It's time again to remember that when it comes to movies, "Italian" isn't just an accent for the bad guys, that Roberto Benigni doesn't have the monopoly on Euro-comedy, and that step-through scooters are probably the most cinematic mode of transport invented.
Yes, it's the Italian Film Festival, now in its fifth year, offering a fortnight's worth of screenings of nine films.
The programme offers chances to revisit a few of the nation's cinematic glories, though the emphasis is on contemporary works which wouldn't otherwise make it to local screens.
Many of the recent films, such as the Venice Film Festival jury-prize winner Hardboiled Egg (Ovosodo, with cast members Edoardo Gabbriellini and Marco Cocci, who will be visiting the festival), Shooting the Moon (L'Albero delle Pere), and That's It (Ecco fatto), examine in their own way the lot of modern Italian youth.
Some familiar foreign names and faces spring from the festival cast lists, such as German actor Bruno Ganz in the comedy Bread and Tulips (Pane e tulipani) and sometime Hollywood star Valeria Golino in Shooting the Moon.
English actor Tim Roth plays a pianist whose entire life and career has been spent aboard a cruise ship in The Legend of 1900, directed by Giuseppe Tornatore of Cinema Paradiso fame.
And in the "past glories" section are screenings of Benigni's Oscar-winning Life is Beautiful. But the true Italian cinemaophile will find vintage thrills in screenings of Fellini's 8 1/2 from 1963, in which the director was arguably at his most Felliniesque, and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Mamma Roma, which scandalised the film world in 1962 with its tale of oedipal melodrama and which has been revived under the supervision of Martin Scorsese.
* The Italian Film Festival 2000 is at the Rialto, Newmarket, from tomorrow until Wed Oct 24; at Rialto Hamilton, November 9 to 19.
For more information: www.italianfilmfestival.co.nz
<i>Film event:</i> Two weeks of Italian glories
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