Retrospective Marco Bellocchio

Marco Bellocchio (*1939) is one of Italy's most important and prolific filmmakers. Since his furious debut I PUGNI IN TASCA (Fists in the Pocket), which established him in the mid 1960s as a leading representative of contemporary Italian cinema, he has directed nearly 50 shorts, features and documentaries. His hugely multi-faceted oeuvre encompasses vehement direct attacks on the bourgeois institutions of the family, the state and the church, uncompromising indictments of power structures and relations in politics, the media and society, complex, introspective studies of the emotionally damaged, cinematic examinations of psychological processes, appropriations of literary sources and precise documentary works, Often seen as a tireless wanderer between a wide range of different genres, subjects and forms of production and a experimenter and communicator of concepts, Bellocchio's work confronts us with anarchy and rebellion, desire and passion, the subconscious, the world of dreams and the realm of the shades. In doing so, he places the mental state of his protagonists – rebels, dreamers and outsiders played by outstanding actors such as Lou Castel, Laura Betti, Sergio Castellitto, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, to name just a few – in direct relationship with their surroundings, connecting the private and the public, and allowing the personal to coalesce with the flow of historical and political time. Yet Bellocchio doesn't just bring together different narratives or layer them on top of one another in individual films, but also allows characters, locations, moods and ideas from the various films made over his decade-long career to enter into dialogue with one another. Discovering the delicate connecting lines that criss-cross Marco Bellocchio's impressive oeuvre is just one of the many delights that we and the Italian Cultural Institute invite you to partake in this October. We are particularly happy to be able to welcome Marco Bellocchio to Arsenal on October 5 and 6 to present his latest film BELLA ADDORMENTATA (2012), which received its world premiere just days before we went to press, as well as his first feature length work I PUGNI IN TASCA.