Days of Antonio Pre-Screening Held At Italian Cultural Institute 11/1

The public is invited to a free pre-screening of the new film, "Days of Antonio," next Monday, November 1 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM at Italian Cultural Institute, 686 Park Avenue (at 68-69th Street). Dario D'Ambrosi, director and Celeste Moratti, who plays Antonio, will be present. The film is in Italian with English subtitles.

Reservations are recommended: 212-879-4242 ext. 370.

"Days of Antonio" is the latest film by Dario D'Ambrosi (Pathological Theater) and will open in Italy in November, distributed by Mediaplax Italia S.r.l. The film is inspired by an unbelievable, true story that was first given dramatic treatment in D'Ambrosi's play, "Days of Antonio," which some of you may have caught at La MaMa Experimental Theater Club in 2007.

The film will open in theaters in Italy November 18, 2010. It's an independent production with a stellar cast and crew: makeup artist Manlio Rocchetti and costume designer Maurizio Millenotti are both Academy Award winners. Set designer Francesco Frigeri is the recipient of several international awards.

D'Ambrosi's involvement with mentally disabled children trough theatre therapy makes him one of the most socially responsible artists on the Italian scene. Some of the cast of this film are mentally and physically handicapped actors, students of D'Ambrosi's academy, Teatro Patologico, located in Rome. Read about it in this article in the New York Times.

Antonio (Celeste Moratti) crows in stage production of "Days of Antonio"at La MaMa in 2007. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.
Celeste Moratti in the film, "Days of Antonio"
ABOUT THE FILM
In the 1920s, in a poor rural province outside Milan, a mentally handicapped boy with one leg shorter than the other was forced to grow up in a chicken coop, where he emulated the chickens and considered himself a rooster. Ultimately he was taken to a psychiatric hospital, where he struggled to build a human life. The film reveals his long and difficult ordeal at the institution, where he encountered a strange and desperate universe of characters, most of them funny and marginalized but with an abundance of humanity. In particular, the film spotlights his intense friendship with his room mate, who was manic about order and cleanliness. The two form a special relationship born of silence and small gestures of solidarity.

Celeste Moratti plays Antonio. Director of Photography is Andrea Locatelli. Art director is Francesco Frigeri, Winner of the David di Donatello in 1999 for "The Legend of the Pianist on the Ocean." Costume Designer is Maurizio Millenotti, Oscar-nominated twice for the films "Othello" (1986) and "Hamlet" (1990), both directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Make-up is by Manlio Rocchetti, Oscar winner in 1989 for "Driving Miss Daisy."

ABOUT DIRECTOR DARIO D'AMBROSI

Dario D'Ambrosi inspects the stage at his first puppet theater production.
Mr. Dambrosi is in NYC because his first puppet play, "Bong Bong Bong Against the Walls, Ting Ting Ting in our Heads," is playing at La MaMa through October 30.

Rosette Lamont wrote in Theater Week, "The yearly appearance of the Italian writer/performer Dario D'Ambrosi at La MaMa is cause for celebration." In a definitive essay, she traced D'Ambrosi's aesthetic to his close study of Antonin Artaud and Georges Bataille. Critic Randy Gener, writing in The New York Theatre Wire, stated "his theater is a form of social realism that is also an idee fixe. With unusual openness and frankness, his theatrical aesthetic openly embraces the extremity of their forms, emotions and ideas, and it is, thus, called teatro patologico."

D'Ambrosi has had a theater named Teatro al Parco in Rome, located in a children's psychiatric hospital. He formed the Gruppo Teatrale Dario D'Ambrosi (since renamed Teatro Patalogico) in Italy in 1979. Last October, D'Ambrosi opened a new theater in a converted warehouse in a norther section of Rome. Named The Pathological Theater, it is home to his resident company of professional actors and a drama school for psychiatric patients. It was described in The New York Times (by Gaia Pianigiani, June 2, 2010) as Europe's first drama school for people with disabilities, who create original works of theater there as actors, designers and playwrights. Fifteen teaching artists instruct sixty students, including people of all ages who are schizophrenic, catatonic, manic depressive, autistic, and born with Down Syndrome. Many of these, the article relates, have broken through their isolation, found self-knowledge and made themselves understood through theater.

Mr. D'Ambrosi also sustains a prolific acting career. He played the Clown in Julie Taymor's film version of "Titus Andronicus" (1999) with Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. He is director and co-author of "The Buzzing of Flies" (2003), a Hera International film produced by Gianfranco Piccioli, with Lorenzo Alessandri and Greta Schacchi (the latter co-starred with Harrison Ford in "Presumed Innocent"). In 2005, he was seen in "Ballet of War," about the clandestine immigration of Albanian people into Italy. But his most well known film appearance may be as the Roman Soldier who mercilessly whipped Jesus in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." The villainous part caused strangers to glare at him scornfully on the streets of Rome while the film was playing. Zachary Pincus-Roth, writing in the New York Times, reported that Mr. D'Ambrosio says he still has dreams in which Jesus - with the face of Mel Gibson - assures him that it was all worth it. The entire experience ultimately inspired him to create "The Pathological Passion of the Christ" (La MaMa, 2004 and film version, 2005), which was based on the idea that many of Jesus' contemporaries considered him insane.