Italian Cinema From "Cabiria" to "Nuovo Cinema Paradiso" Italian Cinema trough ups and downs has offered the world many masterpieces. Italia-online has put together a collection of links to let you enjoy a "carrellata" of the best available on the net.

Italian Cinema Links

CINECITTA Official website of the world renown Rome's Studios Film Distributors Italian Neorealism Literature and Cinema movement originated during WW II. This site list movies, plots, directors and casts. Anica The Italian movie Association. Most comprehensive source of information on Italian cinema, actors, directors, studios, film festivals. Medusa Film Web site of one of the most successful Italian Studios Cecchi Gori Films Cecchi Gori Studios

Italian recent international best sellers

Life is Beautiful Roberto Benigni's 1998 effort. Academy Award winning film for Best Actor, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Dramatic Score. Nuovo cinema Paradiso Oscar Award winning film for Best Foreign Language Film. Il Postino Starring Massimo Troisi, 1995 Oscar Winner for Best Original Score and Academy Award Nominee for Best Picture.

Spaghetti Western

Once Upon a Time in the West Directed by Sergio Leone, regarded as the best Spaghetti Western film. Lo Chiamavano Trinita' Directed by Enzo Borboni who effectively uses the charismatic duo of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer to create a comic western tale. Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars) Directed by Sergio Leone. Starring in the lead role was Clint Eastwood, whose appearance in this and Leone's next two westerns won him international fame. Per qualche dollaro in più Directed by Sergio Leone. The sequel to A Fistful of Dollars continues what is called the "Dollars" trilogy. Clint Eastwood returns, and Lee Van Cleef also appears in his first of many Italian westerns. Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo Third western of the Dollars trilogy. This movie is the most famous of all of Leone's work, largely because of the incredible Ennio Morricone score featuring the modulated screaming in the main theme that is the most instantly recognizable western theme of all time. Django Directed by Sergio Corbucci, starring Franco Nero. A part the Dollar Trilogy, probably the most influential spaghetti western films. La Resa dei Conti First of three original Italian westerns by Sergio Sollima and along with Damiani's A Bullet for the General it is regarded as a seminal effort in the political subgenre of the Spaghetti Western. Starring Lee Van Cleef and Tomas Milian.

Fellini

La Dolce Vita Starring Anita Edberg and Marcello Mastroianni La Strada Starring Giulietta Masina and Anthony Quinn

Controversial film starring Nanni Moretti gets 18 nods

Rome, March 20 - Antonello Grimaldi's drama Caos Calmo starring cult director Nanni Moretti has scooped the nominations for Italy's version of the Oscars, the David di Donatello Awards.

The tale of a widower struggling to cope with bereavement, which has roused Vatican ire for its explicit sex scenes, earned a mention in all 18 of the David categories.

Two other recent Italian box-office hits, first-time director Andrea Molaioli's La ragazza del lago and veteran Silvio Soldini's Giorni and Nuvole, came close to Grimaldi's coup with 15 nominations each.

Both of the lead actors in eerie noir La Ragazza del Lago, Anna Bonaiuto and Toni Servillo, are up for acting gongs. The leads in job-loss drama Giorni and Nuvole, Antonio Albanese and Margherita Buy, have also been nominated.

Italy picked up two (or three) Oscars at Sunday night's Academy Awards with Dario Marianelli winning the best score prize for Atonement and the husband-wife pair of Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo winning for Sweeney Todd's art and set direction.

Rome, February 25 - ''I feel very lucky indeed,'' said Marianelli, whose Atonement score already picked up a Golden Globe earlier this year.

''I was part of a fantastic group. I'm very grateful to the good friends who supported me and my father and mother who gave me a very great love for music''.

''My legs were shaking when I went up to get the Oscar,'' said Marianelli, who started studying piano at the age of six and at 20 moved to London to deepen his musical knowledge.

Critics say his scores highlight his classical training, which clearly emerged in the haunting music he wrote for Atonement.

A special postal stamp will be issued on March 7 to commemorate Italian film legend Anna Magnani. The date of the stamp's issue marks the 100th anniversary of the Roman actress's birth.

Rome, February 20 - The Italian Postal Service defined Magnani as ''an icon of international cinema''. Magnani, who died in September 1973, was the first Italian to win an Oscar, the best actress award for her role in the 1955 film The Rose Tattoo.

The role was especially written for her by American playwright Tennessee Williams, who after meeting her is reported to have said: ''I never saw a more beautiful woman, enormous eyes, skin the color of Devonshire cream''.

Magnani began her career in Italian vaudeville but gained international recognition for her performance in Roberto Rossellini's neorealistic classic Rome, Open City. After specialising in comedy on the stage, the role allowed her to demonstrate her remarkable dramatic talent.

Dolce Vita icon in 80 unseen pictures.

Marcello Mastroianni and the paparazzo king who together lit up Rome's Dolce Vita are teaming up again in a new show in the Italian capital .

Screen icon Mastroianni is the focus of some 100 snaps - 80 seen for the first time - by photographer Tazio Secchiaroli, the pioneering snapper who became the fictional 'Paparazzo' played by Enzo Cerusico, in Federico Fellini's 1960s masterpiece.

Mastroianni, who died two years before Secchiaroli in 1996, is seen in onstage/offstage shots at a slew of immortal shoots including Fellini's Eight and a Half and The City of Women and Vittorio De Sica's Marriage Italian Style with Sophia Loren.

This year is being commemorated the 100th anniversary of the birth of Roberto Rossellini. Rossellini, an Italian film director, born in Rome on May 8 1906 in a well-off family, was one of the most important directors of Italian neorealist cinema, contributing films such as Roma città aperta to the movement.

In 1938 he made his first documentary, Prélude à l'aprés-midi d'un faune. After this essay, he was called to assist Goffredo Alessandrini in making Luciano Serra pilota, one of the most successful Italian films of the first half of the 20th century. Then in 1940 he was called to assist Francesco De Robertis on Uomini sul Fondo.

His close friendship with Vittorio Mussolini, son of Il Duce and responsible for cinema, has been interpreted as a possible reason for having been preferred to other apprentices.

Rome's new film festival on Tuesday announced it would honour Scottish screen legend Sean Connery during its inaugural edition in October.

In announcing the news, Rome's cinephile mayor, Walter Veltroni, called Connery "an actor of extraordinary quality who has worked with the world's greatest directors and written some of the most unforgettable moments in movie history" .

He also said the evergreen celebrity "loves Italy". Connery, 76, will attend the opening and closing ceremonies in October and introduce a 14-film restrospective starting with Sidney Lumet's gritty 1965 army drama The Hill, often considered his best work, and ending with Finding Forrester (2000) .

The former Edinburgh milkman and coffin polisher - since 2000 Sir Sean Connery - will also receive the festival's first career achievement award. Last month he was similarly honoured by the American Film Institute .

A DVD in which Connery looks back on his life and career will be presented when the Rome fest debuts on October 13.

Director applies neorealist touch to Will Smith film

- Los Angeles, June 2 - One of Italy's most talented young directors is hoping his European take on the American Dream will be the making of star actor Will Smith's next film .

Gabriele Muccino has spent the last 10 months in the United States filming The Pursuit of Happyness, a rags-to-riches drama featuring not only America's box-office magnet Smith but also his seven-year-old son Jaden .

Shot in San Francisco, the 60-million-dollar picture revolves around the true-life story of Chris Gardner, a struggling salesman who dragged himself and his child out of poverty to become a hugely wealthy stock broker .

The Columbia Pictures movie hits the screens next December, marking a rare mega-budget American debut for an Italian director .

A new academy that aims to mould the future masters of Italian cinema arts has begun classes at Rome's legendary Cinecitta' studios.

The ACT (Academy of Cinema and Television) Multimedia school aims to give aspiring talents the opportunity to learn about the industry from experts who are making a success of it .

Top Italian directors, actors, editors, screenwriters, make-up artists, photographers, 3D animators and journalists have been enlisted to join the teaching staff.

"The initiative aims to harvest this vast, precious legacy of know-how and use it for the cinema of tomorrow," said ACT Director Vittorio Giacci. In the process the academy hopes to contribute to reviving Italian cinema .

The city of Castellaneta was the stage of an event dedicated to the divo for excellence of the silent era cinema, Rodolfo Valentino.

Saturday 6th May in occasion of the 111° anniversary of his birth, four acknowledgment awards, Magna Greece Awards - Special Mention Rodolfo Valentino, were given to the master Luis Bacalov, the writer and scriptwriter Vincenzo Cerami, to the author and actor Paul Orlandelli and to the actor Emilio Solfrizzi. Castellaneta, this fascinating jonic sea city, once again in the sign of the mythical Rudy, hosted these well deserving protagonists of an acknowledgment that has already paid such mention in the past editions to Ferzan Ozpetek, Elena Sofia Curly, Christian De Sica and Cristiana Capotondi.