Cinema Loses Another Visionary

This is a tragic week for world cinema. First Ingmar Bergman passes away, and now Italian film legend Michelangelo Antonioni, "whose depiction of alienation made him a symbol of art-house cinema with movies such as Blow-Up and L'Avventura," writes AP. He reportedly died at his home on Monday evening and will be remembered for depicting "alienation in the modern world through sparse dialogue and long takes. Along with Federico Fellini, he helped turn post-war Italian film away from the Neorealism movement and toward a personal cinema of imagination." His funeral is scheduled for Thursday his hometown of Ferrara in northern Italy.

"In the empty, silent spaces of the world, he has found metaphors that illuminate the silent places our hearts, and found in them, too, a strange and terrible beauty: austere, elegant, enigmatic, haunting,'' Jack Nicholson said in presenting Antonioni with the career Oscar. Nicholson starred in the director's 1975 film ''The Passenger.''

[Photo Credit: Cannarsa Basso / Grazia Neri / Polaris]