“The Skin” by Liliana Cavani

Film screening and discussion | Free with registration.

Set in 1943 in Naples after the defeat of the fascists, three disparate women—the virginal Maria; an aristocratic princess; and an idealistic U.S. Air Force pilot—find themselves trapped in the immediate turmoil of post-war life. With Marcello Mastroianni as a shrewd former fascist working with a U.S. general (played by Burt Lancaster), director Liliana Cavani (The Night Porter) directs this unflinching look at the collapse of Italian society under the U.S. occupation and the desperate measures required for survival.

Genre: Drama
Year: 1981
Country: Italy
Duration: 131′
Language: Italian with English subtitles
Scenes of violence and nudity

The screening will be introduced by prof. Massimiliano Luca Delfino, Assistant Professor of Instruction in Italian, of the Department of French and Italian at Northwestern University. His research focuses on post-World War II Italian political cinema and literature. At the end of the film, there will be a Q&A with the audience.

Celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Chicago International Film Festival, the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago presents the retrospective ITALIAN WOMEN DIRECT, featuring a selection of films by Italian women directors that have been presented at the Festival through the past 60 years. With a weekly free screening, the Institute invites the audience to rediscover the history of Chicago’s longest running film festival, while learning how Italian women helped shape contemporary cinema, and contribute to ongoing discourses on representation in the film industry. Each title represents diverse themes, styles and narratives that all together provide a snapshot of the evolution of Italian cinema over more than half a century.