Presented as part of Passport: Love & Anarchy: The Radical Comedies of Lina Wertmüller.
From 1963 until her death in 2021, Italian filmmaker and screenwriter Lina Wertmüller weaponized comedy to skewer the status quo. While championing the downtrodden, she seared political ideology across the spectrum, reveling in the essential absurdity of the modern world and humanity full stop.
The first female filmmaker to receive a Best Director nomination at the Oscars, she challenged the second-wave feminism of her time, weaving class consciousness and gender politics into common cloth, shredding both proletarian male-chauvinists as well as the women of the bourgeoisie.
Extravagantly colorful, sexually-charged, and acidicly funny, we present three films produced in rapid succession from 1972-1974 finding Lina Wertmüller and global cinema writ large at a charmingly anarchic high.
Love & Anarchy running June 29 — July 3
A freckle-faced farmer becomes an accidental Anarchist embroiled — alongside a brilliant sex worker — in a plot to assassinate Mussolini: An aching and epic tragicomedy about the terrors of Fascism and the fates of those who challenged it.
"Passionate and stirring."
–The New York Times
"Executed with the high-pitched passion of a gothic romance with a fluid, whirling, dazzling energy."
–Newsweek