Shoeshine - Film June 25, 2009

Shoeshine - Film. (Classics of Vittorio de Sica). In Shoeshine two boyhood friends, Giuseppe (Rinaldo Smordoni) and Pasquale (Franco Interlenghi), bargain with an opportunistic fortune teller, Anselmi (Maria Campi), to buy from them some used American-made blankets before convincing the shrewd woman to read their fortune. Looking at her tarot cards, she tells Pasquale about the "outside" factor that would influence his fate. Just then, the police arrive Guiseppe's brother, Attillio and his mob boss had tipped them off about her black marketeering activities. They had given the boys the blankets to sell to her. This act of unwitting complicity seals the boys' fate- they are sent to a juvenile correction facility. Vittorio De Sica creates an impassioned portrait of poverty, corruption, and desolation. The image of the American soldiers a reference to the presence of Allied occupation forces in postwar Italy is a metaphor of the 'Outside gentleman' or circumstances that exist beyond the boys' control. Of what real use have they been in Italy 's reconstruction? Pasquale's orphaning during the war and the status of Giuseppe's family as refugees forced to share a single room at a multi-family boarding house further underscore the boys' -- and the country's - sense of dislocation and impotence. The screening will be introduced by Anurag Kashyap, critically acclaimed film director and screenwriter, is known for Black Friday (2004), the controversial film about the 1993 Mumbai blasts, No Smoking (2007) and Dev D and Gulaal (2009). He has written award-winning scripts (Satya,1998) and the Academy Award-nominated Canadian film, Water (2005). Regarded one of the most unconventional filmmakers in contemporary Hindi cinema, Kashyap was introduced to world cinema in his college days, Bicycle Thieves remaining for him 'an epiphany'.

Official Website: http://www.buzzintown.com/?108466&ref=yupg&refcity=6