Cinico tv

“Being born in Palermo is a kind of punishment, but I’ve never left because it would feel like betrayal. Moreover, I can’t imagine Cinico Tv in any other place in the world.” To Franco Maresco, a brilliant, solitary director from Palermo, his city was the stage of a surreal comedy of rampant decay just as the Mafia was renegotiating the division of power and influence in the emerging Second Republic. Ruins, trash, scraps, underwear, flatulence and burping raided the TV screen at dinnertime in Italian homes in the spring of 1992, sparking hostile cultural debates about the limits of trash and the aesthetics of ugliness, the sense of post-history and post-humanity

Directed by Franco Maresco, Daniele Ciprì, Cinico tv leans on a strong ensemble — Francesco Tirone, Giuseppe Paviglianiti, Giovanni Lo Giudice — to carry a story that balances spectacle with character.

The film landed with audiences for its craft and performances, and remains one of the most talked-about screen titles of 1992.