Film Forum

VIRTUAL CINEMA EXCLUSIVE!
Rental includes a Q&A with filmmaker Andrei Konchalovsky

Andrei Konchalovsky does nothing in a small way. He’s had 5 wives and 7 children and since 1962 has written and/or directed 35 features, including the recent, highly acclaimed drama of life in post-Stalinist Russia, DEAR COMRADES! In the 60s he wrote two of Andrei Tarkovsky’s most beloved movies, IVAN’S CHILDHOOD and ANDREI RUBLEV. In SIN, he considers the tempestuous life and work of Renaissance genius Michelangelo, played with riveting passion by Alberto Testone. In 2 and a quarter hours, SIN recreates 16th century Florence, a landscape of sublime beauty and a society riven by political intrigue and financial shenanigans. Michelangelo’s passion to sculpt from the largest imaginable block of pure white Carrara marble (dubbed “the monster”) brings him into conflict with competing patrons, artistic competitors, and sycophantic family members -- to name but a few of his tormentors. The film’s gorgeous cinematography does not idealize or glamorize – but limns a complex, sophisticated world in which paranoia, greed, lust and lies feed the spectacular creativity of one of the world’s greatest artists.

Presented with support from the Helen Frankenthaler Endowed Fund for Films on Art and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation Fund.

ITALY     2019     134 MINS.     IN ITALIAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES     CORINTH FILMS

Virtual Cinema program supported by the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation.

Reviews

“The veteran, Oscar-nominated director Andrei Konchalovsky’s sumptuously shot, rowdy, warts-and-all portrait of the artist Michelangelo...shows that, at 82, the mercurial director has lost none of his ability to surprise... An intoxicating insight into an artist’s inspiration... Production design and cinematography conjure one viscerally compelling vista after another – whether beauteous landscape, or Roman and Florentine streets that are dilapidated and disgusting… Stands comparison with Derek Jarman’s CARAVAGGIO as a fascinating portrait of an artist fighting to survive.”
– Demetrios Matheou, Screen International