<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <docID>329361</docID> <postdate>2024-09-19 11:38:30</postdate> <headline>Grim start to an optimistic festival opener</headline> <body><p><img class="size-full wp-image-329368" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Screenshot-2024-09-19-at-10-37-04-Gloria-2024.png" alt="" width="900" height="600" /></p> <caption>A still from Gloria! Teresa centre top</caption> <p><strong>The 2024 Italian film festival kicks off on Thursday with a glorious choice for opening night— a film called Gloria! – with the exclamation mark.</strong></p> <p>Music lovers music lovers will immediately pick up their ears, as it may suggest to them Antonio Vivaldi’s Gloria, and you'll hear it performed in a way you won’t forget.</p> <p>When I catch up with Italian director, singer-songwriter-actor Margherita Vicario, for whom this is her debut film, I find that it’s a largely optimistic film, despite a grim opening.</p> <p><img class=" wp-image-329369" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Margherita-Vicario.jpg" alt="" width="750" height="500" /></p> <caption>Director Margherita Vicario</caption> <p>It’s a feminist take on the hidden world of female musicians and composers in Baroque-era 18th century Venice, where young female orphans were taken into orphanages and trained rigorously as musicians for all-women ensembles, until Napoleon came to town and put an end to the practice.</p> <p>Vicario’s film deconstructs that real-life story and takes us close up and personal to the girls who were all but enslaved.</p> <p>There’s some surprising music in it when some of the girls, behind closed doors, seem to be performing jazz or pop.</p> <p>The film, Vicario tells me, is intended to be hopeful and finishes on an upbeat note, suggesting a happy future for some of the thousands of unknown women composers and musicians whose names have faded into obscurity. She fantasies that it could have been otherwise.</p> <p>And the Vivaldi connection?</p> <p>Vivaldi, it turns out, was involved with just such an orphanage and many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà , a home for abandoned children.</p> <p><img class=" wp-image-329370" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Screenshot-2024-09-19-at-10-36-32-Gloria-2024.png" alt="" width="752" height="446" /></p> <caption>Mediocre chapel master Perlina and the girls</caption> <p>Vicario says she is certainly not suggesting that the mediocre chapel master Perlina in her film bears any resemblance to the great Italian composer, who was from a slightly earlier era than the film’s setting.</p> <p>Briefly, Gloria! Turns the spotlight on Teresa, an abused Cinderella-like maid (with a back story) at the Sant’Ignazio Institute in Venice, where residents are musically trained by the untalented Perlina.</p> <p>When a local craftsman gives the institute a modern pianoforte the girls’ lives are changed. Teresa finds the instrument and, clumsily, begins to explore the keys in jazz-like experiments, unlocking her own musical abilities and attracting the attention of the girls upstairs, who are preparing to perform for a visit by the new Pope.</p> <p>The girls, and especially the most talented of them, Lucia, gather secretly, taking turns on the piano, and prepare to turn the visit upside down.</p> <p>All this takes place against the increasing incursions into Italy by Napoleon, in whom some of the girls place great trust for the future.</p> <p>After a screening in Italy, the film attracted the headline in Variety, “Upbeat Italian Convent Drama Gives 18th-Century Baroque Standards a Girl-Power Pop Makeover,†a reference to both the feminist fantasy elements and the fun, anachronistic music that has the girls bopping as they prepare for the Pope.</p> <p>Vicario co-wrote the screenplay with Anita Rivaroli and also the original music with Davide Pavanello.</p> <p>While she trained in professional theatre at the European Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome, she tells me, she is essentially a self-taught musician who started writing popular songs when she was studying.</p> <p>"I'm not even that good, but I can play enough to write pop songs.â€</p> <p>The idea for making the movie came after her observation that there were so few women in music history.</p> <p>“When I looked for composers, I never found women, so I was a little bit frustrated…I wondered how that is it possible that I could not name even one female composer in the classical music world.â€</p> <p>“I started to research female composers from the 15th of the 20th century and discovered a lot…the most interesting epoque was the 18th centur, Venice where there were institutions that took girls and raised them with music.â€</p> <p>The whole movie, she says, is about the creativity and challenges for these musicians.</p> <p>The two central characters are Lucia and Teresa. Teresa cannot even play, but the moment she puts her fingers on the keyboard of the piano, there's a note of genius, she explains.</p> <p>“My movie is about creativity and fantasy,†Vicario says. “We know nothing about these girls but I wanted to convey something through their friendship.â€</p> <p>Visually and in costumes she captures the era, with the faces of the actors seemingly emerging out of the candlelight, as in a painting, but while largely they play the music of the century, she decided to make Teresa's music like her own music.</p> <p>“Everything she plays is my music. It's extreme. It's quite edgy,†she says.</p> <p>"I tried to be as historical as I could. I wanted to say that we know nothing about these girls, but with the music, I could do what I liked.â€</p> <p>The finale, where the girls become travelling musicians is like a fable, Vicario says. The reality is that in history, they were out on the street.</p> <p><em>The Italian Film Festival, Palace Electric Cinema, NewActon, September 19-October 16. Gloria! will screen 22 times during the season. </em></p> <p> </p> </body>