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By Moira Sullivan      Interview A Transcript Maria Schneider Interview By Moira Sullivan ©Moira Sullivan 2001 Maria Schneider was the Guest of Honor at the Créteil Films de Femmes International Women's Film Festival, March 23-April 2, 2001 and honored with a retrospective of her work. Schneider was the star of the riveting Last Tango in Paris (Italy, 1972), a film New York film critic Pauline Kael loved and defended and whose 6,000 word review was used as an ad to promote the film. In Italy director Bernardo Bertolucci and actors Maria Schneider and Marlon Brando were brought to court for making an 'indecent' film. The charges were later dropped. In several cities in the US, the film was banned. Schneider's career after that was always equated with this cardinal work. She starred in over 40 films and is presented here in a personal interview at the Créteil festival. Q: Maria you were the 'cause celebre' of the '70s art house films and work...

By Moira Sullivan Teresa Villaverde The 33 rd Créteil International Film Festival which ran from March 23 to April 3 was topped off in the final days by a visit from Portuguese filmmaker Teresa Villaverde.  The filmmaker was present at the screenings of her work such as Mutantes and Transe. It is fair to say that Teresa Villaverde who became a filmmaker in her 20s is probably one of the best filmmakers in the world today. There is nothing random about the way Villaverde frames each scene in her films. Her creative use of the camera and editing  is a  brilliant picture language Her stories are concise and vivid and create emotional empathy without  forced manipulation. In Mutantes , young Portuguese boys and girls with problems at home and with themselves are incarcerated in juvenile detention homes. They long for the love of their parents and their freedom but don’t know about boundaries without the foundation of a loving upbringing. They turn to each oth...

By Moira Sullivan At the 33rd Créteil Films de Femmes Film Festival , the daughters of Italian film editor Suso D’Amico were present at a special screening of La Notti Bianche (The White Nights, 1957), by Luchino Visconti . The film that was written and edited by D’Amico stars Marcello Mastroianni as Mario, a young man hopelessly in love with Natalia, a young Italian woman played by Maria Schell . She has waited one year for her lover to return, "L'inquilino" - the tenant, played by Jean Marais , and is desperately in love.  D'Amico, Jackie Buet, director of Créteil festival  ©Moira Sullivan Pilar Miro's The Cuenca Crime (Spain 1980) was screened at the festival about the shepherd Grimaldos who was murdered at the turn of the century. Two of his workers are falsely accused of his death by the police and a corrupt judge and are tortured for committing this crime. The men who are savagely broken down and made out to be savages. Maria Schneider 2001© Moira...

By Moira Sullivan The 33 rd International Créteil Films de Femmes Festival in Paris continues to produce one of the highest quality panoramas in the world on the images of women in cinema. Cecilia Mangini This year, the focus of the festival is on the work of women who have explored the theme of fascism in Europe. The films of Italian director Cecilia Mangini were shown including short films set to the texts of the late filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini , such as Ignoti Alla Citta , from 1958, (Unknown to the city) where excerpts from Pasolini’s controversial novel Ragazzi di vita (Hustlers) shocked Italians in 1955 with his depiction of the decadence of youth, and families in the suburbs of Rome. Another film entitled Stendali (1960) is a funeral song in Griko, the dialect of those of Greek origin in southern Italy.  Mangini was co director with Lino Del Fra and Lino Miccichè  in the brilliant 1962 documentary A ll’Armi Saim Fascista (To arms, we are fascists) assembles...