HBF Pictures – Hoffman Barney & Foscari Ltd

Michael Lindsay-Hogg Presents

HUMANISM!

a Film Written and Directed by Glauco Della Sciucca

HBF PICTURES DEBUT WITH THE FILM “HUMANISM! A NEW COMEDY”

On the first of April 2017 the Pictures division of Hoffman, Barney & Foscari Ltd - Born just two months before at the same time as the company in London – launched the feature film “Humanism! A New Comedy”, a film written and directed by Glauco Della Sciucca and presented by Sir Michael Lindsay – Hogg, with the music composed and conducted by Piero Umiliani (The usual suspects and hundreds of other soundtracks). A film, which its author maintains “... gives off vaguely an old fashioned taste, a sixties style, really fast, satirical, surreal like an old story from the New Yorker magazine…” whose clothing is intentionally essential, really elegant intensely black and white and whose cast is naturally International: from Great Britain comes in fact Huw Parmenter (directly from the TV series “Vikings”), Beth Lockhart (the rising star of English Theatre), the American Randall Paul (“Eyes Wide Shut”, Four Weddings and a Funeral”, “Mission Impossible”) from Italy Enrica Guidi (I Delitti del Barlume, Sky), Saverio Raimondo (probably the most important Italian stand-up comedian working on Comedy Central), Ezio Budini (Hazy Night by Harold Pinter, Astaroth by Stefano Benni), Paolo Fosso (Il Banchiere Anarchico and other films like Marquise”, with Sophie Marceau), Lorena Antonioni (Donnavventura), Roberto Pedicini (the celebrated Italian dubber of actors like Jim Carey, Denzel Washington, John Turturro and many others), Veronique Vergari (“Il Sogno” by Strindberg, Jesce Sole by Kadour Naimi). “Humanism! A New Comedy” had as an associate producer the Fondazione Pescarabruzzo and Gestioni Culturali srl. The producers for HBF were Giovanni Iannelli, Alessandro Addari, Ivano Lapergola. The film, as well as HBF, supports (also through certain themes developed within the film) Meat Free Monday, the campaign launched by Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney.

PICTURES

FROM THE SET OF FILM "HUMANISM! A NEW COMEDY"

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HOFFMAN, BARNEY &
FOSCARI FOR
A NEW CONVERGENCE
BETWEEN THEATER, CINEMA,
WEB AND TELEVISION.

On the stroke of midnight of this year, on the fiftieth anniversary of the iconic 1968 – a year representative of an entire decade, that of the sixties, where artistically, intellectually and culturally western society contributed to the culture and to the period, one of the most interesting and in many aspects unrepeatable for the whole of the 1900's. Hoffman, Barney & Foscari exceptionally, and in a humanistic spirit which animates an artistic, cultural, entrepreneurial view opens ideally the door of its lab to share with its public and followers; the idea is to give life to a sort of division of the Performing Arts that will lay its base this year and in which writing, producing or, where the conditions and opportunities present themselves, co-produce events linked initially to theatre and of course in linguistic and commercial convergence with the Cinema, the Web and Television. An idea that already around a year ago, during the production of the film “Humanism” - admittedly pays tribute to Theatre with its texts in monologue whether in Italian, English or French – as much as on stage as within the workshops scanning the entire arch of feature films – had already begun to circulate and that today HBF can confirm, sharing with the worlds public of the web the possibility to enjoy here and now by browsing this page the four main theatrical moments included in “Humanism!”: the four teasers along with four of the most admirable actors who were at the centre of the film. A kind of bonus on the side of the Pictures section, enriched by a generous series of instantaneous “histrionics” of the set that represents the sense of the project and a trusted companion at the beginning of the activity of the Performing Arts Division.

HUW PARMENTER

IN "HUMANISM A NEW COMEDY"

WATCH THE TEASER 1

A GREAT NEW SATIRICAL COMEDY, GROTESQUE, SURREAL
AND INDEPENDENT. A BREATHLESS COMIC SCRIPT.
A HOMAGE TO THE CINEMA OF THE SIXTIES.
AN EXPLICIT TRIBUTE TO THE POWER OF THEATRE.

"HBF Films has chosen a really elegant and essential black and white for its first feature film by Glauco Della Sciucca. At the centre of the work is the word. But also the actors. Their bodies. Existential and conscious hyperbole. Art and Psychology and Urbanization and all within a modern structure, fast but at the same time a narrative of other times, certainly out of fashion and where each actor – with their contribution – becoming Iconic of a new existentialism bringing on stage an unexpected script as it is sometimes grotesque, other times dramatic, oneiric, comical and light and (intentionally) rhetorical. All this and many other things in the film Humanism! A New Comedy, a work that, adopting the iconic legacy of the Beat Generation, of the New Wave and Swinging London but also the great adult American comedies of the seventies (the mature hallmark that characterised the characters, the bitter melancholy of the soundtracks, the rapid unsustainable rhythms of the events, the essential black and white vaguely and freely inspired by the photos of David Bailey and Richard Avedon, the surreal and paradoxical writings when, apparently, they don't belong to either the scene or the word, between temporary continuity and functional meaning to the events - some images of Michelangelo Antonioni and John-Luc Godard. Up until the recital times of the Yiddish school of the old New Yorker model of Neil Simon or Woody Allen: Tragedy + Time), they were determined to be original but with time also classical film in its narrative structure, always ready to win over the attention of the public of the most refined, comical and satirical cinema than the popular transversal of television merging with the web. Humanism is the story of a middle aged actor whose global success as an actor doesn't prevent him from falling into an internal crisis. Surrounded by an entourage that can't put up with him, women that, in various ways and through the years have become part of his life and therefore allowing him to become part of theirs and that little by little begin to free themselves from him. The film narrates the story of a man in full regression despite his best intentions, notwithstanding he imagines that every day he is becoming better – as an actor, thinker and as a man – of what in reality he is. Young women but humanly very strong, all of them: all involved with him to various degrees in the passed but contradictorily still connected to him for diverse reasons: a Son, a relationship and an Agents contract. Women at the head of his entourage but slowly they begin to create a rift around him by scorning and distancing themselves until finally leaving him alone with himself and his egocentricity. Women who, from the moment of the arrival of Emma Oram from London – Journalist and author of English Television who came to Italy to interview him for a possible mono-graphic documentary of the great Alberto Savoldi – finally open theirs eyes to who he really is.

He takes a fancy to the enigmatic English Women who, from the moment of the arrival of Emma Oram from London – Journalist and author of English Television who came to Italy to interview him for a possible mono-graphic documentary of the great Alberto Savoldi – finally open theirs eyes to who he really is. He takes a fancy to the enigmatic English Women to such a level that pushes him suddenly to leave Jane and Robin – these are the names of his Agent and personal assistant – in the background of his everyday life. In fact, the encounter with Emma messes up all of Alberto's plans to such a point that it induces him to confess, ten minutes before knowing her, things about himself that for some time he had never told to anyone: above all his desire to be a different actor, a different man, and a different thinker. Alive, but from a new life. From the moment of this confession the film changes register and from the language of television takes one twist after another and changes between surreal cinema and satirical political theatre. Alberto leads the women into his world, represented metaphorically by an old distillery – an old renovated place where he has his studios and his neighbourhood – and whose centre is made up of a wooden theatrical stage. And in that metaphysical place and exactly on that open air stage that this person imagined to see (and to present to her) all the actors that he will never be: his alter ego, one after the other. On that stage. Courageous and caustic actors, that he will never be. The film becomes a whirlwind. Sensational. Monologues. Theatre. Emotions. Anthropological analysis. Silences. Power. Loves. City streets. A reality of mixed and dreamlike situations and a succession of thoughts, emotions, protests, clouds, words from the past and the knowledge of existing, controversy, Flashbacks. And again: conflict between the sexes, unique kisses, interviews with fathers, uncles, aunts and ex lovers possibly hostile but at the same time, human, fragile, delicate. Conformism, apathy, a beach in the evening, memories and people who we will never meet again on the face of the earth, pure performance. Where finally Alberto will reconquer everything and everyone, maybe also his same “women”, by doing that which he never had the courage to do: open himself up. Open the doors of his studios and to his life of fantasy. To the Imagination. To Humanism. To a possible humour with the smell of surrealism. A film naturally iconic, each of the performers will shine their own and collective light and where every spectator will find amusement, thoughts, happiness, profoundness, superficiality, pain, fun, commotion, tears. The desire to change everything. Or, to never change. As the same life teaches us. It's like “Humanism”, an incredibly fast comedy in its rhythm despite the choice of the director to move the camera very little, well represented just like a little dream. Like a little story: just life itself”.

PH ROBERTA RAPINO / LARA GIANCRISTOFARO

WORLD PREVIEW AT "ALICE NELLA CITTÀ"
BY "A CUP OF COFFEE WITH MARILYN".
MIRIAM LEONE IN THE ROLE OF UNKNOWN YOUNG WOMAN
BUT STILL A DYNAMIC ORIANA FALLACI.

Miriam Leone is the protagonist of the short film “A Cup of Coffee With Marilyn” based on the Autobiographical event contained in the first book of Oriana Fallaci “I Sette Peccati di Hollywood” of 1958. Written and Directed by Alessandra Gonnella, produced by Diego Loreggian for Redstring and co-produced by the same director and the English Company Hoffman, Barney & Foscar Ltd. Francesca Michielin signed off two of the unreleased soundtracks in English. The short film was presented as a world premiere on the 18th of October during the 14th edition of the Rome Cinema Festival within the Alice section TIMVISION of the Auditorium Parco della Musica. The Film Premiere will continue to be distributed at the main National and International Festivals. Filmed entirely in London but set in the New York of the 50's, the film narrates the life of a really young Oriana Fallaci, sent to the United States by the Newspaper L'Europeo to carry out an investigation into the Hollywood star system during her desperate search to interview Marilyn Monroe. Despite the repeated attempts, Oriana never manages to meet her and, with a stroke of genius, decides not to hide the shame of the failure, describing in detail all the particular humiliations of the case. From that point on, Oriana Fallaci becomes the most important Italian Journalist of the post war, with her unforgettable ways of portraying the characters of her interviews. (copyright by Redstring).

"A CUP OF COFFEE WITH MARILYN"

Based on the Novel by Oriana Fallaci "I sette peccati di Hollywood"
World Preview in Rome

WATCH THE OFFICIAL TRAILER