TORONTO – The federal election campaign continued over the weekend, with the parties and their leaders chasing each other, as always, on promises. →
TORONTO – Dating back to the Paleolithic period, and established as the Roman town of “Matheola” in 251 BC, Matera is the third oldest city in the world behind Aleppo and Jericho. The ancient city, known for its cave dwellings – whose residents were relocated by the government in the 1950s – has since become one of Hollywood’s most exotic shooting locations. By now, the Lucani have seen everyone from Tinseltown’s Ben Hur, Wonder Woman and James Bond create classic cinema in a town that Pier Paolo Pasolini once depicted as Jerusalem, in The Gospel According to St Matthew (1964).
TORONTO – Twenty years ago, Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ earned $83 million in its opening weekend, the second highest rated-R movie return ever, behind the Matrix Reloaded. The then IFC Entertainment president Jonathan Sehring had this to say about Mel Gibson’s film: “It is about as independent as one can get, certainly wasn’t developed by a studio, wasn’t financed by a studio, wasn’t released by a studio. I don’t know of any individual (Gibson) who has ever put so much of his own money on the line for any movie”.
SHERBROOKE (Quebec) – That “magic word” is present, in the Bloc Québécois program: independence. It’s on page 14, in the paragraph entitled Faire porter notre voix (“Make our voice heard”), in a context that leaves no room for doubt: “All elected representatives of the Bloc Québécois will present an image of Quebec to the international community and to the diplomatic corps in Canada and Quebec, thus preparing them for the possibility of a future referendum on sovereignty and, if necessary, recognition of Quebec’s independence…”. →
TORONTO – In 2006, screenwriter Marco Gianfreda wrote a short film Tana Libera Tutti, in which a six-year-old boy yearns to be noticed by a classmate named Flavia. That film earned him a David Di Donatello nomination in the cortometraggio category, and a promising platform from which to launch his screenwriting career. Fast forward almost 20 years later and Gianfreda is now directing his first film, Tre Regole Infallibili, which centers around an adolescent boy courting a girl – yet again – named Flavia.
