Dear Dom --- Just a reminder about Authors' Night on Friday. Please help us to spread the word by forwarding this email to your friends and family and please bring someone with you. In this digital age we are having a tough time getting people to come out to old-fashioned face-to-face events. Any help that you can provide in getting us a decent crowd will be appreciated by me and the presenters. Please help us to create a network of IA book lovers. We will set up a book market in the library. We will have basic wine and cheese. Thanks a thousand--Dominic
Dear Friends---I have invited a number of very talented local Italian American writersto the Italian Cultural Center to do presentations of their work on June 1 from 7 to 10 pm.Our purpose is to celebrate the printed and spoken word in both Englishand Italian as it helps us to define ourselves in our multi-culturalworld. We want to create a network of IA book lovers. Our "Authors' Night" will feature readings, networking, and the selling/ signing of books.
Among our presenters are: Paul Giaimo of Highland Community College, Author Anna Clara Ionta, Poet Gino Impellizeri, Novelist Carlo Lombardo, Gloria Nardini (Bella Figura), Pam DeFiglio (journalist Daily Herald), Kathy Catrambone (Taylor St.), several surprise guests and an open mike segment.To help build up the audience for all presenters, we need YOU tobring some book lovers with you. I know that we are a dying breed, butwe must stick together. If you have some special wine or cheese that you would like to sharewith our hardy group, we will add it to the basic light refreshment farethat we ordinarily offer at Cultural Center events.
mercoledì, maggio 30, 2007
Authors' Night at the italian Cultural Center June 1 at 7 pm
lunedì, maggio 28, 2007
And They Came to Chicago TV Debut
Great work on the show; it was too short though! I watched it this evening and thought it was very well done. Actually, watched it with the whole family - it was very educational without being pedantic.
Would have loved to see younger Italian-Americans and what they are experiencing, later immigrants from Italy that have a post WWII viewpoint.
Is there a sequel in the works? Will you be selling it online?
dt
sabato, aprile 21, 2007
Visit Italy for the Weekend…Immersion Weekend at Casa Italia
Visit Italy for the Weekend…Immersion Weekend at Casa Italia
April 27 & 28, 2007
Basic Outline:
Friday – 6:00 PM Meet & Greet Dinner with wine, food presentations,
and interactive activities to foster conversation useful when ordering
\meals; followed by Italian Card Games & Ground Rules for Saturday’s events.
Saturday: 9:00 AM
Buongiorno Caffe’ with real espresso and breakfast treats.
Start the day with Italian news and current events in Italian.
Followed by several interactive presentations.
Lunch “Make your own Pizza” Buffet.
Conversation components from Friday’s meal will be repeated
and used while participants create their own pizzas in a friendly
casual atmosphere.
“Una Passeggiata” will follow to help digest lunch on the
grounds and will emphasize nature and directions.
(Useful when trying to get around your favorite city!)
Presentations: Various presentations including a special
operatic performance
Spaghettata Dinner and a movie screening of an
Italian Film with english subtitles.
YOU CAN’T GO OUT TO A NICE RESTAURANT FOR 2 FOR LESS THAN $80
We are offering an experience you WON’T soon forget at an affordable rate with 4 meals included!!
Fees (Per Registrant):
Current ICC Students receive $10 discount on The Total Immersion Experience
Total Immersion Experience $110
Friday Only $50
Saturday Only $75
Add Over Night Accommodations $25/$45/$60
Single/Double/Triple Occupancy
Updated Dormitory Style 2-3 beds per room
Teachers receive 16 units of Continued Professional Development Units (CPDUs) for this program.
SPECIAL EARLY REGISTRATION BONUS 3 DAYS ONLY!!
Call US NOW to register! If you register before April 13th We’ll include FREE overnight accommodations with the Total Immersion Package!! Call 708-338-0723 or email CasaItalia@sbcglobal.net. (This applies to those already registered as well, so don’t worry! We’ve got you covered!!)
lunedì, marzo 12, 2007
The courage of Italians during WWII
As noted below, I am the author of "The Cielo: A Novel of Wartime Tuscany," and since its publication I've been surprised by the number of people who say they didn't know anything about the suffering of Italians during WWII.
The setting of my story is Tuscany, but it could have been set anywhere in Italy. Italian civilians were forced to endure bombings, murders, massacres, rapes, and horrific atrocities. Not to mention shortages of food, water, electricity. Many were under siege for months as the Germans and Allies and then the Germans and partisans fought all around them.
And yet there was a tremendous amount of courage and endurance.
Somehow they survived.
Anyone who travels to Italy now knows that the war is still present for the older generation. Let's hope the younger generation -- and all of us who are of Itaian descent -- remember it, too.
(I note there is a poem by Aldo Tambellini a little farther below on this site. I have been talking to Aldo since the pubication of the book. The book resonates with him because he was a child in a village not far from my "Sant'Antonio" and witnessed bombings and killings and oher terrible things. He has written a marvelous poem about it.)
Paul Salsini
New Book: The Cielo
From the author, Paul Salsini:
"The story is about a group of villagers who are trapped in a farmhouse in the hills while the war goes on around them during WWII. It is also the story of the massacre at Sant'Anna di Stazzema on Aug. 12,1944, in which 560 innocent civilians were slaughtered. it was the second-worst massacre by the Nazis in Italy during WWII."
Dom
domenica, dicembre 10, 2006
FW: Is Catholicism the Enemy of Italian American Cultural Identity??
From: Richard Annotico [mailto:annotico@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, December 10, 2006 8:28 PM
To: Giannotti Franco; Marsili Ercole Italia Mia
Subject: Is Catholicism the Enemy of Italian American Cultural Identity??
The 'pure experience': Filmmaker documents brother's story to expose Catholic Church's 'blind faith upbringing'
By Gail McCarthy , Staff writer
Gloucester Daily Times December 08, 2006
Joe Cultrera: 'I can get my God elsewhere'
McCarthy: What was the catalyst for making the film and your desire to create this documentary?
Joe Cultrera: The initial catalyst was watching other media treatments of the clergy abuse crisis and feeling they were all missing the point of origin. They never bothered to look at how we were sucked into the Catholic system from the get-go, how we were watched over by the eyes of those saints and bleeding hearts that lined the walls of our homes and that followed us wherever we went. We were taught fear, shame and embarrassment.
It was those elements of our blind faith upbringing that allowed abuse to happen and go undetected, unspoken about for decades. My brother made me realize that the Catholic Church taught us all these things - in part - as a way of protecting itself. I wanted to make a film from the inside that dug under the fingernails of the situation and walked the viewer step by step through it. A film that was not afraid to criticize the very core of the situation, but that would do so in a very quiet, undramatic way - by simply showing what one survivor and his family went through. The film is pure experience, not gussied up with dramatic music and re-creations.
McCarthy: What was the most difficult part of the filming?
Joe Cultrera: Sitting down and asking questions of my brother, parents and sister that I did not really want to ask was very difficult and scary. Like most families, we do not sit around and have these sorts of deep discussions. They are not comfortable. But if there is anything I have learned from this process it is not to be afraid to talk or to confront your fears. The film created a dialogue and an understanding within our family that was not previously there. We are stronger because of it.
McCarthy: What connection does the film/filmmaker have to Gloucester?
Joe Cultrera: My brother Paul lived in Gloucester from the mid-70's until the breakup of his marriage in the early 90's. He ran the Gloucester Food Co-op. He is still very connected to the town and its people. He has lots of friends there. I worked in Gloucester with local filmmaker Henry Ferrini for a couple years after graduating from film school. Henry and I sort of grew up in the business together and share a way of framing things. Henry shot all the Gloucester footage in the film and supplied invaluable stock footage.
Back in 1976 when I was first playing around with making movies I created some crazy Super-8 films that were screened at various places in Gloucester. The spirit and support of that town pushed me forward with my decision to head to New York, study film and destroy any sense of normalcy I might have had in my life. I am eternally grateful to the spirits of Gloucester.
McCarthy: How has the film and its release affected your life?
Joe Cultrera: I've never lived a more spiritual existence than I have this year. Taking this film from city to city, encountering people and creating dialogue with them, has been like some new type of church. I feel like a missionary man who is trying to dig down to some true sense of God. Making this film and being at screenings has taught me that God is not something you need a priest or a corporate entity to access. It is there in dialogue with your family and within the community you create every day.
McCarthy: Is there humor and warmth infused into what is otherwise a heart-rendering tale?
Joe Cultrera: It's a film about family. My family has a good sense of humor - especially my brother. No matter what this church has dumped on him and us, they cannot steal our smiles. I am incapable of making a film that doesn't have some sense of humor about itself. Whenever bad stuff happens to us, laughter, wisecracks and my mother's smile have always been there to even things out. When I first showed the film to Paul his initial reaction was, "Well that's the funniest film about sexual abuse I've ever seen."
McCarthy: Did your family's Italian heritage and culture influence the film?
Joe Cultrera: I tried to create the detail of our upbringing as a foundation to build the film upon. In creating that specific detail I figured a lot of people from other backgrounds would find some sort of recognition, even if they weren't specifically Italian.
Growing up in the Italian neighborhood of Salem things were always Italian and Catholic. I never saw a separation. I see it now and understand that I can be one without the other. It's taken me a long time to figure that out because I think the Catholic Church has wormed its way into ethnic groups to the point where we came to believe that Catholicism was our cultural identity. We got protective of it. We didn't want to think outside of it. We didn't want to question or criticize because it felt like some sort of betrayal of where we came from - of our ancestors. I now understand that being Italian-American is my cultural identity, but Catholicism is just a corporate product I was sold. I can get my God elsewhere.
Paul Cultrera: Film helps bring family together
McCarthy: What was the catalyst for making the film and your desire to be a part of this documentary?
Paul Cultrera: The catalyst was Joe saying he wanted to do it, and I trust my brother. He's good at whatever he does.
McCarthy: What was the most difficult part of the filming?
Paul Cultrera: The hardest part was thinking about what effect the film would have on my life, the fear of how people would react to me. People who I work with or who I have known for years and know nothing about it are now finding out. I have lifelong friends who don't know and find out through film or the newspaper. ... But similarly to when I told my ex-wife about it, her reaction and that of others was supportive, and the overall reaction to the film is supportive. No one walks out in disgust or throws things at you. They appreciate the intent of it.
McCarthy: What connection do you have to Gloucester?
Paul Cultrera: My mother went into labor when she was at the Fourth of July fireworks celebrated in Gloucester, and she went back to Salem. I was born on July 5. I moved to Gloucester 26 years later, and I thought I was coming home. I just love Gloucester and Cape Ann. It feels oddly like home to me although I've been away for 15 odd years. If they could change the weather I'd still be there. I think about Gloucester all the time, and I'd love to live there, and then I think of those mornings when you have to shovel the snow just to get out of your driveway and then you return home and you have to shovel to get in after the snowplows. (Paul, now 57, lives in California).
McCarthy: How has the film and its release affected your life?
Paul Cultrera: People I have known are now finding out about it, and it has opened up different conversations with them, and I get more calls from newspapers than I ever had before in my life. It has changed my relationship to my family. Joe and I have always been close, and it's created more closeness. My brother is nine years younger. He was born on Thanksgiving. He was the first Thanksgiving baby born in Salem and that was as newsworthy as the big Salem-Beverly football game.
But he was able to ask the tough questions, and I have a much more immense respect for what he does and how he took all these pieces and put it together in a story. He's an amazing editor. With my parents and sister, I think the film has opened up a space that wasn't there before. It helped to start some conversations with all of us about what happened and how we dealt or didn't deal with this.
McCarthy: What about the humor and warmth in the film?
Paul Cultrera: My brother is incapable of making a film without humor. Our family is incapable of having a life without humor. I don't even know where this sense of humor comes from, but it probably helped get me through this. I am still able to laugh, especially when I see the Pope and bishops dressed up.
McCarthy: Did your family's Italian heritage and culture influence the film?
Paul Cultrera: One of the things that spurred Joe on was when my parent's local parish closed down; it was to be sold off and pay off debts to survivors of Joe Birmingham. That pushed Joe over the edge, and he saw that here's the story of how it's affected my mother and father, who are devout Catholics. Their parish church was everything to them, and now it's being taken away. My grandparents came over from Italy in the early 20th century, and we grew up in this tight-knit Italian neighborhood. So being Italian wasn't having a lot of vowels in your name. It was part of us.
In my fantasy world, I live in Rome. I love Italy. I went when I was 23 and spent four months with relatives in Sicily, and I wanted to get back there for the rest of my life. I go there about once a year, to Canicattini Bagni, near Siracusa in Sicily. I probably felt so comfortable in Gloucester because I heard a lot of Sicilian dialects like my grandmother had.
Joe went to Sicily and took footage there, and it's in the film. A lot of the film is about my relationship with my father and how it was harmed and how Father Birmingham took that role, and I wasn't able to tell my father or allow him to protect me. My father had a distant father. There just a lot of father stuff going on.
Seeing seARTS" is an occasional Times feature highlights the work of seARTS members or those who participate in seARTS events. The Society for the Encouragement of the Arts is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to re-establish Cape Ann as a world-class center for working artists in balance with the unique character of Cape Ann as a maritime community.
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/lifestyle/local_story_342120941/resources_printstory
giovedì, luglio 20, 2006
A Poem by Aldo Tambellini
AMERICA
Al Capone died for your sins
died for the privately owned
on the take respected politicians
died for the creative entrepreneurial capitalistic spirit
supplying a need wanted by the people
died as a CEO & Chairman of the board
ruling a powerful highly profitable corporation
& for security
employing hit-men protecting from the competition
exterminating rats with the new law & order
the highly successful soprano hits the high C
performing in the sold-out drama best known as:
THE MOBSTER STEREOTYPED OPERA
receiving artistic awards & endless encores
remember those 2 immigrants Sacco & Vanzetti
one smelling of fish the other a peddler
they were framed & executed
in the historical puritanical Boston
believing that the free America symbolic eagle
with clipped wings was an endangered species
let’s not forget Rocky
the macho italio-stallion
what happened
in the never ending boxing ring saga
did he win/loose/make a come-back/fade away?
or did the downsized intellectual brain
deflate his muscular power
& if the Viking came here
before the navigating controversially adventurous Colombo
they should be represented with an antique museum ship
at that once a year proud marching band parade
notice the political candidates
making the obligatory brief appearance
& disappearance after hustling for votes
who really did & why
they shot a different Colombo
2 bullet slugs in the brain
disrupting the Unity Rally in Manhattan
an FBI well scripted HIT scenario?
the growing Italian American Civil Rights League
was relentlessly under fire from the NY media
they could not tolerate the stereotyping claims
of yet another discriminated group
but you will ask
what the hell is this
all about?
why call that bloody red drink
DEGO WINE
fermenting in the Napa Valley
why not re-baptize it
MAFIOSO WINE
updating the label to a more
popular sellable identification
during this multi-cultural & divided gender time
it seems many discriminated groups
are prominently represented
filling the bookstore shelves/the library & school texts
someone will say:
we have equal representation too
buried below ancient graves
there in the old country
patronized by Lorenzo Il Magnifico de Medici
public TV called him the
RENAISSANCE GODFATHER
(it raised some objection)
I disagree says someone else:
here with the masses we have
achieved high recognition
in this new country we have the famous deceased
notorious TEFLON DON
the network financing his family to grow up on TV
we have an endless list of odd names
playing on the media HIT PARADE:
Jimmy the Clam/ Alley Boy/Anthony Gaspipe/
The Chin/The Snake/Crazy Joe Gallo
the who’s who list too long to mention
the canaries inside cages
sing to the judge at the
FEDERAL COURT HOUSE
while big time legitimate political gangsters
cash in billions from wartime racketeering
devastating nations
destroying lives
as the ecological balance tilts to disaster
we have the best seller
powerful CORLEONE
acted by legendary Brando
sealed lips/secret OMERTA/
COSA NOSTRA affairs/
territorial wars & VENDETTA
we have the ruthless GANGLAND MOBSTERS
killing each other in real life
& on the bigger than life-size Hollywood screen
question:
does a name make one
guilty by association?
we have the grease ball/the wise guy/
the good nature dumb GOOMBA
all well publicized loved & hated by the media
as for the history books
don’t forget the over-achiever
LUCKY LUCIANO
first imprisoned by the government
later released as a useful tool for the Feds
others will say:
pay no attention
it’s all a tempest in a teapot
it will all wash away
& the children of the children
of the struggling back breaking cheap labor
un-welcomed immigrants
do they know
LA STORIA SEGRETA
the disrupted lives of the GUINEA’S WWII internment camps?
& those who have so called “arrived”
with legitimate professions?
well most of them have gone outside dangerous cities
migrating to insulated safe suburbia
inspired by the AMERICAN DREAM
sold by TV commercials
carpet lawn desert/two car garage & shopping mall heaven
some may be renting blockbuster video reruns
featuring well directed & acted
ruthless MOB CAPOS-men of honor
ruling the crime corporation with good old family values
their greedy mouths stuffed with spaghetti or linguini
home made basil tomato sauce simmered in blood
remember the Alka Seltzer commercial
thatsa a spicy meataballa
& those viewers could be judges/doctors/lawyers/teachers/
even proud local politicians or just blue-collar workers
they might say to the growing new generation:
LOOK
finally we have arrived at
a nationally visible representation
question:
is the most acknowledged contribution
food & crime?
somewhere
a writer/an artist/a creative intellectual dreamer
sits in a dark corner at the CAFFE’ PARADISO
staring at Dante’s shrunken head on the wall
next to a puzzled Mona Lisa reproduction
one of them reading lines from a famous poem:
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness starving hysterical naked
he sips a bitter espresso
macchiato with chemical creamora
tasting an artificially sweetened cannoli
thinking:
maybe someday there will be a real cultural pride parade
just maybe
is this a wishful dream or something to think about?
