EUROPE/ITALY - “Temptation to believe”: 9th Festival of Spiritual Cinema opens today

Rome (Fides Service) - “Temptation to believe” is the theme of the 9th Tertio Millennio Festival of Spiritual Cinema which opens this evening in Rome. According to the organisers cinema has often attention given to this profound, universal theme trying to capture the tension which leads people to measure themselves with the Divine. It has been done by Dreyer with Ordet an extraordinary portrait of a man open to the transcendent, by Rossellini when he gave Ingrid Bergman in “Stromboli” a change to play a woman who fought nature in her search for God. The theme has inspired many as we see from works of Pasolini, Bresson, Tarkovskij. Today cinema appears to want to tackle once again the “temptation to believe” felt again in the hearts of men and women, with stories based on the search for the supernatural, sacrifice, the need to help others.
The Festival will close on Sunday 27 November and is promoted by Italian Ente dello Spettacolo in collaboration with Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca nazionale, and the Pontifical Council for for Culture, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Vatican Film Library. The Festival will present 17 films, 3 first showings. Friday 25 November there will be the 1s Contest for one-reel films and the assignment of RDC Awards. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 22/11/2005 - Righe 17, parole 233)