Lake Como Film Festival is back, 20 evenings of arthouse cinema under the stars

Twenty evenings of auteur cinema under the stars, on the shore of Lake Como. The ‘Lake Como Film Festival’ is back, the kermesse dedicated to cinema renewed in form with a great open-air review that involves, for the first time, four symbolic places of Lake Como beauty. In fact, ‘La Riva del Cinema’ was born, which from Villa Erba, passing through Villa Sucota and Villa del Grumello, arrives in the park of Villa Olmo with a program of twenty evenings of auteur cinema from 1st July to 2nd August to celebrate the landscape richness of the lake territory. The film festival starts at Villa Erba, continuing the special edition of the Culture project of Villa Erba which began in 2018. For the fourth consecutive summer, the historic residence opens up to the territory. Organized by the Lago di Como Film Festival Association, in co-production with Villa Erba SpA with the patronage of the Municipality of Cernobbio and with the support of Intesa Sanpaolo, the Lake Como Film Nights at Villa Erba offer 7 nights of great cinema for an intimate audience and immersed in the trees of the park of the residence that once belonged to Luchino Visconti. “Despite the difficult moment that we are all still experiencing – explains Filippo Arcioni, president of Villa Erba SpA -. Villa Erba strongly wanted to give a signal of presence and restart by putting itself at the service of the territory to offer once again this year a cultural proposal of excellence. The review ‘La Riva del Cinema’ is part of the already started project of cultural enhancement of our Larian landscape which stands out for its beauty and uniqueness. Despite the exceptional situation, we managed to propose a rich program of cultural events, strictly open-air and usable in maximum safety. The hope for the future is to be able to design a cultural season in a structured way in full agreement with the Municipality of Cernobbio and the Municipality of Como in the compendium of Villa Erba ”. The big screen lights up on July 1st with Chloé Zhao’s ‘Nomadland’, Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival 2020 and winner of three Academy Awards for best film, director and leading actress, Frances McDormand. Follows, on July 2, “Dreams of the Great North” by Dario Acocella, who travels the journey of the Italian writer Paolo Cognetti, in the company of his friend Nicola Magris, traveler and illustrator. Saturday 3 July is the turn of Giorgio Rights – former guest of the Festival – with ‘Volevo nascermi’, a film homage to the great Italian painter and sculptor Antonio Ligabue, played by Elio Germano, awarded as best actor with the Silver Bear at the festival of Berlin 2020 and with the David di Donatello 2021. Continuing on 4 July with the old west with Kelly Reichardt’s ‘First Cow’, while ‘Valley of the Gods’, the new work by Polish director Lech Majewski starring John Malkovich and Josh Hartnett, is scheduled for July 5th. The evening of Tuesday 6 July is dedicated to an elegant noir. ‘The burnt Orange Heresy’ by Giuseppe Capotondi, adaptation of the novel by Charles Willeford ‘The heretical picture’. The film festival hosted at Villa Erba closes with a tribute to the great director Luchino Visconti with the screening of ‘Senso’, a 1954 film inspired by the homonymous novel by Camillo Boito. The park of Villa Erba on the evenings of Friday 9 and Saturday 10 July becomes the stage for two musical performances organized in collaboration with the Teatro Sociale di Como, with free admission with compulsory reservation. Within the project “Pic, a territorial treasure”, two appointments are proposed in the name of the great composers who stayed on the lake. Friday 9 July ‘Love is in the Arias’, directed by Davide Marranchelli. A concert with arias drawn by composers who stayed at Villa Erba and in the surrounding areas and interpreted by the young winners of the latest editions of the AliiCo competition for young opera singers, by an actor and a pianist. Saturday 10 July, a tribute to the great Poet is scheduled, on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of his death, with the concert ‘Dante – symphonie’ by Franz Liszt which – for the occasion – is proposed in a version for two pianos, reciters and choir. In collaboration with the Villa del Grumello Association, ‘La Riva del Cinema’ continues at Villa del Grumello with four evenings on 14, 16, 21 and 23 July. New in the 2021 edition of the Festival is the collaboration with the Antonio Ratti Foundation which makes the beautiful Villa Sucotanelle available to the public on the evenings of 15 and 22 July. The suggestive stop at Villa Olmo closes the auteur film festival, where the design of La Riva del Cinema is completed, offering the city of Como a beautiful open-air audience with a splendid panoramic screen. Seven evenings from 27 July to 2 August with a multimedia program, with thematic and stylistic intertwining between cinema, music, theater and visual arts. Among the titles on the program ‘Alida’ by Mimmo Verdesca, ‘Ammonite’ by Francis Lee, ‘ The bad poet by Gianluca Jodice, which narrates the last years of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s life played by Sergio Castellitto, ‘Vosm – Lakescape’ a live performance made with modular synthesizers and environmental recordings made in the park of Villa Olmo and the projection of ‘Per Lucio’ by Pietro Marcello, ‘Colombo / Bardin-Tein’ soundscapes Como 2021 and the restored version of Wong Kar Wai’s film ‘In the mood for love’ The environmental documentary ‘The last forest ‘by Luiz Bolognesi. “Again this year we renew the cinema nights in the evocative space of the Villa Erba Park, where our cinematographic journey through the landscapes of the world continues – remarks Alberto Cano, director and creator of the Festival -. A path that this year from Villa Erba we extend on the shore of the lake that from Cernobbio reaches Como. Four audiences immersed in the greenery of the gardens of four historic residences. The atmospheres of a unique territory, due to the particular synthesis of nature and culture, are intertwined with the images, colors, sounds, the many evocations of the 20 films proposed. A mixture of sensations and stories to contemplate, reflect, fascinate, as only the magic of cinema can do “.