Paolo Taviani

Allonsanfàn
Against the backdrop of the Bourbon Restoration, Lombard aristocrat Fulvio Imbriani, a former political extremist who once served under Napoleon, is finally released from an Austrian jail, after a lengthy sentence for his part in the secret Sublime Brotherhood. He strives to resume normal family life, but his Hungarian lover, Charlotte, together with his ex-comrades, succeeds in convincing him to take part in a revolutionary cause in the south. In fact, Fulvio considers the effort futile and fails to stop his sister Esther from reporting the conspirators. But the trap fails to catch the intended prey and, evading arrest, the comrades meet and bury Charlotte, who was killed in an exchange of fire with the gendarmerie.
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Quote:
This symbolic film underscores the struggles between a group of visionaries versus the Establishment while wondering about the survival of humankind. A group of young men manage to escape a volcano eruption on their small island. Seeking a new life, they stop at an island between their destroyed island and the mainland. This island is run by Renno, the community leader who offers the men help and a boat to continue their journey. The group conspires to panic the islanders with fear of another volcano eruption in order to take over the abandoned island. Renno has the men jailed for creating a disturbance, but after their terms are served, the men betray Renno by killing off the male population and escaping with the surviving women. The two apparently go off to pursue their utopian ideals where there is one woman for every two men.Read More »

Synopsis
Florence, Italy, 1348. As the plague ravages the city dwellers of Tuscany, a group of young men and women takes shelter in a remote villa in the hills surrounding Florence. Now living as a community, they decide to tell each other a story a day to take their minds off their precarious situation…Read More »

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani first garnered critical attention with this adaptation of Gavino Ledda’s autobiography, winning both the Golden Palm and the Critics Prize at Cannes in 1977. Gavino’s father pulls him out of elementary school at the age of 6 to force him into the life of a Sardinian shepherd, often severely beating him. Yet Gavino’s illiteracy spurs him on to eventually earn a university degree on Sardinian dialects. And it’s his journey from the cruel, solitary, animal world of shepherding under the yoke of his tyrant Padre, to that of a writer and a linguist that forms the body of this tale. But more, it’s a showcase for the talents of the Taviani brothers, whose style keeps us distant from their subject, like a child watching an ant colony.Read More »