23/10/2013 - Artistic director Marco Müller presented the programme for the most experimental section within the Rome Film Festival, running on 8-17 November 2013

“To shadow expressive languages through their gradual liberation from every single definition,” “to make our screens more fluid, so that they may capture every single form of expanded cinema”: this is how Marco Müller described CinemaXXI, the segment within the Rome Film Festival (8-17 November 2013) dedicated to new types of global cinema, without any distinction given to genre or duration. Running in parallel to the “controlled schizophrenic” official competition section (read the news story), the CinemaXXI programme – presented yesterday at the MAXXI (the 21^st century art museum in Rome, where screenings will take place) – will include documentaries, fiction films, a mix of cinema, philosophy and theatre, without any specific main line. As the festival director put it, the event will be “searching for the richest of singularities.”

The section will open with L'amministratore by Vincenzo Marra (at Venice Days 2012 with Il gemello [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Vincenzo Marra
film profile] – read the review) based on Umberto Montella’s life as the manager of a number of buildings in Naples who sucks us in to the various souls of the city. Other programmed films include French documentary Atlas by Antoine d'Agata (an extreme photographer from the Magnum agency), an autobiographical diary of a collector of Jewish images; O Novo Testamento de Jesus Cristo Segundo Joao by Portuguese Joaquim Pinto (special jury prize at the last edition of the Locarno festival with What Now? Remind You [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] – read the review), the gospel according to John as read by one of Portugal’s best actors, Luis Miguel Cintra; Racconti d'amore by Elisabetta Sgarbi, where Ferrara and its surrounding region are the scene for love fantasies; and the gripping Parce que j'étais peintre by Chistophe Cognet, a never before done inquest into the works of art secretly created in Nazi concentration camps.

CinemaXXI’s public will also be able to see Fear of Falling by Oscar-winning Jonathan Demme (read the news story), Little Feet by Alexandre Rockwell, a frontrunner in new American cinema, and Zanj Revolution, a return to cinema of one of the most awarded new northern African directors, Tariq Tegula, after films Roma invece di te and Inland were selected in Venice. Among medium and short length films are Ennui ennui by Gabriel Abrantes, a black humour film on the military invasion of Afghanistan enacted as a silent comedy; Belva nera by Alessio Rigo and Matteo Zoppis, in which Tony Scarf, an expert of metropolitan panthers captures one; Just Like Us, in which media-artist Jesse McLean observes celebrities at malls and in parking lots only to discover that deep down they are just like us.

The international jury, presided over by American director and artist Larry Clark (winner last year in Rome of the golden Marc'Aurelio for best film with his Marfa Girl), will give out the CinemaXXI prize for best film, the CinemaXXI special jury prize and the short film CinemaXXI prize.

(Translated from Italian)