£6.00
£4.50 - concessions
dir. Liliana CAVANI
year. 1970
country. Italy
run-time. 88 mins
“Today our cities are like many Corinths, where the tyrant gives orders against nature. That is an obscene authority, the real scandal nature resists, because she is free and innocent, and she loves man, her son. We have seen symptoms of rebellion. My film wants to bear witness to this type of natural rebellion.” — Liliana Cavani
In her first independently-financed feature, Cavani reimagines Sophocles’s ‘Antigone’ in the heavily-stylised and overtly-political 1970 film I Cannibali—updating the canonical Theban tragedy and relocating its action to contemporary Milan, Cavani’s futuristic dystopia brought to life by a bombastic, bold use of colour, and an insurgent original score by Ennio Morricone. Antigone (Britt Ekland) and Tiresias (Pierre Clémenti) transgressively oppose a tyrannical, totalitarian state regime, while Cavani’s film’s most surreal, and striking motif—of lifeless human bodies scattered on the ground—presciently points to the wave of political terrorism by right-wing paramilitary organisations that would take place throughout the city in 1969. Cavani’s film premiered at the 1970 Quinzaine des Réalisateurs, two years after the unrest of May 1968 cancelled the Cannes Film Festival.
I Cannibali, 1970, dir. Liliana Cavani, 88min.
Screening as part of Liliana CAVANI: 1966 — 1970 | See also: Franco PIAVOLI: 1954 — 2016
With thanks to: Fondo Liliana Cavani
Doors - 7.30pm
Film - 8.00pm