Gina Lollobrigida’s death on January 16, 2023, inspired us to look back and reflect on an extraordinary era of Italian cinema that spans the neorealism of the 1940s to the early 1970s. During that time, numerous directors with different styles brought Italy to life on the big screen, and the actresses became as well-known around the world as any Ho...

With 2022 coming to an end, we reflect back on the personalities, icons, and celebrities we lost in the Italian community this year. These 20 men and women of Italian descent made important contributions in the areas of cinema, art, music, cuisine, fashion, journalism, commerce, and sport.  Ray Liotta (December 18, 1954 – May 26, 2022): The death o...

The counterfeit premise: a boating party embarks from Sicily, safe beneath the transparent warmth of the Mediterranean sun, coordinates set on a daylight cruise around the Tyrrhenian Sea; the crime occurs out of nowhere, ex nihilo, after which the survivors wander aimlessly between the rocky Aeolian Islands, where the old world of reality has sudde...

When: May 20, 2022 | 6:00 PM & 8:15 PM - Where: Brava Theater Center. The Event is co-presented by BAMPFA under the auspices of the Italian Consulare General of San Francisco An evening of film to commemorate the recent passing of beloved legend of Italian cinema, Monica Vitti, showcasing her comic and dramatic talents in Mario Monicelli’s La ragaz...

Often described as the “Thinking Man’s Sex Symbol,” actress Monica Vitti passed away on Feb. 2 at the age of 90. Before retiring 20 years ago, she’d spent the latter decades of her career largely focused on comedies, for which she was beloved at home in Italy. But to international audiences, Vitti forever remained what one critic called “the muse o...

On February 2nd Italy lost a queen, the queen of Italian cinema. Maria Luisa Ceciarelli, the real name of Monica Vitti, died at the age of 90 years, after a long-suffering period of disease that made her retire from the scenes for almost 20 years now. Monica Vitti was born in 1931. She studied acting at the academy and began her career as an actres...

Monica Vitti, the versatile movie star of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura” and other Italian alienation films of the 1960s, and later a leading comic actress, has died. She was 90. Her death was announced Wednesday on Twitter by a former culture minister, Walter Veltroni, who said he had been asked to communicate her death by her husband, the...

Italy celebrates Monica Vitti, the much-loved Italian actress, who was born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli in Rome on 3 November 1931. Vitti, whose career began in theatre in the 1950s before she burst onto the big screen, has long been out of the spotlight due to a serious degenerative illness. The legendary actress is best known for her roles in films di...