The Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute of Washington are honored to invite you to the screening of “Dante”, a movie directed by Pupi Avati.
The movie tells the story of Dante Alighieri through the words of Giovanni Boccaccio who in 1350 embarks on a journey to find Antonia Alighieri, Dante’s daughter, to offer her a symbolic sum of money in reparation for the pain her family was put through and along the way he retraces the salient episodes of Dante’s life, offering us the story of a poet who is amongst the greatest and best known in the world.
The screening is introduced by H.E. Ambassador Mariangela Zappia.
Directed by Pupi Avati
Duration: 94 minutes, 2021, color
Language: Italian, with English subtitles
📍Embassy of Italy
3000 Whitehaven Street, NW
Washington, DC 20008
ABOUT THE MOVIE
“Dante” narrates the journey undertaken by Giovanni Boccaccio in 1350 when he is asked to bring a sum of money to Suor Beatrice (Nun Beatrice), Dante Alighieri’s daughter, who is living in a convent in Ravenna, in the monastery of Santo Stefano degli Ulivi. The sum is meant to symbolically make up for the pain her father and family were subjected to by the municipality of the city of Florence, following the writing of the Divina Commedia (Devine Comedy), when Dante Alighieri and his male descendants were being sought out to be publicly put to death in part due to the pressure of those inside the Catholic Church who considered Dante’s Divina Commedia the work of Satan.
In 1350, when the political balances have changed, Giovanni Boccaccio accepts the assignment in part to re-evaluate this author and in part to conduct an investigation that would clear Dante’s name while telling of the injustices he had to endure.
Retracing part of Dante’s journey from Florence to Ravenna, stopping in the same convents, in the same villages, in the same castles, Boccaccio reconstructs the human story of Dante Alighieri.
ABOUT PUPI AVATI
Giuseppe Avati, known as Pupi Avati is an Italian film director, producer, and screenwriter who gave up veterinary studies to join a jazz band and ultimately enter the film industry in the 1960s at a time of high creativity in the field. He formed the A.M.A. production company with his brother Antonio and with Gianni Minervini, and went on to direct several award-winning films in his native Italy. He collaborated on many different genres with varying success. He is known to horror film fans for his two giallo masterpieces, The House with Laughing Windows (1976) and Zeder (1983), and collaborated on the screenplay of Pasolini’s last film, the highly controversial “Salo o le 120 Giornate di Sodoma/The 120 Days of Sodom” (1975). In the 90s, Avati made his first English-language, American-shot film, “Bix” (1991), an intriguing examination of the meteoric rise and rapid descent into alcoholism, oblivion and death at age 28 of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke.