.”
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