Italianamerican preceded by Sincerity I

Director: Martin Scorsese, Stan Brakhage

1974 / 76min / DCP

Filmed shortly after Scorsese had returned from debuting Mean Streets at the Cannes Film Festival, the avuncular Italianamerican offers a rather more quotidian view of the Italian experience in America than the director’s wise-guy melodrama, hunkering down with the director’s parents, Catherine and Charles, inside their apartment on Little Italy’s Elizabeth Street and observing the pair of gifted raconteurs as they discuss their own lives and those of their ancestors from the Old Country, with Catherine—a familiar bit player in many a Scorsese film—demonstrating how to prepare her signature meatballs and gravy. Preceded by Brakhage’s Sincerity I, which, per the filmmaker: “Draws on autobiographical energies and images which reflect the first 20 years of my living.”

Distributor: Janus Films