Gli Ultimi (The Last Ones)

Shot during Italy’s economic boom and set in the 1930s, the post-neorealist Gli Ultimi stages the country’s struggle to reconcile traditional life with the prospect of progress. In Pier Paolo Pasolini’s words, directors Pandolfi and Turoldo transfigure “the meaning of humble human lives into a symbolic system that is as much deprived of ornaments as rich in a nearly-physical pain.” Adapted from the autobiographical I Was Not a Child by poet and essayist Father David Maria Turoldo, and shot entirely in his native province of Udine with the residents as actors, this re-discovered classic was restored by the Cineteca del Friuli and is presented here in its US premiere.

(Vito Pandolfi and David Maria Turoldo, Italy, 1963, DCP, courtesy of the Cineteca del Friuli, 92 minutes)

Luca Giuliani is Head of Cultural Projects at the Cineteca del Friuli (Gemona, Italy) and a member of the Programming and Access to Collections Commission at the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF); he also collaborates regularly with Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone. After receiving his Ph.D. in Film Studies from the University of Bologna, he taught for seven years at the University of Trieste before committing full-time to archival curatorship. From 2008 to 2011, he was FIAF vice-president and Head of the Film Archive at the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Torino.

Curated by Sabrina Negri, Ph.D. candidate in Cinema and Media Studies, as part of the Graduate Student Curatorial Program at the Film Studies Center.