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Liliana Cavani (born 12 January c. 1937) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. She belongs to a generation of Italian filmmakers that came into prominence in the 1970s and includes Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellochio. Cavani became internationally known after the success of her 1974 feature film Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter) . Her films have intellectual ambitions and historical concerns. In addition to feature films and documentaries, she has been an opera director. Cavani was born in a working-class family in Carpi, near Modena in the province... MORE

Liliana Cavani (born 12 January c. 1937) is an Italian film director and screenwriter. She belongs to a generation of Italian filmmakers that came into prominence in the 1970s and includes Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Marco Bellochio. Cavani became internationally known after the success of her 1974 feature film Il portiere di notte (The Night Porter) . Her films have intellectual ambitions and historical concerns. In addition to feature films and documentaries, she has been an opera director. Cavani was born in a working-class family in Carpi, near Modena in the province of Emilia-Romagna. According to Áine O'Healy (Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, 2007, p. 427), Cavani was born on 12 January 1937, although Liehm states 1935 (Passion and Defiance, 1984, p. 198); other commentators have claimed 1933 and 1936, with 1933 prevailing on Internet biographies such as IMDb. Cavani's father, an architect from Mantua, belonged to a conservative bourgeois family of landowners. "My father was an architect interested in urban development. He took me to museums. He had worked in urban planning in Baghdad in 1956, when Iraq was still under British control. My mother was LESS