Jonathan Demme will premiere his upcoming film “Fear of Falling” at the Rome Film Festival this November.
In addition, the Oscar-winning director of “The Silence of the Lambs” will teach what is being billed as a “master class” on the most significant film scenes in his oeuvre and will discuss his interest in cinema, the festival said Tuesday.
Demme’s career has taken him from commercial hits like “Philadelphia” to quirky comedies like “Married to the Mob” and documentaries like the Talking Heads concert movie “Stop Making Sense.”
“Fear of Falling” sounds like one of Demme’s more off-beat efforts. It is an adaptation of a theater production that was created for the stage by the team behind “My Dinner With Andre” — actor, director, and screenwriter André Gregory and actor and playwright Wallace Shawn. Louis Malle, the director of that film classic, died in 1995 but the festival’s backers say the new venture is a “a worthy successor of Malle” and is both funny and personal.
Shawn will attend also attend the festival.
