Give peace a chance

 

Early '60's, in Rome the olimpic flame lights the souls, while in Trentino Alto-Adige one of the darkest pages of its history is about to be written. A group of young high school students decide to meet for an experiment of peace.

At the beginning of the '60s Italy rediscovered something that had been almost unknown for centuries, economic and social wellness. A wellbeing built with an imaginary that was not even it's, more likely coming from the dreamt, watched in movies,  sometimes listened on the radio, America. And the radio had to be listened carefully, as during fascism foreign words and jazz were forbidden.  Foreign words were so difficult to stand during Mussolini's regime that even a commission to italianize names was set, for instance in Trentino Alto-Adige, where a consistent part of the population doesn't speak Italian as first language. WWII was over while the cold war was moving its first steps. Steps that sometimes had the rythm of the runners, the sweating faces and the perffect bodies of the athletes that in 1960 met in Rome, the capital of that 'BelPaese' (Beautiful Country) that was re-starting to walk with the wind in the bouffant hairstyles and the happy laughter spreadiing from Lambrettas and brand-new Fiat. When the olympic flame crosses the Eternal City, the Open City because unanimously considered too beautiful so that could not be bombed nor damaged,  a shiver, a spine-chill, light electricity to affirm that the darkest moments of those horrible times were over. While in Rome the kaleidoscope of languages that could be listened in the Vatican during the international pilgrimages was multiplied by the olympic teams, in the North, two languages apparently have the intention to become the expression of incomprehensions. In the Bolzano province, a group of youngsters decide to challege the world, to get inspired by that olympic spirit that was in the air and attempt a simple, tiny experiment of peace.  Experiments of peace are never simple, actually, and those youngsters clean-cut as the mountain skyline in a sunny day, decide to gather for afternoon talks about culture, Dolomites, politics and sport. A politics intertwined with culture, best said with cultures, with ideas of a Europe without borders, of something vital to the acutal life of the future of humanity and of the natural wonder of the landscape. The spearhead of the meetings would have become the living icon of ecology and of the so-called intercultural dialogue, Alex Langer, while his region would have left behind one of the darkest pages of its history.

©2010.2020

Politics, also in Italy, is possible

Once upon a time ago, not much time ago, there was a nation, going out of a bad war, a bit damaged but with a great strenght and willing to stand on her legs. In that nation, where the borders where not even so defined, a man, a mountaineer, son of peasants, made his way on what once, not that much time ago, was the Italian Politics. This man had strong ideas and an even stronger soul, he was skilled, really skilled. and as often happens in this odd nation, he had the chance to go on, to become the number one. There was the entire Italy to set on foot and Italians, in hard times, exhibit their best, they can marvel, enchant the world with their extraordinary abilities, with their strenght of soul and thought. to go back to be the 'Italietta' that hides her beauty behind a finger. Alcide De Gasperi.

©2009.2022

A leaning cathedral in the heart of the Flemish Netherland

The distance between Delt and The Hague is covered by a tram ride, a few stops, a handful of minutes and you cross the interval between two different cities, calling it suburbia would be the equivalent of saying that Florence is the suburbia of Rome, for Australian, Chinese or Canadian standards. In Delft there is an entire square, complete with a cathedral that if compared to the Pisa tower the latter looks straight, but you barely notice it, even if royal celebrations are in that church and if the delftware, to be honest that are really nice but compared to the Italian pottery are a bit pale, even if it's true that the Delft blue is world reknowned. Cathedrals are indeed extraordinary, all leaning, wonkysh, one, the Oude Kerk (Old church) on the artificial canal, the other impressive in a typical European Flemish market square, the Nieuwe Kerk (New church, so to speak), that treasures the graves of the Orange-Nassau royal family.

Typical representative of Delft art scene is Vermeer, reknowned for the ante litteram photographic use of light, perspective, focus and colour so to be considered one of the undisputed masters of Flemish school,  famous his painting Girl with a Pearl Earring, better known for the novel and the film inspired by the painting. Even if, probably for the closeness with the world capital of international law, The Hague, also siege of the government and official residence of the Orange-Nassau, probably the name of the town is more easily associated with the name of Hugo Grotius, considered one of the 'creators' of modern international law, having foreseen a law of the sea not far from the one presently implemented worlwide. And how can't we recall, talking about this wonderful little city, also Anthony  Van Leeuwenhoek, self-taught discoverer of the protozoan and of the most celeb spermatozoa, ando of bacteria, but that's another story.

Going back to the small streets, the bridges, the small typically Flemish canaals you get definetely enchated by that delicate concreteness of a market square identical to itself during the centuries where the buildings are lightly leaning but you barely notice it in the maritime country par excellence, where between the seasickness and the earthsickness you don't know if the buildings are moving following the rythm of the waves or if it's us who got the typical sailors step. 

©2011.2021

Pina

A provincial place in Germany, the North-Rhine Westphalia region, world reknowned for the Ruhr industrial district, an important node for business and mainly for the heavy industry of the Teutonic giant. The region, though, is best known amongst culture buffs, to be the hub where the Pina Bausch tanz-theater, an absolutely unique form of performative art where everyday life is staged in the form of dance and dialoguing,  developed.

A form of art, even if I think it would much fitting to name it a form of unconditioned, absolute and pure love for life in all its gradations and its nuances.

In Wuppertal, Essen, a tiny woman, stubborn and strong, decided to build a dream of creativity, she actually made it, now she is not among us anylonger, not even if the 3D images realized by an extraordinary admirer of her, the German movie director Wim Wenders, tried to keep that memory alive.

©2011.2021

Happy 114th anniversary Madame Curie!

The day Marie Curie was born the entire world changed, she didn't know, her parents, friends and  relatives were not aware of that. Angels did not come to announce her arrival and there was not actually anything miraculous in her birth, if not the everyday miracle recreated each and every time a living being is born. But she, stubborn and with the desire of knowledge, would have loved that world, would have loved life in all its nuances, with passion, willingness and strenght, and one day, the twice Nobel Prize laurate Marie Curie would have invented also the stage lights for the Moulin Rouge performances where an American woman, Loie Fuller, was creating a new dancing visual imaginary.

©©2011.2021

Cassese

Atripalda is a town in the Irpinia province, best said, is a small town in the province of a provincial small city situated in a somehow provincial region of Southern Italy. 

In Avellino winter, on the contrary of what one could guess, does exist. Even the cold exists, and the heat, the sun, the 'caseificio's, cheese factories, the good ones, though, where, when you buy a mozzarella you want to drop any diet, dive into the pools with the tepid 'latticello' and gorge of rounded delicacies. 

As for many small Italian towns, Atripalda has a long story, rooted in Pre-Roman epoch, developing during the Middle Age and then in the following centuries ups and downs of country's history. As for many small Italian towns its history is long, complex and far from the appearances. The river, that in this case is named Sabato, Saturday in Italian, has a lots of stories to tell, stories of merchants and of monologuing dialogues between monotheistic religions, for instance. In Atripalda, though, the one who listened to the river's stories in order to remember History is nothing less than a great Italian historian, Leopoldo Cassese, director of the State Archives of L'Aquila and Salerno, and professor of archival, the very first in Italy.

Leopoldo is not a bookworm, is proficient, can read between the lines, and between the documents, the stories hidden behind the extraordinary evocative strenght of narration, he can listen to the sound of words. He loves life, he loves his wife and the kids who learn since they are really young how to repulse dictatorships listening to the tales trasported by the river waters, the sound of the wind in the trees and of the people that always say what has to be said, if you are able to truly listen. 

His sons learn how to understand, to listen beyond words, to read between lines the sound of the laughters and of the tears of people, also of the ones who can't read or write. Leopoldo's sons are Antonio Cassese and Sabino Cassese, lawyers and judges, but most of all men who can read the law to defend those who cannot even read their names. They start studying law almost at the same time, they're almost the same age, Sabino focuses on the administrative part, then works for the Italian gas and petrol company ENI, the Italian government and European institutions, while Antonio clings on listening to the moans of people that apparently the world want to forget, unless there's the prime time crime, for TV schedules needs. With stubborness, a deep culture, and a humbleness that only people of that calibre can afford, decides to believe in the realization of something that sounded impossible, an international judiciary system to demonstrate that world's peace starts also listening to the silent cry of a 'normal' person from a far end of the world, to whom the childhood, adolescence, adulthood or simply, just to say, the fundamental rights were denied. And together with a woman that faces everything resolutely, Carla del Ponte,  he makes a prototype of European tradition international criminal tribunal work, the UN former Yugoslavia Tribunal (ICTY), a weird object, a glimmer of justice for people whose stories are heard from those who are able to look beyond the appareances with the careful and aware glance of a man from the province who probably got tired of listening.
©2011.2020

TinTin, dauntless Belgian journalist agitates the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot

Hercule Poirot never gets angry, unless he is 'accused' of Frenchness. He's a Belgian! even if not at birth, his creator being Lady Mallowan Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller, world renowned as Christie, from the British town of Torquay.

Another imaginary characther, the young journalist TinTin, is actually so, head on in the bargain. His cartoonist Georges Prosper Remi, Hergé, is from Ettebeek, provincial town in the bilingual Bruxelles-Capitale region, the Belgian newspaper that first published in 1929 the adventures of the dauntless fair-haired boy with the wisp, Le Petit Vingtième, was the supplement of the Vingtième Siècle and even is four-legged friend, the white terrier Milou, is Belgian. TinTin is froncophone and the Spielberg movie highlights this aspect, but notwithstanding during the Rome Film Festival the 'French comic-strip' was still in the conversations.  The 'little grey cells' of Hercule Poirot would have surely get stressed.

©2011.2021

Gianny Musy

Once upon a time there was a youngster with a childohood probably happy and  surely marked with the difficulties of the war; a city, Milan, a quite odd familiy and a 'sweet and blessed Country' where 'the most ancient people of the world live', a people that 'with two loonies of bread and hope, drinks a glass of wine and drifts along'. The boy follows the path drawn by his parents, almost without thinking on his future, learn a trade and save it for the rainy days, in his experience, for the early days. His parents are actually two actors, the father is one of the 'bad guys' face of the Italian cinema from the very beginning, and also a theatre actor. We can imagine that he must have been strong-spined.

After graduating in law during the '30s of the last century, when illiteracy was current affairs, decides to move to Paris, where he sets the Teatro degli italiani (Theatre of the Italians) and is encouraged by  Sacha Guitry and Pierre Chenal to take a stab at this prodigious technological and continuosly evolving novelty that was affirming its popular and artistic importance, where the white telephones just appeared. But that's another story, perhaps. The youngster is Gianni Musy, who learned playing under the spotlights even before learning his first words, coincidences and fate. The father Enrico migrates together with the mother Gianna Pacetti, actress, to the French capital in those years and the young Gianni couldn't not be amazed, enchanted and dazzled with all that lights, scenes, costumes and the words, the written words that become images, and the staged words reproduced for the first time just before his birth. 

Actually it's the same that happens when he plays kids games, with the difference that at the cinema the words become images identical for everybody and not only visible to the eyes of a child. Words that become imagination, that magic that make so many people dream worldwide, words that become dancing music, visual narration. While Gianni moves his first steps, cinema learns how to talk, even with the voices of his father and his mother, fate, perhaps. 

In 1940 Musy is turning ten and Charlie Chaplin uses for the first time in his filmography the sound to say something that cannot be unsaid anylonger; after the Modern Times' grammelot, the Great Dictator. 

Cinema for actors in not only cameras and photographer's flash, more actual actorial activity, beyond and together with the moving image there's the voice, and Musy learns the trade, among  the other cinema jobs, where the Italians are the best in the world, the art of the dubbers. And he becomes famous. More than a celebrity one of those 'cult' characthers of Italian cinema. Remembering the charachters and the actors he dubbed would be too long and would distract the focus from a story of the Italian provincia, best said of the Roman and Sabine province.

Gianni Musy lived indeed in the Roman Sabine, surrounded by his friends and neighbours, such as Sergio Endrigo, with whom he wrote the words of the song quoted at the beginning of this eventually provincial keepsake. And you almost have the impression to actually see him wandering in the small roads of the towns where his voice echoes, listened also during the events that are important for the locals without being under the heady spotlights of the seventh art, when he showed, causing a number of gossip and comments, sided by two young, beautiful girls, the  ones you never know if they have the brands label as their make-up and hair-style is always so similar to the cover picture of the season's magazine.

When I read the poster that announced his departure, on a simple and sober publication of the local funeral honours, I almost had the impression of seeing him there, skinny and standing tall,  between his personal body guards, to read unbelieving his name not scrolling on a movie screen  but in the sad glances of the locals, normal provincials who loved his ability to wonder them with a story, a novel, a movie.  ©2011.2020