At Giunti Odeon a rich selection of films and documentaries on painting, visual arts and comics in the 20th century. This is a selection of very rare titles (with many experimental and artist films) - from the Cineteca di Bologna archive - dedicated to the life and works of Alberto Burri, Umberto Boccioni, Primo Conti, Giorgio De Chirico, Antoni Gaudì, Alberto Grifi, Hugo Pratt, Gino Rossi and many others.

When one of the greatest British actors and directors meets the queen of detective stories. In recent years Kenneth Branagh has begun adapting Agatha Christie's most famous novels for the cinema, impersonating with originality and sophistication the most famous of her characters: Hercule Poirot. Giunti Odeon offers the first two films of this ‘series’.

Encounter 4 - Adventure and the Individual

The second half of the 1950s is for Hitchcock the one of the challenge with himself through three (im)possible films: in the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) he fine-tunes the mechanisms of suspense and surprise (in the scene of the eardrum blowing); in Vertigo (1958) he pushes on narrative forms as (distorted) geometries of the gaze; in North by Northwest (1959) the plot is a gigantic, demented pretext and the use of images is designed for effect and not verisimilitude.

At Giunti Odeon a selection of American classics from the 1980s! Colourful, crazy, experimental, joyful and dark at the same time: the films of that decade are the kaleidoscope of a renewed and euphoric society, but not without its shadows. Here then are the films of masters such as Robert Zemeckis, David Cronenberg, Terry Gilliam, Martin Scorsese and many other cult films to see and see again!

Beauty and the star-system, talent and fragility, the lights of the cinema and the shadows of life: Giunti Odeon pays tribute to one of the most extraordinary divas in the history of cinema, Marilyn Monroe, with three of her most famous and iconic films, authentic masterpieces directed by as many great directors. 

On the GO stage, we will present Gabriele Cecconi’s historical and multi-voiced novel La città delle cento ciminiere (Giunti). For the occasion, the author will converse with Andrea Mazzoni, with readings by Alessandra Zampini.

The Book:
On the morning of July 30, 1900, the city of Prato, one of Italy's most important textile hubs, awakens paralyzed with horror: King Umberto I has been assassinated in Monza, and the killer, anarchist Gaetano Bresci, is a native of Prato. However, not everyone in the city is quick to condemn such an extreme act of rebellion. Among them is Pisacane Bresci, the regicide’s cousin, who raises his children with a strong belief in anarchist ideals. His sons, Gracco and Libero, share their father’s unruly hair and defiant nature, determined not to yield to injustice and to fight for a better world.

At the edge of the Bresci family’s sharecropped land lies the Presa estate, owned by Ademaro Magni, who dreams of becoming an industrialist. After his death, his son Donatello realizes that dream, establishing one of the city's most successful wool mills and aligning himself with fascism. In stark contrast, the farmer Dante Gori—an admirer of the great poet and proud bearer of his name—rejects the ideology imposed through arrogance and violence for himself and his daughters.

As the dramatic years of fascism, World War II, and the Resistance sweep through the industrious city of Prato, collective and individual memories intertwine. The rhythm of daily life, marked by the ceaseless clatter of looms and the smoke from the chimneys, is shattered. The fates of the Bresci, Magni, and Gori families become intricately connected by love and a long-buried injustice that poisons their relationships across generations.

The Author:
A filmmaker and writer, Gabriele Cecconi has taught Literature and History in high schools, serves as the artistic director of the Mauro Bolognini Film Festival, and is the president of the Alfafilm Cultural Association. He also teaches at the Anna Magnani School of Cinema. Cecconi authored Il linguaggio cinematografico, analisi comparata tra testo cinematografico e testo letterario (2004) and the novel Oltre il cancello (2009). Among his numerous films and documentaries, he wrote and directed the feature films The Seminarian (2013) and The Anarchist Who Came from America (2019), both recognized as "art films" by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage.

Children... let's read together at GO!

Every Sunday, from 11:00 to 12:00, our readers will take you through the pages of wonderful books, right under the stage at GO! Soft pillows and plenty of stories await you to end the week beautifully!

Each child who participates will receive a card where they can collect a sticker for each reading. Collect all 5 stickers on the card, and you'll receive a complimentary book (chosen from a selection of curated collections).

Free admission and no reservation required. Readings will be carried out only when the necessary attendance is reached.

At Giunti Odeon the traditional Sunday appointment with all the great Disney and Pixar classics! To see and see again the great animated films that over many years have enchanted generations of viewers, young and old!

François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard: two great masters of film history, undisputed protagonists of an unrepeatable season as the French Nouvelle vague. First friends, then rivals, very different from each other, but both bound by a visceral love for cinema: at Giunti Odeon a series of documentary films recounting their contrasting relationship. 

Gabriele Galasso's Digital Photography Course is aimed at all those who are interested in photography, both from a technical perspective and from a language perspective, and who are taking their first steps with digital photography.

The goal of the course is to provide participants with all the knowledge needed to shoot in manual mode independently, immediately putting into practice, through photographic exercises, the shooting techniques while stimulating their creativity both during the day and at night.

Through the viewing of images from past and contemporary photographers, the potential of photographic language is analyzed. A camera capable of manual shooting is required.

The subscription (120€ and 60€ for those under 25) can be purchased at the GO ticket office. Registration is limited.

PROGRAM FOR THE 5th LESSON

Image Review

During the final lesson, the images taken during the outings will be reviewed.

Gabriele Galasso

Gabriele Galasso was born in 1995 in Umbria. He graduated in Cinema Studies at DAMS at Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna, and following his passion for art, he realized that his artistic expression comes through photography. He enrolled in a two-year photography course at Spazio Labo', and at the end of the program, he joined the team initially as an assistant for courses and masterclasses and later as an instructor for digital and analog photography courses. His photographic interest is particularly focused on personal artistic research, while he also works on commissioned projects for brands, companies, and events.

In addition, he designs educational programs aimed at young children, creating tools to raise awareness of photographic language through practical and experiential workshops and basic photography concepts for children and teenagers.

He currently lives and works in Florence, collaborating with various organizations.

Together with the author Luigi Manconi, Paolo Hendel, and Adriano Sofri, we will discuss the book La scompartsa dei colori (Garzanti). The conversation will be moderated by Chiara Tamburello.

The Book:
Becoming blind is a harrowing experience. It means losing one’s connection to the world—its dimensions, colors, promises, and surprises. It also strains relationships with others and with things: caresses that miss their mark, glasses that fall, the inability to write a dedication, or to read a face. Over the course of more than fifteen years, Luigi Manconi—a sociologist and political activist—went from severe myopia to low vision, partial blindness, and eventually total blindness. His is the story of a loss and a slow descent into a darkness that, however, is not a “well of unbroken gloom,” because “blindness is not black. It is milky, sometimes hazy. And at times, it even reveals flashes of luminescence.”

This book is a testimony of awareness and discovery, a chronicle of a new world full of echoes: the sounds of a basketball game, the notes of a song, a voice dictating a text or giving a command to a virtual assistant, or that of an actor narrating an audiobook. It’s about tactile sensations: the warmth of sunlight on the skin, hands brushing against walls for orientation, uncertain grips on objects, shins bumping into corners. And above all, memories, because with the loss of sight comes the interplay of memory: premonitions of adolescence and faces that remain frozen as they were thirty years ago. And then the fundamental question: what does someone who cannot see see?

Manconi’s narrative intertwines despair (“the thought of whether or not to throw myself out the window”) with a constant streak of humor, irony, and self-irony. It is a reflection on accepting the limits imposed by fate and a tribute to struggle: the antidote to blindness—“which is, above all, immobility”—is precisely struggle: “movement that gathers and mobilizes energy, generates knowledge, pursues goals, and exercises intelligence.”

The Author:
Luigi Manconi, formerly a professor of Sociology of Political Phenomena and president of the Italian Senate’s Human Rights Commission, served as a member of parliament for three terms and as Undersecretary of Justice. He was the first Human Rights Ombudsman for the Municipality of Rome. In 2001, he founded A Buon Diritto onlus, which he still presides over. His books include Poliziotto Sessantotto. Violenza e democrazia (con G. Lettieri), Il Saggiatore 2023; Il senso della vita. Conversazioni tra un religioso e un poco credente (con V. Paglia), Einaudi 2021; Per il tuo bene ti mozzerò la testa. Contro il giustizialismo morale (con F. Graziani), Einaudi 2020. È editorialista di «la Repubblica».

Encounter 5 - The Last Streets

With Psyco (1960) Hitchcock has a new interpretative code to illustrate: after the double, sexuality, guilt complex and innocence in a trap comes the removal of the maternal figure, which disorients and upsets profound equilibriums; the pact of complicity with the spectator (identification with the hero) is broken to the advantage of pure fear. The Birds (1963) is his last masterpiece, crazy and visionary: a film based on unpredictability, on the precariousness of human relationships, on the absurdity and non-sense of life.

Giunti Odeon celebrates lovers' day with one of the greatest love stories ever told on film. An absolute masterpiece that has marked the imagination of the contemporary world, moving several generations.

Giunti Odeon pays tribute to the dark universe of Tim Burton, one of the creative geniuses of world cinema and one of the most versatile and fascinating artists of our time, thanks to his ability to shape a unique and unmistakable poetic universe. We celebrate the great American director and artist with a selection of his most famous films, all in original version with Italian subtitles.

At Giunti Odeon the traditional appointment with the great Disney and Pixar classics! To see and see again the great animated films that over many years have enchanted generations of viewers, young and old!

Encounter 1 - The politique des auteurs

The Nouvelle vague was born out of the cultural ferment that invaded Paris and France after the war. Cinema became more and more a cultural phenomenon: the Cinématheque Française directed by Henri Langlois, film clubs, magazines, among which André Bazin's Cahiers du Cinéma, constituted the prerequisites for the birth of a new criticism on which a new and combative generation of cinephiles took shape, fighting against ‘de papa’ French production and in defence of auteur cinema (in particular Hitchcock, Vigo, Renoir, Rossellini). This was the birth of the politique des auteurs, i.e. the theoretical seed from which the Nouvelle vague would flourish.

Encounter 2 - The Vague arrives

Demolishing old stereotypes, immersing oneself in reality, searching for new stories and new performers. The Nouvelle vague is a generational movement that has its foundations in the 1950s. Brigitte Bardot's erotic explosion, the urban setting, sentimental confusion, as well as technological changes and the new way of producing films, are all phenomena that anticipate the Nouvelle vague. At the end of the decade, this ‘wave’ found in Louis Malle (and his film Elevator to the Gallows) one of its precursors.

Gabriele Galasso's Digital Photography Course is aimed at all those who are interested in photography, both from a technical point of view and from a language perspective, and who are taking their first steps with digital photography.

The goal of the course is to provide participants with all the knowledge needed to shoot in manual mode independently, immediately putting into practice, through photographic exercises, the shooting techniques while stimulating their creativity both during the day and at night.

Through the viewing of images from past and contemporary photographers, the potential of photographic language is analyzed. A camera capable of manual shooting is required.

The subscription (120€ and 60€ for those under 25) can be purchased at the GO ticket office. Registration is limited.

PROGRAM FOR THE 4th LESSON

Daytime Practical Session

During the daytime outing, theoretical concepts will be put into practice through photographic exercises, shooting the city at night with artificial light.

Gabriele Galasso

Gabriele Galasso was born in 1995 in Umbria. He graduated in Cinema Studies at DAMS at Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna, and following his passion for art, he realized that his artistic expression comes through photography. He enrolled in a two-year photography course at Spazio Labo', and at the end of the program, he joined the team initially as an assistant for courses and masterclasses and later as an instructor for digital and analog photography courses. His photographic interest is particularly focused on personal artistic research, while he also works on commissioned projects for brands, companies, and events.

In addition, he designs educational programs aimed at young children, creating tools to raise awareness of photographic language through practical and experiential workshops and basic photography concepts for children and teenagers.

He currently lives and works in Florence, collaborating with various organizations.

Encounter 3 - The protagonists: Jean-Luc Godard

The Nouvelle Vague was also born from the dual relationship of love and detachment with classic American cinema, which is also a painful confrontation between myth and reality. A bout the souffle (1960) is a key film in this sense, through the use of metalanguage and the disruption of traditional narration. Godard continued his research on language through other important films such as Questa è la mia vita (1962), Le mépris (1963), Bande à part (1964), Alphaville (1965), until he elaborated a ‘political’ idea of his own cinema around 1968.

Encounter 4 - The protagonists: François Truffaut

He is the poet of the Nouvelle vague, the ‘son’ of Bazin, who grew up with the myth of cinema and literature. In his films, themes such as the mystery and instability of human relationships, the contrast between the purity of the dream and the harshness of reality, the regret for a lost purity emerge. His style strives to make the act of storytelling more important than the narrative itself: with Les quatrecentre coups (1959) the idea of cinematic autobiography as an aesthetic project was born, just as in Jules et Jim (1963) the contrasting story of an amour fou a tre becomes an opportunity to explore the subjectivity of the camera.

Encounter 5 - The protagonists: Éric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, Jacques Rivette

With Godard and Truffaut, they are the other three great masters of the Nouvelle vague: Rohmer stages not actions, but thought, in a spiritual and erotic tension in which chance dominates (Le signe du lion, La collectioneuse, Ma nuit avec Maude). Chabrol is the one who most reflects on the relationship with genres (in particular the detective story set in the provinces), with writing that turns into an infernal trap (Le beau Serge, Les cousins). In Rivette's cinema, narration gives way to a labyrinth in which one gets lost between reality and imagination (Paris nous appartien).