Thank for making this summer’s festival fun. We started this summer’s festival with our fingers crossed. It was to be unlike in prior years. We were to be indoors at the Firehouse Museum Theater and not under the stars, due to the unavailability of Amici Park. Movies were to be one Saturday per month and not every Saturday night. I appreciate and thank those that remained faithful to the festival and made it a success. I think they were rewarded with 5 enjoyable movies.
The festival opened with two movies that paid homage to Claudia Cardinale and to Gina Lollobrigida. We continued with a musical documentary about Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio an orchestra made up of immigrants living in Rome. This orchestra has played all over the world and continues today and operates a music school. We finished with two movies from the Rome Film Festival. Siccita’, a satire on human behavior during a pandemic and drought—which hit pretty close to home; and a romantic comedy, Never Too Late for Love, a charming story of finding love later in life.
The 2024 spring series of the festival will be in the Firehouse. Planning and film selection is now in process. The Amici Park restoration is in the city approval process. The pandemic caused delay has cause the costs to increase and contracts to be renegotiated. We remain hopeful to return in the summer.
The film we show is in Italian with English subtitles