Retrospective of the Great Film Master Visconti is to Stage at SIFF

The 19th Shanghai International Film Festival (SIFF) is to be held in Shanghai from June 11 to 19, 2016. It is announced by the Organizing Committee of SIFF today that eight films of the great Italian film maker Luchino Visconti are to be screened on the "Tribute to Masters" section to commemorate the 110th anniversary of his birth and the 40th anniversary of his death.

Luchino Visconti (1906-1976) was a great art master during the golden age of Italian films. With an aristocratic family background, Visconti was associated with the great Conductor Arturo Toscanini, and Composer Puccini and other celebrities since his boyhood. He was charmed by music and theatre in his early years and later took great fancy in film making after he moved to Paris. It was during this time that Visconti became a Marxist. As a result, the beauty and decay of aristocratic world and the Marxist social analysis consisted of the contradictory and fascinating themes of Visconti\'s creation. Visconti demonstrated extraordinary creativity in the film aesthetics, which made him one of the greatest masters of age in the film history.

With his early works such as La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), he and Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica created the paradigm of the neorealistic films. In the 1960s, Visconti began to focus on the subjects in the transition from the late 19th century to the early 20th century and produced works such as Leopard, and Death in Venice and so on. By depicting the lavish and decadent of the aristocratic world, the art and beauty, and the crime and punishment of humanity, his works formed the most renowned extreme gorgeous film style, but the social analysis and unique aesthetics processing implied within made Visconti one of the greatest film directors in the world.

In the "Tribute to Masters" section at SIFF this year, we have specially set "The Last Film Aristocrat--Retrospective in Memory of Visconti". Eight of the master\'s films will be revealed to the audience this time, including Leopard, the Golden Palm Award winner in the 16th Cannes Film Festival in 1963, Vaghe stelle dell\'Orsa (Sandra)(Of a Thousand Delights), the Golden Lion Award winner in the 30th Venice Film Festival in 1965, La terra trema (The Earth Trembles), one of the "World\'s Best Ten Films" selected by the English magazine Sight and Sound in 1962, along with Bellissima, Le notti bianche (White Nights), Rocco and His Brothers, Senso and Death in Venice. These films stand for different styles of Visconti in different stages and can be regarded as a general review of the artistic achievements of the giant of the filmdom. Among them, the Rocco and His Brothers, Leopard and Vaghe stelle dell\'Orsa are all the latest 4K renovated versions. To the film lovers, the review of this SIFF is a rare opportunity for pilgrimage.

The renowned US Director Martin Scorsese made such comments on Visconti:"Visconti was often called the greatest political artist, but this was too limited and narrow. He had extensive knowledge of European history. He understood the upper bigwigs\' life, but also was aware of the suffering and hardships of the poor people of the lower class. He had his own unique insight and believed that everyone was affected by the big tide of the history, which could be seen from the fishermen on Sicily in La terra trema (The Earth Trembles) and the Venetian aristocratic in Senso as well.”

It is reported that the 19th Shanghai International Film Festival is to release the screening schedule and other screening films in the "Tribute to Masters" section successively in the coming days. The annual great feast of movies is about to be unveiled soon.