curated by
Marco Berti and Francesca Pappalardo, Palazzo Esposizioni Roma

promoted by
Rome the Capital City’s Cultural Affairs Department and the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo

with thanks to
Cineteca Lucana, Cineteca Milano, Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Lucky Red, MPLC, Park Circus

Palazzo Esposizioni Roma’s cinema theatre celebrates the first centenary of Robert Altman, a giant in movie history, with a broad selection of his superb work as a director. The legendary orchestrator of a universally acclaimed series of films, capable of keeping dozens of stories and characters going strong in the course of a single film, and whom moviegoers and critics worldwide loved in such masterpieces as Mash, Nashville, The Player, Short Cutes, Gosford Park and A Prairie Home Companion. The analytical experimenter who, even when he turned his back on the chaos of society, proved capable of plunging his camera into the depths of individual lives, exploring the fragmentation of identity, particularly female identity, with visionary originality. One has but to think of his ideal trilogy on women, That Cold Day in the Park, Images and 3 Women or of Come Back to the Five & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. The omnivorous innovator who turned his hand to classic genres, sanctioning the end of their founding myths and heroes in, for example, The Player, a western dripping with rain and opium fumes, The Long Goodbye, a noir in which Marlowe loses the thread of his investigation and even his cat, or Thieves Like Us with its snapshots of bankrobbers’ humdrum daily lives.

The critical reflection on our contemporary world that Altman offers us is positively merciless, revealing a society that has irreversibly lost its way between profit and consumption. His relationship with his audience knows no compromise, demanding of it a thoroughly unconventional approach. He does not want any dumb automaton sat in front of a television screen. His audience has to ask itself questions and to seek connections in his always unpredictable, episodic, irreverent narratives rich in irrelevant dialogue and fragmentary images. Altman urges us to find a meaning of our own, to probe beneath the surface of this grotesque and rowdy carnival that we call life and to rediscover the thread of our existence. He does not grant us any reassuring endings, we have to find them for ourselves on leaving the movie theatre, in our own lives.

The title of the retrospective is a play on the title of his timeless masterpiece – a merciless caricature of war – and the technique of musical composition in use today that combines one or two existing songs. At a frightening moment in history such as we are living through today, in the tragic and deafening medley of bellicose slogans, overlapping voices, advertising jingles, mobile phone ringtones and social media notifications, this great master of the cinema admonishes us once again not to lose ourselves, to stay human.
 

For some of the films we were unable to trace the current screening rights holders. We are happy to acknowledge all requests and clarifications.