Vittorio De Seta, born in 1923, in Sicily, began making documentary films in 1954 and is completing a new film this year. Martin Scorsese has invited De Seta to present his short films at the Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham and at the Tribeca Film Festival later this month (along with one of his features and a new documentary about him). MoMA’s Department of Film and Media is pleased to make use of this occasion to announce a planned retrospective of De Seta’s feature-length films as part of Documentary Fortnight in 2006. On April 14, at MoMA, in association with the Tribeca Film Festival, Cinecittà Holding, and the Italian Cultural Institute, New York, De Seta will introduce his masterwork, Bandits of Orgosolo, which he wrote and directed in 1961. The film, his first fiction feature, inflects his approach to the poetics of Neorealism and is at once beautiful, deeply humanistic, and compelling.
Organized by Mary Lea Bandy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator, and Sally Berger, Assistant Curator, Department of Film and Media.
Special thanks to Camilla Cormanni, Cinecittà Holding.