Cinema Paradiso

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Italian pronunciation: [ˈnwɔːvo ˈtʃiːnema paraˈdiːzo], "New Paradise Cinema"), internationally released as Cinema Paradiso, is a 1988 Italian drama film written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. The film stars Jacques Perrin, Philippe Noiret, Leopoldo Trieste, Marco Leonardi, Agnese Nano and Salvatore Cascio, and was produced by Franco Cristaldi and Giovanna Romagnoli, while the music score was composed by Ennio Morricone along with his son, Andrea. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 62nd Academy Awards.

Plot

In Rome, in the 1980s, famous Italian film director Salvatore Di Vita returns home late one evening, where his girlfriend sleepily tells him that his mother called to say someone named Alfredo has died. Salvatore obviously shies from committed relationships and has not been to his home village of Giancaldo, Sicily in 30 years. As his girlfriend asks him who Alfredo is, Salvatore flashes back to his childhood.

It is a few years after World War II. Six-year-old Salvatore is the mischievous, intelligent son of a war widow. Nicknamed Toto, he discovers a love for films and spends every free moment at the movie house Cinema Paradiso. Although they initially start off on tense terms, he develops a friendship with the fatherly projectionist, Alfredo, who takes a shine to the young boy and often lets him watch movies from the projection booth. During the shows, the audience can be heard booing when there are missing sections, causing the films to suddenly jump, bypassing a critical romantic kiss or embrace. The local priest had ordered these sections censored, and the deleted scenes are piled on the projection room floor. At first, Alfredo considers Toto a bit of a pest, but eventually he teaches Salvatore to operate the film projector.

Cinema Paradiso (company)

Cinema Paradiso is a UK-based DVD-by-mail company which specialises in world and arthouse cinema but also caters for mainstream tastes as well with over 80,000 titles films and 5000+ Blu-ray high definition titles available. They operate a system which divides film info for each title by genre and special features on the disc. They also carry a list of over 5000 foreign language DVDs from Hollywood to Bollywood, Argentina to Vietnam, Tajikistan to Mongolia.

History

Cinema Paradiso is privately owned company which was established in 2003 in Lewisham, South London and is currently headquartered in Brentford, UK. In 2005 the company bought Zoovies.net, and in the following year acquired DVDsToMe.

Awards

References