SICILIANS WOW VENICE

Audiences and critics at the Venice Film Festival have been impressed not only by Sicilian directors and films featuring Sicily, but also by a certain female politician who has become Sicilian "by adoption".  She is Michela Stancheris, Regional Councillor for Tourism and  Governor of Sicily Rosario Crocetta's right-hand woman.

In Venice to introduce two of the Sicilian films, Miss Stancheris's handling of questions about her possible candidacy for the office of Mayor of her home town of Bergamo was masterful: The idea had first been announced by Mr Crocetta when he was in Bergamo for a meeting and it delighted some residents of that beautiful town whilst surprising others, including the incumbent, rather negatively. Miss Stancheris said she would first like to complete her work in Sicily but that she would consider the proposal seriously if invited to stand. Asked what would be the first thing she would do if elected, she replied that she would create an entertainment centre in Bergamo as, although the city is well-served by its airport, once young people arrive there, there is nothing to do in the evenings.  As for any romantic plans, Miss Stancheris said that she already has a fiancé whose name is Sicily.

But could it be that another career beckons the 31-year-old? An unnamed British film director who saw her at Venice is said to have cried,

"But you look like Diana!"

What do you think? Are they alike?

Michela Stancheris

Diana, Princess of Wales

I'll be watching developments in Bergamo with interest as it was the first Italian city I ever saw and, despite the fact that it is a Lega stronghold, I have a lasting affection for it.

Now, I'm sure you'd like to know about the films in the Festival which have been made by Sicilian directors or which are set in Sicily, so here they are:

Con il fiato sospeso - Costanzia Quatriglio

A 35-minute film but none the less powerful for that and based on a true story:  Anna, a pharmacy student at Catania University, begins some research in the chemistry laboratories there. She soon realises that her working environment is unhealthy and indeed, her fellow-students become ill. Anna's friend Stella, who has dropped out of university, tries to persuade her to stop working in the laboratories but Anna has a dream - to become a qualified pharmacologist. Throughout the film, we hear readings from the real diary of a student called Emanuele, who died of lung cancer in 2003. Five years later the laboratories were closed, after 36 people working or studying in them had become ill.

Via Castellana Bandiera - Emma Dante

Everyone is talking about this film! Two women drivers, one of them played by the director Emma Dante, cause a traffic jam in Palermo and a stand-off ensues. The film can be seen as a homage to the Western but Emma Dante says it is also about principles and the inability to compromise.

Le Donne della Vucciria - Hiam Abbass

Screened in the Giorni degli autori - Venice Days section for independent filmmakers, this is a very short film created as part of the Miu Miu Women's Tales series. Palestinian director Hiam Abass was in Palermo when she was invited to make a film for the project and she immediately knew that the vibrant Vucciria market had to be the background. At the beginning of the film we see Sicilian puppets dressed in Prada clothes and then we see some of the real women of Palermo in celebratory mood. Hiam Abass says she wanted to showcase the city's music, craftsmanship and a "certain kind of femininity".

Summer 82 When Zappa Came to Sicily - Salvo Cuccia

In the Fuori concorso - Not in Competition section: In 1982 Salvo Cuccia, who was doing his military service in the North of Italy, set off for Palermo to see a Frank Zappa concert. Sadly, he didn't arrive in time. Thirty years later, he retraces his steps and remembers his youth. We also meet members of Frank Zappa's family, who are visiting the land of the rock star's ancestors. The film contains previously unseen images from the 1982 concert.

Future Reloaded - 70 Directors for Venice

In addition, Franco Maresco has a short film in the Future Reloaded section, in which 70 directors who have been instrumental in the development of the Festival have been invited to make a short film to celebrate the 70th edition.

Con il fiato sospeso - Trailer

Via Castellana Bandiera - Trailer

Le Donne della Vucciria - Trailer

PRIVACY ACROSS CULTURES - A "LET'S BLOG OFF" POST

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "Privacy".

In Italy the British are famous for their supposed love of privacy and Italians even use the English term for the concept. Thus it is that I often find myself explaining that my compatriots' perceived "coldness" or lack of curiosity is really just British reserve or the Anglo-Saxon virtue of leaving the other chap alone unless he asks you to become involved in his troubles.

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We are, I tell my Italian friends and students, just as interested as they are in the lives of others and I ask them if they have ever, whilst on holiday in Britain,  seen a net curtain twitch.  The British, after all, have some of the most intrusive media in the world and there is no tolerance for those who fall foul of it or, like the late Diana, Princess of Wales, fail to understand it.

Just a few miles away but across a significant stretch of water, things are very different, however:  When it was publically revealed that President Mitterand of France had a second, "secret" family, his countrymen deemed the matter to be largely his own business.  In Britain he would have been hounded and, of course, political scandals such as those being revealed almost daily in Italy would not be tolerated.  In fact, whenever I hear a British Prime Minister announcing his "support" for some hapless colleague whose lustful instincts have ruled his or her head, I know that that politician will resign very shortly indeed.

Italy's privacy laws* do set out to protect the ordinary citizen, though, and a blogger in this country would have to be very reckless to publish a non-public-domain photo of someone without his or her permission.   A few months ago I wrote that I had managed, using a photo editing programme, to restore a faded photo of my first Italian boyfriend to its former glory after 40 years and several commenters asked me why I hadn't published it.  The answer is that I daren't.  

But nowhere were my own concepts of privacy more challenged than in a Sicilian hospital, where I had to spend some time three years ago:  I want to say at the outset that the medical care I received was excellent and I will always be grateful for that.  However, being examined in full view of the other patients in the ward - there were no partitions or curtains that could be drawn around the beds - was somewhat disconcerting, as was having your case discussed within their hearing.  Once I was in the loo when a group of doctors on the ward ruminated upon the best course of action for me and I learnt about my future medication not from them, but from the solicitous patient in the bed opposite.  This lady also appointed herself as my dietician and my advice to anyone having to undergo a similar hospital stay is to surrender your privacy gracefully, for the rewards of doing so are great.

The trouble with privacy, it seems to me, is that we all have a different concept of what it entails and this can happen across or within cultures:  I once had a foreign colleague who kept turning up at my home without warning at inconvenient times and I couldn't work out why he wanted to spend so much time with me, for there was no romantic interest.  I was flabbergasted when he told me that he had never, until he came to Britain at the age of 31, spent as long as one minute of his life alone.  I was almost as surprised when a young Sicilian friend told me that when she gets married she will move into a house situated between that of her mother and that of her mother-in-law but, as she says, what she loses in privacy she will gain in helping hands and she will certainly not lack willing babysitters when the time comes!  

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Another friend here, who has had six children in as many years, does not seem to need personal space at all and perhaps that is just as well! Yet, paradoxically, this friend is more capable than most of understanding that a single life with all the privacy you want - and some that you don't - is not always a joyride.

So there we have it: some have their privacy thrust upon them whilst others give it up for security, family, fame or, unintentionally, to satisfy other desires.  In a world in which we are all increasingly observed, what would you give up yours for?

* Italian privacy laws are under review as I write and there is concern that they may be used to silence some bloggers.  This is a political matter which I do not want to expand upon here but you can read more about it in this post at Alex's.

Below is a full list of blogs participating in this theme:

MY TWO CENTESIMI-WORTH

Shall I use the magic word "Diana" in the title of this post and get lots of hits? - No, I don't think I will.

Almost a year ago, when an Italian magazine published photos of the dying Diana, I wrote this post and received more hits than I had ever had before, though only one comment. [I’d been blogging since April 2006.] In my naivety, I didn’t realise that what a lot of these visitors were looking for was a copy of the magazine. I was amazed when I found out that copies were being sold on ebay.

Now British Channel 4 TV is planning to show a documentary containing video footage of the Princess’s last moments and I gather there is a public outcry. As one commenter wrote to the Telegraph, how long will it be before the Mercedes is sold on ebay?

Here the film The Queen has been available for a couple of months on DVD and friends who have borrowed my copy ask if the situation was really as portrayed in the film. I tell them that it’s an interpretation . They also express, as they expressed in 1997, their amazement at the way the British people “let themselves go” emotionally at that time. I was convinced then , and am convinced now, that this behaviour can be partly explained by the fact that, for the first time, it had become possible to reach middle age without having known bereavement. So for many, the “loss” of this person they had never met was their only experience of it. There were other factors, of course: our collective guilt; our fascination with celebrity, even in death; and if many had not known bereavement, who had not been betrayed in love? We identified with Diana in this, at least.

My opinion is that no one deserves to have their dying moments paraded as entertainment – unless you were Allen Ginsberg and wanted it that way – and , whatever you think of the woman, she has sons, a brother and sisters still living. Please, channel 4, spare a thought for them.

Here is something I wrote in the early days of September 1997. I have not edited it:

DIANA - THOUGHTS OF A REPUBLICAN

Like most people in the country, I switched the radio on last Sunday morning and began to go about my routine. Then I realised that these were not normal programmes. At first, I could not work out who they were talking about. When I did, I thought for a moment that they were going to say that she had topped herself. However, the manner of Diana’s death was so arbitrary as to have been absurd had it not been so tragic. As I listened, I hoped that she had not, at any stage, been conscious.

Then I sat, mesmerised, in front of the television for the rest of the day - something I never do. A week before, we were laughing at her over her denial of what she was supposed to have said to “Le Monde”. Now her funeral was being planned and no one mentioned “Le Monde”.

Of course it is sad. Yet thousands all over the kingdom will have suffered their own tragic losses this week, and they, unlike royalty, do have to worry about how to pay for their little funerals or whether the floral tributes received for their loved ones will be sufficient.

I have never been able to comprehend the mass purchasing of flowers on these royal occasions. If you wish to pay a tribute, why not take flowers to the old, the lonely or the sick? Perhaps, as one newspaper suggested, these improvised shrines are taking the place of religion in the land.

And how does a republican feel about the woman in question?

Let’s face it - we all coveted her looks, her figure and her style. Charitable she certainly was and she showed a genuine warmth towards those she met. But there is a dichotomy in attending a ball to raise money for charity and spending thousands on the dress you wear to it; in campaigning for funds for the underprivileged when what you spend on tights in a week would keep a third world family for thrice as long. But she did her best in the circumstances in which she found herself and the world in which she moved.

As to the rest of the royal family, I think that the judgement of history will be “too late”: Too late, the flag at Buckingham Palace; too late, the viewing of the tributes by the royals; too late came the realisation that they had to be seen to be responding to the situation by the people.

And how did they look at Balmoral, Charles and the Duke? - Like relics of a bygone age, in their silly, and, to our eyes, inappropriate, kilts. And there was the Queen, outside the Palace yesterday. Whoever goes just outside their own home with their hat on and a handbag? Diana, hatless, tightless in summer, gloveless, blew all that away.

For all the respect that the Establishment claims to feel, and although the coffin has been draped, since last Sunday, in the royal standard, the HRH has not been posthumously restored to the Princess. That says it all.

Going back to the lady herself, I truly hope that she did find some happiness with Dodi. However, had she lived, would this hypocritical and deeply racist nation have allowed her to marry a Muslim without comment? I doubt it.

For hypocrites we all are. It is inevitable that someone, somewhere will one day publish a photograph of the dying Princess. When they do, we will all go out and buy the papers. Ghouls to a man, we are too fascinated by her not to do so.

I watched the solemn procession to Kensington Palace last night and honestly felt that anyone with a camera should have been arrested. Hypocrisy, again. After all, I was watching.

I watched again today, in between bouts of working. As the touching cortège passes, you want the young Princes not to hurt so much. You want Diana to know that she was appreciated in a way that she could never have imagined. Most of all, you want it to be last Saturday night and you want to say to her, “Don’t get in the car”. But the reality is all too clear now.

Whatever the Queen says, I do not believe that the royal family will learn from these few days. I think that without Diana they will revert to being the stuffed shirts that they always were. You cannot tell me that, with the exception of William and Harry, they have not collectively breathed a guilty and secretive sigh of relief, now that the force for change has gone.

If the monarchy is to survive at all, perhaps they should declare a regency under Anne until William comes of age. Then Charles can marry the detested Camilla instead of conducting the affair, as we all know he will, behind the drawbridges of his dreary castles.

The royals have come through this week, but only just. It was the closest call they have had. Now, as shock and grief subside, the anger may well resurge.

The kings and queens of Britain live lives of enormous privilege and owe their continued existence to the will of the people. The House of Windsor would do well to remember it.

6.9.97