Big party for Liliana Cavani, a 90 year old girl. In the Sala della Crociera of the Ministry of Culture to celebrate it, in front of a huge white cake with red roses on it, many Italian artists, while the Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano and the Undersecretary of State Vittorio Sgarbi wished the great Italian director who will celebrate January 12 . They included Marco Bellocchio, Paolo Sorrentino, Paolo Virzì, Pupi Avati, Michele Placido, Giovanna Ralli, Susanna Nicchiarelli, Cristina Comencini and then again Fausto Bertinotti, Luciano Violante, Walter Veltroni, Gianni Letta, the producer Pietro Valsecchi, who the poet Barbara Alberti, the Director of the Experimental Center Marta Donzelli, that of the Rome Film Festival Paola Malanga and Secretary of State Gianmarco Mazzi.
“A successful and fun celebration – commented Sangiuliano at the end – it looked like a student assembly”. Even with a surprising announcement: the director of the Quirino Theater, the Neapolitan actor, producer and director Geppy Gleijeses, announced the news of Cavani’s return to theater directing with a co-production with the Theater La Pergola in Florence for Six characters in search of one Author, which makes her even more surprised and happy for an engagement planned for 2024, after finishing work and the new film, The Order of Time, based on the bestseller by physicist Carlo Rovelli, with Claudia Gerini, Alessandro Gassmann and Edoardo Leo, presented.
“An infinite thank you. I thought I would find ten people, and they were already enough, you surprised me – said Liliana Cavani while cutting the cake, addressing the deus ex machina of the whole party, namely Vittorio Sgarbi – Thank you thank you thank you,” he repeated. “I am grateful for this kind, very generous, benevolent event, I don’t even know if I deserve it. In the meantime, thank you, I’ve heard a lot of interesting and beautiful things.” Born in Pascal Vicedominis Capri, Hollywood, “when I had this girl’s appearance,” said Sgarbi, Sangiuliano saw the idea of watching between the books in the wonderful Ministry Hall “Vittorio calls me 7-8 times a day to propose 30-40 ideas. I didn’t need to be convinced. Cavani to me is La Pelle, a film that I loved very much. Night calls from the Undersecretary of State for Artists, “who immediately joined because they love it, convinced there are living national treasures,” Sgarbi said, speaking of the two films that shaped his childhood, Last Tango in Paris and The Night Porter.
The Happening, for that was it in the end, served to bring together great masters, each with their own personality ready to emerge. Pupi Avati, “I wake up and think I’m 14 and then I realize how old I am,” joked the “oldest” director in the room. “Cavani Bellocchio Bertolucci are the three musketeers who inspired me as a boy,” he said. Then Marco Bellocchio, friend of a generation, for whom Cavani had a loving impulse tonight: “We are at the top that we have always been, we are the generation ahead, with emotion and love I say that we share a coherence, I think it’s paying off, that’s why we’re still alive if we’re just trying to make the movie we wanted to make.” And according to Paolo Virzì, who, as storyteller, narrates the cinematography of the “young woman”, film by film, “met by the cannibals, the discovery in the Quattro Mori in Livorno, a film of anger-instinct-revolt, disturbingly free scandal that, I was 16, made me sublime.” Sorrentino spoke to the minister, who reminded him of a commonality between the streets of Naples, and then little by little, those present exchanged greetings, such as Barbara Alberti, who recalled the scandals (“with some of his scenes you end up in prison today” ), Bertinotti , Letta, Veltroni. And absentees like Edoardo Leo – “don’t put out candles or numbers, don’t count anything, you’re a woman without age” – and Alice Rohrwacher (“You made my eyes grow like a sail in the wind”), in words that the President of the Association of Film Journalists Laura Delli Colli were entrusted. “Making films is a passion, why else would I do it? Otherwise I would work. I have always felt happy doing what I wanted and that – concludes Cavani, who also recalls the controversies and censures of the night porter – was a wonderful gift that gave me life”.