The Latvian publisher Aminori continues its series of translations of literary works by film directors with Līva Trektere’s translation of a collection of essays and articles by the provocative Italian film auteur Bernardo Bertolucci (1941-2018), My Magnificent Obsession. 

The book is a subjective history of cinema written in Bertolucci’s own words and includes first-person reflections on his own films, his views on life and art, and a personal look back at his filmography. This includes his best-known and most controversial works: the brutally frank anatomy of male-female relationships in Last Tango in Paris (1972) with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, and the film that embodies the meeting between cinephilia and revolution in 1969 Paris, The Dreamers (2003), which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. 

The clarity of beliefs in Bertolucci’s films is a mirage: he addresses his films about working-class life and the absence of any kind of justice to an intellectual audience, in whom his work has most often provoked a backlash. 

The introduction to the Latvian edition of the book features an interview with Bertolucci by film director Dāvis Sīmanis, which took place in Rome in 2018, shortly before his death.

The book is published with the support of the State Culture Capital Foundation, and the opening event is held in cooperation with the Embassy of Italy in Latvia.