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Auction History Result 8b027 FILIBUS Italian 2p 1915 art of lesbian master thief burglarizing Museo Egizio, ultra rare! Date Sold 8/6/2019 Sold For: Login or Register to see sold price. An Original Vintage Theatrical Folded Italian Two-Panel (known in Italy as a "4 Fogli") Movie Poster (2p; measures 55" x 78" [140 x 198 cm]) (Learn More) Filibus, the 1915 Mario Roncoroni Italian silent science fiction (sci-fi) pirate fantasy crime detective adventure thriller (about a mysterious female sky pirate who makes daring heists using her airship; the screenplay was written by Giovanni Bertinetti, a member of the Italian "Futurist Movement", which was popular at this time; he wrote science fiction stories and children's books, and the Futurists believed in women's equality and gender fluidity long before it began to enter the mainstream, and he wrote those themes into this movie as well!; see below for more on this; the movie was intended to be the first of a series of movies with this female master criminal, but the poor reception the movie received on its first showing, and the start of World War I combined to stop any sequels being made) starring Valeria Creti (the title role as Filibus), Cristina Ruspoli, Mario Mariani, Giovanni Spano, and Filippo Vallino. Note that we have only ever auctioned two sizes of poster from this extremely early science fiction/fantasy movie. One is a large Italian four-panel that has an incredible image of a flying airship lowering the female sky pirate to the ground in a bucket that is suspended from the airship. What is fascinating about that four-panel poster is that the airship appears to be made entirely of metal, whereas planes of this time were made entirely of wood, because aviation at that point had no ability to make a metal plane fly, due to its great weight. Yet somehow, the author of the movie and the source story was able to predict the future and see a time when flying metal planes would have solved the difficulty of making metal aircraft fly! The other poster is an Italian two-panel poster, which shows the female master thief about to rob jewels from a giant cat statue on display in the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy. As stated above, this was written by Giovanni Bertinetti, who not only had a wonderful imagination, but was very daring. He had his female master criminal (who was also a countess) perform amazing crimes that involved James Bond-like gadgets, but perhaps most interesting of all, the female criminal was a master of disguise who impersonated men as well as women, and there are scenes of the criminal seducing women while in disguise as a man, thus adding a lesbian/bi-sexual component to the movie! As with other films that were far ahead of their time, the movie was not well received at first, and the filmmakers were criticized because the lead character was a female version of Fantomas, and they even stole one of Fantomas' trademark aspects. The movie was forgotten for many decades until it was screened in 1997 at an Italian festival, and then it was picked up by other festivals, including one in 2013, where the lead character was described as one of the first lesbian characters in the history of film, and others said that she was "the cinema's first lesbian bad girl". When Wonder Woman was a giant hit in 2017, people who were aware of this movie have sarcastically wondered if movies are finally catching up to where they were a century ago! Interestingly, since we first auctioned a first release poster from this movie, in 2017, the movie was finally completely restored and given a major worldwide release in 2019. The distributors of the movie used the airship poster image to promote that 2019 re-release! NOTE: Click on linked names to see a biography. If you know who did the art (if any), please let us know. Important Added Info: Note that this is a "country of origin" poster (printed in Turin) for this Italian movie, which we have never auctioned before! Not only that, but the only posters from this movie we have ever auctioned were two Italian four-panels, and both those sold for between $5,000 and $6,000. This two-panel has a completely different image from the four-panel, and shows a cat with gigantic jewels in its eyes, and the female star of the movie is preparing to steal them from the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum), which is an archaeological museum in Turin, Italy. It specializes in Egyptian archaeology and anthropology and houses one of the largest collections of Egyptian antiquities. Our consignor had shown this poster to the museum staff and they were quite surprised as they had not heard of the film (but they had a good laugh at the fake hieroglyphics shown on the poster). Also note that this Italian two-panel was printed in 2 sections designed to overlap. Finally, note that the theater that used this poster glued the pieces together before putting them on display. Condition: poor to fair. The theater that used this poster glued the pieces together before putting them on display (this is typical of many actual theater-used posters in multiple pieces). It has tears and small areas of paper loss along parts of several folds (more so across the middle of the poster), and the poster itself is very fragile (but it is over a century old!). The poster also has significant paper loss in the bottom right corner that extends into the title and the studio logo next to it. It does not affect the image at all, and an image of another example of the poster can quickly be located on the Internet (although we have never auctioned it before), and any talented restorer could use that online image to replace the missing area, and after proper restoration, the poster will display wonderfully. But please bear in mind this significant defect (and the other defects the poster has, which can be seen in our super-sized image) before bidding on this incredibly rare and historic poster. Learn More about condition grades 
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