This page is to obtain access to the Sands Films Cinema Club . . . , presentation ONLINE
To attend in person, please CLICK HERE
Sands Films Cinema Club season of three Italian films of 1963
START TIME IS 8.00 PM
In Naples, disaster strikes. How closely adjacent to a slum building is the new apartment building that was being constructed? The former has collapsed, killing two and robbing a boy of his legs. The real estate developer responsible for the new construction, Edoardo Nottola, sits on the City Council. The public land had been sold to him, and his development of it ignored urban planning law, including safety regulations. With the next municipal election one month away, an investigation is launched into governmental responsibility, but each agency admits to only the narrowest handprint on the project, declaring itself innocent of all irregularities. Someone else is to blame; but, as a both-serving political alliance is forged between Nottola’s right wing and the center, all responsible hands are absolved and Nottola, following re-election, is made city commissioner! One cover-up covers up another.
The story line may remind you of many others: the Grenfell Tower tragedy being only the most vivid in our mind...
With documentary realism and poker-faced satire, former journalist Francesco Rosi’s Le mani sulla cittàachieves brilliant, absorbing, sometimes thrilling results. It is a film of hands. Hilariously, after the accident, city councilmen—and at this point in patriarchic Italy they are all men—throw up their hands as a sign of having hands that are clean of the building disaster. Other shots involve a sea of hands; in another, in the street, they belong to impoverished tenants who have been evicted as the city poses as though it were conducting itself responsibly. Where will these people—and in this group there are countless women—go?
Toward and at the end, two shots of epic withdrawal, one inside the City Council chamber and the other outdoors, as another construction project is christened that will make Nottola even richer, one by dollie, one by reverse zoom lens, challenge us: Step back, and seewhat’s going on!
Dennis Grunes
Hands Over The City was made in 1963, 30 years later Francesco Rosi went back to document what had changed...
We will screen his "Neapolitan Diary" (1992) on 21st March
This page is to obtain access to the Sands Films Cinema Club . . . , presentation ONLINE
To attend in person, please CLICK HERE
Sands Films Cinema Club season of three Italian films of 1963
START TIME IS 8.00 PM
In Naples, disaster strikes. How closely adjacent to a slum building is the new apartment building that was being constructed? The former has collapsed, killing two and robbing a boy of his legs. The real estate developer responsible for the new construction, Edoardo Nottola, sits on the City Council. The public land had been sold to him, and his development of it ignored urban planning law, including safety regulations. With the next municipal election one month away, an investigation is launched into governmental responsibility, but each agency admits to only the narrowest handprint on the project, declaring itself innocent of all irregularities. Someone else is to blame; but, as a both-serving political alliance is forged between Nottola’s right wing and the center, all responsible hands are absolved and Nottola, following re-election, is made city commissioner! One cover-up covers up another.
The story line may remind you of many others: the Grenfell Tower tragedy being only the most vivid in our mind...
With documentary realism and poker-faced satire, former journalist Francesco Rosi’s Le mani sulla cittàachieves brilliant, absorbing, sometimes thrilling results. It is a film of hands. Hilariously, after the accident, city councilmen—and at this point in patriarchic Italy they are all men—throw up their hands as a sign of having hands that are clean of the building disaster. Other shots involve a sea of hands; in another, in the street, they belong to impoverished tenants who have been evicted as the city poses as though it were conducting itself responsibly. Where will these people—and in this group there are countless women—go?
Toward and at the end, two shots of epic withdrawal, one inside the City Council chamber and the other outdoors, as another construction project is christened that will make Nottola even richer, one by dollie, one by reverse zoom lens, challenge us: Step back, and seewhat’s going on!
Dennis Grunes
Hands Over The City was made in 1963, 30 years later Francesco Rosi went back to document what had changed...
We will screen his "Neapolitan Diary" (1992) on 21st March