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Once again, the Italian Cultural Institute presents a unique cinematic concert, with a screening of Giovanni Pastrone’s Il fuoco (1915), accompanied by Maestro Stefano Maccagno’s live piano improvisation, presented in collaboration with the Department of French Francophonie and Italian Studies, and the School of Music at University of Kansas.Spark, blaze, and ash: fire and passion are destined to follow the same path of rise and fall. Giovanni Pastrone tells this story in one of his masterpieces, a drama both baroque and essential, which launched the mysterious owl-woman Pina Menichelli into the firmament of movie divas. The actress was yet to be famous when Il fuoco was released, but her charisma immediately won over audiences, giving life to a new model of distant and fatal dark lady.
Giovanni Pastrone (1883–1959), also known under the pseudonym Piero Fosco—used to present Il fuoco—was a director and film producer, one of the pioneers of Italian silent cinema. As director of Itala Film, he is renowned for the epic Cabiria (1914), which introduced technical and narrative innovations that went on to influence world cinema.
Director: Giovanni Pastrone (Piero Fosco) – Cinematography: Segundo de Chomón – Production: Itala Film, Turin – Original length: 1100 m – Copy length: 1038 m – Intertitles: Italian (with English subtitles) – Cast and characters: Pina Menichelli (the poetess), Febo Mari (the painter Mario Alberti).
The restoration of Il fuoco was carried out by the National Cinema Museum in 1991 at the Favro laboratory in Turin, starting from a duplicate negative printed in the 1960s, itself sourced from an unedited nitrate negative now lost. The restoration of the editing sequence, color tinting, and original intertitles was achieved on the basis of original production materials preserved by the Museum.
Free and open to the public.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Murphy Hall, 1530 Naismith Dr,Lawrence, Kansas, United States
