Mid-Century Movie Nights: Rome, Open City
Fri, May 06, 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm
SCREENING
Bushel is pleased to open its Mid-Century Movie Nights series with a screening of Rome, Open City [Roma città aperta], 1945, directed by Roberto Rossellini, featuring Anna Magnani, Aldo Fabrizi, Francesco Grandjacquet.
This film depicts a wide cross-section of Romans who, despite their obvious social, economic, and religious differences, are united in their suffering during the German occupation and their resistance to the Nazis. Shot on location just six months after the end of World War II, the film captures Italy’s recovery, with scenes in actual bombed-out buildings, using a mix of professional and non-professional actors for authentic results. Rosselini directed the film in the documentary format that came to be known as “neorealism,” with immediacy in every frame. Marking a watershed moment in Italian cinema, this galvanic work garnered awards around the globe and left the beginnings of a new film movement in its wake.
This program is free to attend with a suggested donation of $5. Doors open at 7 pm; screening begins at 7:20 pm. Seating is limited to 30; attendance is mask optional.
Mid-Century Movie Nights is a six-film series taking place on Friday nights between May 6th and June 10th, co-curated by Cheryl Clarke and Mina Takahashi. The films, made between 1945 and 1959, give present-day viewers the opportunity to ponder the weight of the post-World War II era on its generation. From Rome to Tokyo, to the US Southwest, then to France, over to the Indian subcontinent, and back to gritty Manhattan, the films ask us to consider their subjects’ alienation, perseverance, and survival. As we witness the 1950s fascist regimes, exploitative working conditions, the loneliness of ageing, the indignities of poverty, the complexity of racial ambiguity, and the subtle and not-so-subtle ways racism and sexism play out, we ask ourselves today, what has stubbornly endured, and what has changed for the better?
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Cheryl Clarke is a poet and one of the organizers of the annual Hobart Festival of Women Writers. Her most recent book is Targets, published by Bushel Editions in 2020. She spends weekends processing books in her partner’s bookstore, Blenheim Hill Books, one of six bookstores in the Book Village of Hobart.
Mina Takahashi is a working collective member of Bushel. She lives in Delhi, edits Hand Papermaking magazine, and is involved in a number of community initiatives including Catskills Unity, Delaware County Citizens for Refugee Support (DCCRS), and Get Woke! Catskills.