Articles by: Tommaso Cartia

As a young girl, growing up in Salerno, Amelia Antonucci used to spend almost every night at the movies. She likely had no idea then that part of her life would end up being dedicated to this great passion of hers and that she would have the chance to share it with so many. After graduating with a degree in modern literature, Antonucci began a career as a cultural attaché at the most important Italian Cultural Institutes in the US. First in New York, where she would become the deputy director in charge of the film department of the Italian Cultural Institute, then in San Francisco, where she moved in 1996.

Eventually she would establish herself in the City by the Bay. From 2008 to 2011 she was the director of San Francisco’s Italian Cultural Institute where, among the other important initiatives aimed at celebrating the Italian culture, she played a key role as an “ambassador” of Italian cinema. “I was always involved in cinema,” Antonucci told us, “in New York, in San Francisco, but also in Rome in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Cinema Department. I always maintained contacts within Luce Cinecittà and other entities that were fundamental in my work as a cultural director in America.” Antonucci recalls her early years working at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York. Her first experience was a collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and its late film curator, Stephen Harvey. “It was dedicated to Anna Magnani,” she says, “and at the end I was mentioned in the MoMA catalog... What an incredible feeling!”

Cinema Italia San Francisco

Even after her retirement as director of the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco, Antonucci’s energy did not decline while her love of film persisted. Pushed by the desire to try something new, she decided to... go back to the classics! She realized that a lot of attention in San Francisco was being given to contemporary cinema, while great classic Italian cinema was slowly disappearing from the big theaters. “I had already brought to the city the New Italian Cinema Events (NICE),” she recounts. “It’s an interesting show of young directors’ first films. However, I missed the golden age when I had brought Alberto Sordi, Marcello Mastroianni, and Michelangelo Antonioni to the city. I wanted to recreate that atmosphere.”

Thus Cinema Italia San Francisco was born. It consists of one full day of showings from morning till night; four or five films from the same director with a themed party to follow. The location is the Castro Theatre, San Francisco’s historic art-deco palace. The first exhibition was in 2013, with a retrospective dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini. The guest of honor from Italy was Giovanni “Ninetto” Davoli, a notable protagonist in such Pasolini films as Uccellacci e Uccellini (The Hawks and the Sparrows) and Il vangelo secondo Matteo (The Gospel According to St. Matthew).

The public was enthusiastic, and the program caught on in San Francisco, becoming an essential event for cinema lovers. In 2014 Cinema Italia San Francisco presented the works of Bernardo Bertolucci; in 2015, Vittorio De Sica’s; in 2016, Anna Magnani’s; and in 2017, Dino Risi and Lina Wertmüller’s.

Antonucci speaks enthusiastically about her creation. “When we presented Bertolucci, we had Joan Chen as a guest of honor. She was one of the main characters in L’Ultimo Imperatore (The Last Emperor), which we presented in the exclusive 3D version. Then in 2015, we presented Vittorio De Sica. It was a great success; we had 1,700 people in just one day. Among the films presented was a restored version of Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis). We try to offer the best that we can to the public, showing restored 35mm films.”

The support of Luce Cinecittà, and the collaboration of the Italian Consulate and Italian Cultural Institute, are fundamental in the success of the event. The program graphics are by publisher, designer, and curator Colpa Press. The biggest challenge that Antonucci faces is certainly the budget. “It’s a project that needs financing because the box office covers only a small portion of the expenses. We are constantly looking for public or private sponsors.” On the last day of the 2017 edition earlier this Fall, Antonucci was able to involve sponsors like the eyeglass company Zenni Optical—a natural choice since one of the films presented was Behind White Glasses, a documentary on Lina Wertmüller by Valerio Ruiz. Wertmüller was the first woman in the history of cinema to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Director. Antonucci was able to get four of Wertmüller’s films and a documentary in a restored format from New York film distributor Kino Lorber.

Passion and a lot of hard work carry Amelia through her ambitious project: to be able one day to transform Cinema Italia San Francisco into a true Italian film festival in America. She is convinced of the project’s great potential thanks to the encouraging response that is coming not only from the Italian and Italian-American public, but also from the general American audience.

The San Francisco Audience

Amelia Antonucci is very active in the Italian community in SF. She is the president of the non-profit Leonardo Da Vinci Society, and one of the administrators of the group called DIVE (Donne Italiane che Vivono all’Estero). However, although Cinema Italia San Francisco is primarily geared towards the Italian community, its audience is mixed. “Actually, the biggest boost comes from the general public. Americans who love films in their original languages are the ones buying tickets. These are the same people who go to see films in German and French. We’ve become part of something that goes beyond the reaches of the Italian and Italian American communities."

Antonucci finds that the San Franciscan audience has always been very open to Italian culture, even more than the public of other cities like New York, where there is a lot more competition. “For example, in 2010,” Antonucci recalls, “alongside the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco, I did a show of Maria Callas’s costumes, and it was incredibly successful. The San Francisco Opera also helped us. Another event was Teatro San Carlo’s trip here with Verdi’s Requiem. It was the event of the year, not just an Italian event.”

Contagious optimism

Antonucci is aware that hers is an uphill battle, as Italian cinema lacks industrial investments and a consistent policy of promotion and distribution. “At the San Francisco International Film Festival,” she says, “France is able to present an average of 30 films a year. We Italians need to jump through hoops to be able to present even one! We still have a lot of work to do in terms of both investments and promotion.” Neverthess, she is optimistic. She notes that Luce Cinecittà is now being restructured along lines similar to UniFrance—the French agency for cinema promotion. “Soon we too will be able to show our cinema abroad with greater strength—both classic and contemporary cinema!” One thing is certain: Amelia Antonucci is a force of nature. And her optimism is contagious. 

The A.I.I.K. is a nonprofit organization with the mission of promoting the relations between Italy and Kenya on an economic, trading and cultural level, trying to improve their internationalization policies.

The A.I.I.K. Mission

Kenya and East African countries such as Rwanda are, in fact, a fertile territory that offers the possibility for many different interactions and businesses like tourism, trading, infrastructure and new technologies for Italian companies, who are looking to find new ways to invest. Of course a lot still needs to be done to simplify the logistics of these types of operations between two countries who have a very different cultures and histories. Mutual understanding and respect for diversity in lifestyle, philosophy and costumes are agents that also affect economic affairs.

To create awareness about these subjects, organizations like the A.I.I.K were born to be a link, a platform and a medium for understanding these two different worlds, which can create a new fruitful economy in the future.

The Roundtable at the Italian Trade Agency

“We are very excited about the Investors Network Event in New York,” said Alessandro Cianfrone, President of A.I.I.K. “It is a key step in our effort to promote, support and enhance economic relations and trade interchange between Italy and Kenya, and to contribute to a better and mutual knowledge of the two markets.”

The conference at the Italian Trade Agency in New York was in line with this purpose. With a lineup of prestigious speakers, A.I.I.K. presented its mission and program of activities for 2018. The meeting was organized in collaboration with Paolo Siniscalco, who is the association’s North American representative. Siniscalco is experienced in mergers and acquisitions, and his firm Siniscalco & Partners is part of the Italian Certified Public Accountants and aligned with the firm Grassi & Co. This partnership created a bridge between Italy and New York, allowing clients to be contemporarily supported in both Italian and US markets.

The meeting started with Maurizio Forte, Trade Commissioner and the Italian Trade Agency in New York’s Executive Director for the USA of the. Forte greeted the guests and made the opening remarks. Then the stage was left to the mediator of the event, Mrs. Marta Eleonora Paiar, who is the Chief Sales Officer in Digicel in Central America. She speaks five languages and is a regular speaker at African and international conferences. Paiar has been based in Nairobi since April 2014, so she can offer a firsthand testimony to the changes and transformation that are occurring in the countries of East Africa.

“I am really proud of this event,” Paiar stated, “Attendees have the valuable opportunity to network with leading investors, CEOs of Italian and Kenyan businesses, general managers and representatives from various firms and companies, and to learn about new opportunities, trends and challenges of the Kenyan market.”

Her dedication to this life’s mission that she undertook was eloquently expressed by the passion that she infused in her speech, giving voice to the other panelists.

The roundtable included Sunir Chandaria, Principal Conros and Honorary Consul of Kenya in Canada; Nancy Wamaitha from Safaricom Limited; Dr. Eliane Ubalijoro, Professor of Practice for Public Private Sector Partnership at McGill Montréal University and Fellow of African Academy Of Science as well as member of President Kagame Advisory council; Zaynah Khanbhai, CEO Latin America, Caribbean and Africa (LAC Africa); Andreas Dal Santo, Director of Research, Italian Central Bank – Director, Solidus Capital Group LLC and Massimo Tommasoli, Permanent Observer for International IDEA to the United Nations.

The speakers brought to the audience’s attention all of the rich opportunities that the countries of East Africa can offer to not only Italy’s economy but also the world economy. It’s an opportunity to establish proficient businesses and to stay away from the usual stereotypes. In fact, much has already changed in those territories that were considered countries of the Fourth World. Their economies are rapidly transforming, but it is important to take into consideration that African culture is a very specific and distinctive one socially, legally and politically. In order to construct a stronger and flourishing community, foreign businesses should enter these countries with an integrated approach that will lead to a mutual understanding of both cultures.

Paolo Siniscalco underlined that when we had the chance to talk with him during the conference:

“I became involved in this association thanks to friends, colleagues, and Italian entrepreneurs who spent a good part of their lives in Africa. Especially president Alessandro Cianfrone and Marta Eleonora Paiar, who lived in Africa. I liked the idea, and I like the idea of cooperation between different people, and I am convinced that the only way to enter into a country is to share culture aspects and to insert yourself among other people. That’s what I’m doing here in the United States, combining the American and Italian mentalities. That’s what should be done in African countries. We shouldn’t be conquistadors. Conquistadors are not welcome. They’re seen as a foe."

Kenya and Italy: The Numbers

The work that A.I.I.K is doing is commendable, and it has become a leading platform in revitalizing not only the Kenyan economy and other East African economies, but it’s also helping Italy’s economy and the economies of other countries interested in this new business frontier.

Kenya is ranked 92nd in the Doing Business Index and 96th in the Global Competitiveness Index 2016-2017.

Kenya is member of the World Trade Organization since its inception in January 1995; it is also a member of COMESA (Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa).

The Country is the 93rd destination market for Italian exports and the 7th destination market for Italian exports to Sub-Saharan Africa.

Thanks to its strategic position and the potential for economic and social development, Kenya is considered an important partner for Italy. In 2016 Italian exports amounted to approximately 211.1 million euros, up 3.9% over 2015, and for the coming years it is expected to grow steadily.

Italian exports consist mainly of me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing (37%), food and beverages (14%), chemicals (10%), electrical equipment (10%) and transportation (10%).

In 2016 Italian imports from Kenya amounted to 52.1 million euros, down 41.7% on the previous year.

The most significant investment opportunities are present in the following areas: construction, infrastructure, food processing, packaging, transportation, and energy.

For more info on the A.I.I.K. activities click here >>

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If you enter the heart of Brooklyn from the Avenue J subway station, you’ll find yourself in a classic Jewish neighborhood, with synagogues and kosher restaurants. It’s the last place you would ever think of finding a typical Italian pizzeria. However, New York is a city of infinite surprises, of contrasts but also of cultural synthesis. And just a few steps away from the Avenue J subway station stop, you’ll find one of the city’s most venerable pizzerias, Di Fara Pizza, a place  that has become legendary and in recent years  an important destination  for tourists and celebrities from all over the world.

The secret of this little storefront  lies in the golden hands of Domenico DeMarco, a pizza maker from Caiazzo, in the province of Caserta, who, since opening the pizzeria in 1964, has been preparing his classic pizzas daily.

Domenico’s Story

His story is also a classic one. In 1959, Domenico left Caiazzo and followed his father, an American citizen, to the dream metropolis of New York. When he told us his story, the silence, the pauses, and his eyes, still full of youthful passion, spoke a thousand words. “My father was an American citizen, so I automatically became a citizen. I came here from the city of Caiazzo, a very old city. My family was a family of farmers. We cultivated oil, figs, and also made wine. Before moving here to Brooklyn, I lived in the town of Huntington on Long Island. I worked on a farm there.”

While he was working on the farm, Domenico remembered that someone told him about the neighborhood near the Avenue J subway stop and that there were interesting opportunities there. One Saturday night, Dom went to visit the area, and he was surprised by the amount of people on the street. The place that would eventually become his pizzeria was for sale and was situated in a great location, steps from the subway entrance. Domenico already had some pizzeria experience, and he felt ready to open his own business.

Trusting the instincts that had always guided him through the important decisions in his life, he decided to take the storefront. When he opened the business, his partner’s name was Farina. The two combined their names, DeMarco and Farina, and Di Fara Pizza was born. The pizzeria is the same today as it was back then, unchanged thanks to Domenico’s strength, determination, and his great love for his art. “As soon as you open the door, you don’t stop working until 9 at night. It’s my passion, my life. I’ve been in business for 53 years,” Domenico proudly told us.
However, pizza was not DeMarco’s only love. He married an American woman who gave him wonderful children. To this day, his daughter Margaret still sticks by her father’s side and helps him run the pizzeria.

“I married a very religious Catholic woman. We got married in the church. I liked her because she did her own thing, and she was reserved. It was good because as I always say, ‘it’s better to be alone than in bad company!’”
In addition to being a tireless pizza maker, Domenico is also a positive and friendly man. He loves life and, in particular, music, which he listens to and plays for Di Fara’s customers.

“I always listen to Italian music here. I like the sound of the accordion, the tarantella, and Italian folk music. One of my favorite artists was Enrico Caruso, who I was able to see here in New York. I also like Enrico Fiume, who always used to come here to have pizza. My music helps me to find the right rhythm for my work. My favorite song is “Ave Maria.”

Di Fara’s Pizza

But what’s made Di Fara so popular? It has become a must stop for tourists visiting New York. Many Italians affirm that the pizza is even better at Di Fara than it is in Italy, and celebrities have never stopped showing up, including singers Tony Bennett and Ed Sheeran and actor Leonardo DiCaprio, to name a few.  

“When Italians come here to try my pizza, they tell me that they like it even more than the pizza they eat in Italy,” Dom says. “I don’t understand how that’s possible because all of the ingredients I use for the pizza come from Italy. The Casapulla mozzarella from Caserta, San Marzano tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil. Perhaps this is the reason: I use only products of an extremely high quality. If you do what you like, if you have passion for your art, in this case the art of making pizza, the magic happens, and people like it. I like what I do, and I’m very proud of what I do.”

Using ingredients of the highest quality is, of course, important. But DeMarco’s skill  is also key. He’s able to make approximately 150 pizzas daily at a rate fast enough to cause any of the larger restaurants to be jealous. Dom does almost everything by himself; he’s helped only by a few assistants, among whom are his children. 
DeMarco’s prowess is not only in his extraordinary hands but also in his knowledge of cooking, of the importance of the dough and the constant search for new processes. “I always experiment with the pizza. I’m always evolving,” Domenico told us.

“Before letting my clients taste a pizza, I’m always the first to try it. The dough is the most important part of the pizza, and that’s where I experiment the most. Pizza shouldn’t stay inside the oven for too long. I keep it in for no more than 5 minutes. If it’s in there for more than 5 minutes, the taste changes radically, and it gets too dry.”

Writing about the taste of this pizza is easy; you can safely say it’s exquisite because that’s just the truth. But it’s the experience of going there to the Avenue J stop in Brooklyn, of walking into a place that seems like something out of a black and white postcard, and of seeing this man, both strong like a rock but as good as bread, knead his pizza, as he’s been doing every day for fifty years… and then of eating it, allows you to taste an important part of our Italian history.
 

Di Fara Pizza

1424 Avenue J
Brooklyn, NY 11230

google map >>

Elena Berriolo is an Italian born, New York-based artist who has made a commitment since 2009 of working exclusively in the book format with the sewing machine. 

Elena's Roots

Elena was born in Savona, a small city on the north east coast of Italy, an area of the Italian Riviera where many influential artists used to gravitate up to the 1960's because of the ceramic workshops in the village of Albissola, a few miles from Savona. Berriolo became interested in ceramics, and in 1974, at age of 15, she started interning with a ceramist business in Albissola. At the time she did not know anything about contemporary art, but that was when she first came across big names such as Piero Manzoni, Lucio Fontana, Nikolay Diulgheroff and Bruno Munari. 

She then decided to study art in Turin at the Accademia Albertina and after her graduation she moved to Milan. In January 1990 at the opening of her solo show at Studio Marconi 17 Gallery, she met a New Yorker, the person who would eventually become her husband and with whom she moved to NYC in 1994 where she continues to live.

The Sewing Machine Epiphany

After experimenting with sculpting, painting, performing, Elena had an epiphany while thinking about one of the most traditional femminine tools: the sewing machine. She came to the realization that the uninterrupted line that a sewing machine produces can be a response to the Infinite Line series by Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana's cuts that break the two dimensional space of the canvas. The cut on the canvas suggests a third dimension, redefining the concepts of space and time. 

For Berriolo, the sewing machine is an instrument that can produce an infinite line. This line while embracing the two sides of the page, is visible on the front and on the back of a stiched material. Therefore the front side of the line is in the present and the back side of it is in the future, portraying an infinite and holistic sense of time. As the artist stated - write/sew a book by reading in the second page, the memory of the first one.

Also the sewing machine became for Berriolo a symbol of the feminine energy that is infused throughout her art. "I chose the sewing machine the moment I stopped believing that to be worthy of being considered an artist, a woman needed to delete the word "woman" from her own identity"

Books as Bridges

Ultimately the machine has become for the artist the vehicle with which she gives a voice to social and political statements, from femminist revendications to political ones. As Berriolo said, "the very identity of the machine as an instrument able to link, to repair and to unite, led me in 2015 to start a series of works aimed to mend the world." A vivid example of this was the performance A Book as a Bridge, Across the Mexican Border, presented while travelling from San Diego to Tijuana, on December 19th 2016, the day of D. Trump's confirmation, as an act of protest against the wall that the new President of the United States was planning to build. 

"In San Diego," the artist recounts, "I placed my machine at the rear end of a Tijuana bound Tourismo Express bus next to an accordion book whose length, when unfolded, would equal more or less the length of the bus. I started sewing/tracing the book with an embroidered line at the San Ysidro Station and continued producing it while unfolding the book up to my arrival in Tijuana, Mexico. At the time of arrival, the whole line-book had stretched through the entire length of the bus, having grown the distance from its back to its front while growing from San Diego to Tijuana over the Mexican border, covering about five miles distance within its 35 feet of its length while creating a bridge."

"Since I have committed to limit myself to working within the book format, and therefore excluding most of my work from being displayed on a gallery wall, I need to make a public statement. That is why I started performing," explains the artist.

But not all performances involve political statements or social revendications. Berriolo uses the sewing machine also to investigate the rhythms of nature, sewing in unison with them or with played music. In one of her first performances, Two Sided Concerto, back in 2012, she sewed following the rhythm of a piano, in collaboration with pianist Edith Hirshtal. 

"Whenever I use my sewing machine next to a musician, soon enough he or she will have no choice but to go along or against my beat. Our interaction produces two outcomes: our music and a visual outcome which is a book. This performance came from the realization that the sewing machine, sounding as a percussion beat while producing a pattern, is a link among visual art and music."

The Performances at the Children's Museum of the Arts

But these are just some of the visual and conceptual possibilities of the sewing machine, and its enchantments can really be experienced just watching the artist performing or flipping the pages of her books. This is an experience that is very hard to translate and report through words. From the most conceptual notions like when she perforates the Fibonacci Sequence to the investigation of nature's microbiotic life, as when she recreates the paths of a beetle over a leaf, these are all suggestions that have to be experienced with the full 5 senses and beyond.

If you are interested in knowing more and experiencing the world of this fascinating artist, don't miss the chance to go see her performing this September and October in New York at the Children's Museum of the Arts in New York.

The Calendar

September 21, 2017
The perforation of the Fibonacci Sequence in a Book which will be a10 minute performance every 20 minutes from 3:00-4:30PM

September 24, 2017
Feed me The Line, a performance with sewing machine and poetry with poet Sarah Riggs at 3PM

October 1, 2017
A Book as a Bridge Among Diversity, a performance with sewing machine as an act of resistance for DACA.  performance at 3PM

October 8, 2017
The Infinite Poem  a performance with sewing machine seaming together words and thoughts from the participants and have them fly through  space held up by balloons. An interactive performance at 3PM

October 14, 2017
The Sound of Silence, a performance with sewing machine and violin, with violinist Rosi Hertlein at 3PM

October 22, 2017
A Book as a Bridge among time and space.

An interactive performance on the 1 train from Houston Street Station to Cortland Park station in the Bronx.It is an act of resistance to the repeal of Obamacare. The average lifespan of a child born in the Greenwich Village is 5 to 8 years longer than the life of a child from the Bronx, By sewing a line on an accordion book while traveling from the Village to the Bronx and back, a bridge will be built among the two destinations, covering 25 miles within the 40 feet of the book while linking the two communities. Leaving from the Museum at 3PM.

For more info about the artist go visit her website here >>