Dive è DivineDivas: The Divine Women of the Italian Silent CinemaThis series is programmed and curated by Gian Luca Farinelli and Angela Dalle Vacche. It is coordinated by Enrica Serrani, in collaboration with Anna Fiaccarini and Guy Borlée.The series was organized as a special presentation for the 38th New York Film Festival.The presentation at PFA is cosponsored and supported by the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco. We wish to thank Vittorio Boarini, Director, Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, for inviting PFA to participate in this touring series; Angela Dalle Vacche, Adrienne Mancia and Sylvie Pras for their assistance; Angela Zawadzki for sight translations and Tamao Nakahara for written translations; and Amelia Antonucci for her generosity. "I remember these women with their vacillating, staccato steps and their demeanor of shipwrecked survivors of love, who went about lightly touching the walls along the hallways, who got drunk on the perfume of the flowers between sheltered gardens and little marble stairs..."-Salvadore DalíDeadly, Daring, and Divine: The diva of silent Italian cinema takes contemporary audiences back to the beginning of the millennium, before and after World War I. In those days, men were falling at her feet, gambling their fortunes away, while the film diva would wander across enchanted gardens and splendid palazzos, twisting her long white pearl necklace and wearing gowns designed by Worth, Poiret, and Fortuny. The diva's yearning for impossible love and freedom, along with her seductive ties to the Baroque and Art Nouveau, accounts for her mystical-erotic power on screen. Born on the stage of opera, the Italian diva is a special film star, because she sings the music of the Gods through acting, fashion, and sets. At the turn of the century, the film diva embodied fantasies of revenge and surrender, power and transformation for men and women alike. Through this retrospective, beautifully restored films screened for the first time in the United States, and its accompanying catalog, contemporary audiences will realize that the diva of silent Italian cinema lends a unique twist to the international history of female stardom.- Angela Dalle VaccheA catalog to the series, Silent Divas: Passion and Defiance, published by Edizioni Olivares, with essays by Eva Vittadello, Angela Dalle Vacche, and others, is sold in the Museum Store and at the PFA Box Office. Sunday October 15, 2000
