the most talented of Roman actresses..!

Anna Magnani was an Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo. Born in Rome to an Egyptian father and an Italian-Jewish mother, she worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs. During her career, her only child was stricken by Polio when he was 18 months old and remained crippled.

She was referred to as "La Lupa," the "perennial toast of Rome" and a "living she-wolf symbol" of the cinema. Time magazine described her personality as "fiery," and drama critic Harold Clurman said her acting was "volcanic." In the realm of Italian cinema, she was "passionate, fearless, and exciting," an actress that film historian Barry Monush calls "the volcanic earth mother of all Italian cinema." Director Roberto Rossellini called her "the greatest acting genius" since Eleonora Duse. Playwright Tennessee Williams became an admirer of her acting and wrote The Rose Tattoo specifically for her to star in, a role for which she received her first Oscar in 1955.

La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita is a 1960 film by the critically acclaimed director Federico Fellini. The film is a story of a passive journalist's week in Rome, and his search for both happiness and love that will never come. Generally cited as the film that marks the transition between Fellini's earlier neo-realist films and his later art films, it is widely considered one of the great achievements in world cinema. In various interviews, Fellini claimed that the film's initial inspiration was in fact this particular style.

Brunello Rondi, Fellini's co-screenwriter and long-time collaborator, confirmed this view explaining that "the fashion of women's sack dresses which possessed that sense of luxurious butterflying out around a body that might be physically beautiful but not morally so; these sack dresses struck Fellini because they rendered a woman very gorgeous who could, instead, be a skeleton of squalor and solitude inside."The famous scene in the Trevi Fountain  was shot over a week in winter. Fellini claimed that Ekberg stood in the cold water in her dress for hours without any trouble while Mastroianni had to wear a wetsuit beneath his clothes - to no avail. It was only after "he polished off a bottle of vodka" that Fellini could shoot the scene with a drunk Mastroianni.

Rome Film Festival

Rome Film Festival is a film festival that takes place in Rome during the month of October. The last edition was held from October 15 to 23, 2009. The actual complete name in Italian is Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma.

Even though it is quite a young festival at its second edition, the importance of the hosting city as well as the strong economic investment has placed the Rome Film Feast among the most important film festivals in the world, with huge media coverage and world-famous artists on attendance.

Besides, along with the festival, a film market called the Business Street is set up in the Via Veneto, well-known due to 1960s La dolce vita.

The Rome Film Festival award is a silver statuette shaped after the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius statue, placed in Michelangelo's Campidoglio Square, arguably one of the most recognizable symbols of Rome. Created by the Rome-based jewelry maker Bulgari, the prize will be assigned to the Best Film, the Best Actor and the Best Actress.

The Rome Film Fest’s Jury is composed by a president, normally a renowned director (2006 edition, Ettore Scola), and 50 Jurors, which, unlike most film festivals, are not film professionals. In fact, it is a People's Jury made up by common moviegoers selected both in Italy and Europe.

Italian Modern Cinema....

The history of Italian cinema began just a few months after the Lumière brothers had discovered the medium, when Pope Leo XIII was filmed for a few seconds in the act of blessing the camera.

A new generation of directors has helped return Italian cinema to a healthy level since the end of the 1980s. The sign-bearer for this renaissance is Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, for which Giuseppe Tornatore won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1990. This victory was followed two years later by another, when Gabriele Salvatores's Mediterraneo won the same prize. Another exploit was in 1998 when Roberto Benigni won three oscars for his movie Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella) (Best Actor, Best Foreign Film, Best Music). 

Other recent films of note include: Jona che visse nella balena directed by Roberto Faenza, Il grande cocomero by Francesca Archibugi, Il mestiere delle armi by Olmi, L'ora di religione by Marco Bellocchio, Il ladro di bambini, Lamerica, Le chiavi di casa by Gianni Amelio, Io non ho paura by Gabriele Salvatores, Le fate ignoranti, La finestra di fronte by Ferzan Özpetek, La bestia nel cuore by Cristina Comencini.

In 2007 American director Quentin Tarantino said "New Italian cinema is just depressing. Recent films I've seen are all the same. They talk about boys growing up, or girls growing up, or couples having a crisis, or vacations of the mentally impaired." He received criticism from the Italian media and actress Sophia Loren who said "How dare he talk about Italian cinema when he doesn't know anything about American cinema?"

Cinecittà: the cradle of Italian Cinema

Cinecittà is a large film studio in Rome that is considered the hub of Italian cinema.

As the home of Italian cinema, Cinecittà has seen the production of many classic films such as La dolce vita and Satyricon.

Since the days of Ben Hur, the studios have welcomed international productions, recent examples include Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York and Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

Cinecittà also hosts TV productions, such as Grande Fratello, the Italian version of Big Brother, where the Big Brother house is built on Cinecittà's premises. It has also been home to the filming of the Passion of the Christ, starring James Caviezel and directed by Mel Gibson.

Additionally, the BBC/HBO series Rome was filmed there from 2004-2007, the show being widely acclaimed for its sets and designs.

La Dolce Vita

La Dolce Vita is a 1960 film by the critically acclaimed director Federico Fellini. The film is a story of a passive journalist's week in Rome, and his search for both happiness and love that will never come. Generally cited as the film that marks the transition between Fellini's earlier neo-realist films and his later art films, it is widely considered one of the great achievements in world cinema. In various interviews, Fellini claimed that the film's initial inspiration was in fact this particular style.

Brunello Rondi, Fellini's co-screenwriter and long-time collaborator, confirmed this view explaining that "the fashion of women's sack dresses which possessed that sense of luxurious butterflying out around a body that might be physically beautiful but not morally so; these sack dresses struck Fellini because they rendered a woman very gorgeous who could, instead, be a skeleton of squalor and solitude inside."The famous scene in the Trevi Fountain  was shot over a week in winter. Fellini claimed that Ekberg stood in the cold water in her dress for hours without any trouble while Mastroianni had to wear a wetsuit beneath his clothes - to no avail. It was only after "he polished off a bottle of vodka" that Fellini could shoot the scene with a drunk Mastroianni.