Yesterday, I published an overview of the events scheduled to coincide with the Portland Art Museum‘s big Italian Style: Fashion Since 1945 exhibit, opening Saturday, Feb 7. Within that was a brief mention of the NW Film Center‘s complementing “Italian Style” film series, which is worth making particular note of.
Though framed around a fashion-centric premise, it’s not as niche-y as that might seem, and helps to contextualize the era of Italian design as a phenomenal—even improbable—cultural bounce-back for the nation in the wake of WWII, a rebirth that, clearly, extended to other modes of creative expression like film and music, too. Essential films like La Dolce Vita, Roman Holiday, and L’Avventura might do so most famously, but the series also helps bring a through-line to more recent times with the excellent 2008 documentary, Valentino: The Last Emperor. It kicks off on March 6, which should be ample time to calendar up.