Last Blood
(Italy, 2003) by Guglielmo Favilla, Alessandro Izzo
14’, Italian
a dreadful cry echoing in the woods. A small pack has slaughtered its prey. The beasts sink their teeth into the bloody remains. But they’re not animals. They’re humans, or at least they were, before a devastating and irreversible mutation took place.
Hidden in the bushes, a man is spying on them. A hunter. He draws the bow, shoots the first arrow.
War is on.
The Licaoni Collective from Livorno has left a strong mark on the italian “indie” scene of the third millennium, which is true for this work too, a down and dirty, post-apocalyptic horror that uses
the main stylistic features of b-movies without any snobbery. Alex Lucchesi, starring as the main charachter, proves himself worthy of being referred to as the italian Shwarzenegger.
Olivia
(Italy, 2016) by Alessandro Izzo
8’, Italian
In a near future, a environmental disaster exterminates the world’s population, somehow sparing
only kids. Some of them reorganize themselves in small groups, occupying old and run-down facilities. Others prefer being solitary, like Olivia.
However, everything changes when the girl decides to go and take back something that belongs to her.
Alessandro Izzo works, as the sole director, on a script written jointly with Francesca Detti, keeping on his path in the field of post-apocalyptic horror films. No monsters, this time - even though there are some gigantic alien skeletons, very reminescent of Bava’s collaborations with Federico Sfascia – just a group of creepy kids, the only survivors to the global holocaust.
The atmosphere and locations are bewitching.
I rec u
(Italy, 2012) by Federico Sfascia
116’, O.V. in italian with English subtitles
Neve is a teenager with a visual impairment which doesn’t allow him to see women’s faces.
Dr. Therieux invents a pair of glasses connected to a camera which enables him to correct his eyesight disorder.
Neve’s life plods on between a suicide attempt and another until he meets Penelope, the only girl whose face he can see without the aid of his special lens.
After Alienween’s success at last year’s FFF, Federico Sfascia is back, this time with his previous work, which seems to look up to Terry Gilliam’s to find the invisible point of convergence between
fantasy and tragedy, romanticism and horror, nightmares and the memory of a teenage dream.
Visionary and sweet, sorrowful and cruel, I rec u is a film which will stay in your mind.
Introduced by Guglielmo Favilla, Alessandro Izzo, Francesca Detti, Federico Sfascia and Focus On curator Raffaele Meale.