Thursday, April 2nd | Introduced by Dennis Lim, Director of Programming at the Film Society of Lincoln Center
Recently restored by the Cineteca di Bologna, this astonishing 1975 documentary centers on the titular pregnant, homeless 16-year-old girl whom filmmakers Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli encountered in Rome’s Piazza Navona. Mainly shot on then-newfangled video, it documents the interactions between the enigmatic Anna and its directors, whose interest in her is at once compassionate and self-serving. Far from straightforward vérité, this complex, self-implicating chronicle includes Grifi and Sarchielli’s explicit attempts to direct their subject, reenactments of off-screen events, and intrusions from behind the camera (not least the emergence of the film’s electrician as a love interest). In Italian with English subtitles.
1972-75, Alberto Grifi and Massimo Sarchielli, Italy, DCP, 225 minutes + discussion
Massimo Sarchielli (1931–2010, Florence, Italy) was an Italian actor, filmmaker, and mime. As an actor, he worked with Federico Fellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento, Terence Stamp, and Spike Lee.
Alberto Grifi (1938–2007, Rome, Italy) was an Italian painter, filmmaker, and inventor. His experimental works range from incisive montage films to a 12-hour event composed of magnetic tape distributed among and reassembled by the audience.