ONLINE SCREENING OF THE MACALUSO SISTERS, A FILM BY EMMA DANTE (in Italian with English subtitles) – TRAILER
Nov. 6 through 15 (any time)
Access to the screening will be provided through the Accademia del Cinema Italiano Premi David di Donatello platform after creating an account.
Adapted from her prize-winning stage play of the same name, which premiered in the U.S. as part of Peak Performances at Montclair State University, Emma Dante’s moving, decades-traversing drama THE MACALUSO SISTERS (2020) follows a family of five orphaned sisters living on the top floor of a distressed building in Palermo, who rent pastel-painted doves to weddings and birthdays to earn a living. When a sudden catastrophic seaside event alters the family dynamic, they are left grappling with the outcome. The delicate balance of sisterhood is tested in this accomplished, generation-spanning three-act sophomore feature. THE MACALUSO SISTERS premiered in competition at the 2020 Venice International Film Festival where it won the Pasinetti Awards (given by the National Union of Italian Journalists) for Best Film and Best Actress (awarded to the ensemble cast playing the sisters).
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THE MACALUSO SISTERS FROM THE STAGE TO THE SCREEN: A CONVERSATION WITH EMMA DANTE AND MARICA STOCCHI
Online event in Italian with optional simultaneous interpretation into English
Sunday Nov. 14 2-3:30pm EST (20-21:30 in Italy) TRAILER
Speakers: Emma Dante (director and co-scriptwriter) and Marica Stocchi (co-producer, Rosamont)
With opening remarks by Massimo Mascolo (Advisor to the President for Awards’ Innovation and Reform), Academy of Italian Cinema David di Donatello Awards
Moderated by: Teresa Fiore (Montclair State University)
Focused on the adaptation of The Macaluso Sisters from a play which premiered in the U.S. as part of Peaks Performances at Montclair State University in 2017, to a feature film, the conversation with acclaimed director Emma Dante will address issues of creativity across media and the role of women in Italy’s art scene and film industry, also according to the perspective of innovative producers such as Marica Stocchi. We are very pleased to have Emma Dante back in conversation with us after our first digital exchange in 2017. Since then she has contributed significant works to the world of the performing arts, the moving image and the written word!
A towering figure of the performing arts in the international scene, Emma Dante continues to prove her creative versatility in always new directions, smoothly moving from different media, even to refashion her own works, as is the case of The Macaluso Sisters. Her entire oeuvre could be seen as an incessant exploration of the themes of family and exclusion through a poetics of tension and madness, imbued with tragedy and humor, and often rooted in the land she is from and lives in: Sicily.
Founder of the company Sud Costa Occidentale, she has directed a long list of plays for the stage, securing the most prestigious prizes in theater (2001 Scenario Prize and Ubu Prize for Innovation for the show mPalermu; 2003 Ubu Prize for Best New Italian Play with Carnezzeria; 2005 Golden Graal Prize for Best Director for the play Verso Medea). Other titles include Il festino, Cani di bancata, Le pulle, Bestie di scena, La scortecata, Misericordia, and La trilogia degli occhiali, comprising Acquasanta, Il castello della Zisa and Ballarini. She has also delved in the opera world with an unforgettable Carmen by Bizet at the Scala di Milano, directed by Daniel Barenboim (she won the Sinopoli Culture Prize for it) as well as other titles: La muta di Portici by Daniel Auber at the Théâtre national de l’Opéra-Comique di Parigi, Heracles by Euripides at the Greek Theater of Syracuse, to cite a few. As a writer, she has published Carnezzeria: Trilogia della famiglia siciliana with a preface written by Andrea Camilleri in 2007; two stories for children and adults, published by Dalai and adapted for the stage: Anastasia Genoveffa e Cenerentola and Gli alti e bassi di Biancaneve; and the novel Via Castellana Bandiera (published by Rizzoli, 2008, and winner of the Vittorini and Super Vittorini Prizes) which she adapted to the big screen with an award-winning closing song by the Fratelli Mancuso. The Macaluso Sisters is her second adventure into film, and the indefatigably inquisitive artist that she is, she is working on a third film, Misericordia![/column][/row]
Marica Stocchi is the co-founder with Giuseppe Battiston of the trailblazing company Rosamont, which produced The Macaluso Sisters. Rosamont is producing Emma Dante’s next film Misericordia, once again adapted from a previous play of hers. Stocchi herself comes from a theater background and recently moved to the world of film production with a transnational view that is allowing her to collaborate with a really diverse group of artists in very different locations: in Israel for films like Honeymood by Talya Lavie, Here We Are by Nir Bergman, and Reading Lolita in Tehran by Eran Riklis, and with the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia for Ordinary Failures by Cristina Grosan (news), and Belgium for Daniele Vicari’s Orlando. Stocchi has been selected as one of the European Film Promotion’s Producers on the Move for 2021.
Both the screenings and the conversation are organized and sponsored by the Inserra Endowed Chair at Montclair State University
In partnership with the Accademia del Cinema Italiano Premi David di Donatello (the Italian equivalent of the Oscar Awards)
In collaboration with the Italian Program (Dept. of World Languages and Cultures)
FURTHER RESOURCES
Sicily as a Theater of the World: A Conversation with Emma Dante
Interview with Emma Dante by Teresa Fiore
New York Times’ review of The Macaluso Sisters (Aug. 2021)
Variety review by Jessica Kiang
Short link for this page: http://tinyurl.com/MacalusoSistersMSU
PHOTO CREDITS