Dario Argento Retrospective

It is with particular pleasure that IIC, in collaboration with Cinecittà and Moving Story, presents this year a full retrospective dedicated to the Italian master of thrill: Dario Argento. The collaboration between the Italian Cultural Institute of Sydney and Moving Story of Melbourne – operating in Sydney as Cinema Ritz – has been consolidating over the years, with several series displaying the two institutions’ commitment to making quality cinematographic products available to the public, such as the series dedicated to Fellini, Wertmuller and Pasolini, the various editions of the Jewish International Film Festival, the Europa! Europa Festival and, in a “triangulation” with Cinema Reborn, the restored cinema festivals. The series includes 18 feature films:

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
The Cat o’ Nine Tails
4 Flies on Gray Velvet
The Five Days
Deep Red
Suspiria
Inferno
Tenebrae
Phenomena
Opera
The Black Cat
Trauma
The Stendhal Syndrome
The Phantom of the Opera
Sleepless
The Paper Dealer
Do you like Hitchcock?
The Third Mother

All screenings will be at the Ritz Cinema in Randwick (45 St. Pauls Street), on a weekly basis, starting from 24 August and until 21 December. Opening Night will feature a convivial moment and, before the screening, a presentation by film critic and scholar, Bruce Isaacs on the famous director and his filmography.

Dario Argento (Rome, 7 September 1940) is an Italian director, screenwriter and film producer. Highly regarded both in Italy and abroad, especially in France, Japan and the United States, he is nicknamed Master of the thrill having devoted almost all of his production to the horror and thriller genre. Among his best-known works is the Trilogy of Animals (The Bird with the Crystal Feathers, from 1970, The Cat O’Nine Tails and 4 Flies on Gray Velvet, both from 1971), the pivotal film of the transition from thriller to horror Profondo rosso (1975), and the Trilogy of the Three Mothers (Suspiria, 1977, Inferno, 1980, and The Third Mother, 2007). Right from the start, Argento has focused on the mechanisms of suspense and horror, especially in his early films, considered the fathers of the Italian thriller. In this, Argento has undoubtedly found inspiration in the works of the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock and from the Italian forerunner of the genre, Mario Bava. Bruce Isaacs is a Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor of Film Studies and Director of the Film Studies Program at the University of Sydney. He is the author of The Orientation of Future Cinema and Toward a New Film Aesthetic and has published in leading journals on topics related to the evolution of cinema as an art form. In his 2020 publication The Art of Pure Cinema: Hitchcock and His Imitators he devoted space to Dario Argento and the influence that the British director had on his work.