Italian Cinema Today

Rotonda By Sergio Ragone The Pollino Experience portal at pollinoexperience.com  is now online. The territorial communication and promotion project aggregates the accommodation and catering facilities belonging to the "Il Borgo Ospitale" compound in Rotonda.  The portal is divided into four main sections: Food , with direct links to the catering facilities and excellent food and wine offer which enhance the area's products: red aubergine and white bean; Hospitality , the section with direct connections to the Albergo Diffuso Borgo Hotel and its facilities; Wellness , the area to discover the wellness services offered by the Eufrasia SPA; Nature , a section entirely dedicated to direct contact with nature and the environment, for those looking for a fully sustainable and ecological tourist experience. Another section, Stories , is dedicated to the history of the territory and consists of testimonies presented by the protagonists and guests of the structures. Pollino Nation...

Written by Sergio Ragone After more than a year of closures caused by the fight against Covid, Italian catering restarts from Made in Italy and from the excellence of the territory. An example of how this strategy is successful is offered to us by the newly created platform "Officine La Rossa," a hub of Lucanian food and wine excellences, which recently opened in Rotonda, a village of extraordinary beauty and home of the excellent red aubergine DOP.  The creator of the project, which makes use of the collaboration with the Lucanian Coldiretti, is Franco Bruno who presented the basic idea of the Officine as follows: "Our challenge is to welcome the many tourists who come to Rotonda every year in the Pollino Park," explained Bruno. He went on to say, "In this structure, they can taste the best of agri-food products made in Basilicata; an initiative that aims to promote the best synergies between sustainable tourism and food combined with the typical hospitality o...

Singer/Songwriter Rosmy performs at the Giornate del Cinema Lucano in Maratea My editor at  Fra Noi Magazine recently asked me to write an article about my experience traveling through Basilicata and researching my origins there. If you've followed this blog for a while, then you know that I am always happy to offer my insight into contemporary Basilicata. New School Basilicata It has been 20 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. I was living in New York City at the time and working at ABC News as a video editor. Seeing all that heartbreaking footage of people jumping to their deaths from the Twin Towers and then walking through the eeriness of Manhattan made me realize how precious life is and how we can literally be here one moment and gone the next. That realization led me to do something I had been putting off for years — perform a genealogical search of my maternal great-grandmother’s family in Basilicata. Of all my great-grandparents who emigrated from Italy, I ...

Poetry that crosses images and becomes cinema - By Sergio Ragone Born from an idea by Sergio Ragone and Omar Gallo, and created by the award-winning director Giuseppe Marco Albano , in collaboration with photographers Mariano Silletti, Federica Danzi, Raffaele Contini, Pierangelo Laterza and Michele Lategana, with the original music by Robert G. Pellegrino , the texts by Sergio Ragone , the voices of Omar Gallo and Andrea Ramolo (for the international version), the video "Terra lucana" is an artistic homage to Basilicata, to its natural beauty and its humanity. "We chose to make this video - Albano, Gallo and Ragone jointly declare - to try to give a new story to Basilicata. The choice of the shots of talented photographers, combined with the poetry of the words and the original music composed precisely for this work, has allowed us to overcome the usual and by now consummate narration of Lucanian places through the use of canonical images of Lucanian land...

The story and landscape of Lucania are in the spotlight during the month of April. A rare, uncut version of Francesco Rosi ’s 1979 film "Christ Stopped at Eboli" is being shown at the Film Forum in New York City’s West Village. The screenplay was adapted from the book by Carlo Levi, a doctor, writer and painter from Torino who was exiled to the southern region of Lucania (today, Basilicata) because of his political beliefs. The year was 1935 and Benito Mussolini's Fascist Party was in power. Levi was forced into exile due to the silencing of those who spoke out against fascism.  The uncut version is divided into four parts and lasts approximately four hours. The most striking difference from the two hour version is the visual decadence. The cinematographer, Pasquale De Santis, brother of director Giuseppe De Santis (Bitter Rice) , was Rosi's longtime collaborator. It's obvious from the composition of the shots and the slow pans of the unique Lucanian landsca...

The big news in Basilicata this week is making the New York Times list of 52 places to go in 2018 . Pictured in the article with a nice write-up is Matera. While this ancient stone city is stunning and should be on everyone’s list of places to visit, there are so many other treasures across the region of Basilicata. Also referred to by its ancient name, Lucania, the region is divided into two provinces: Potenza and Matera. While Matera gets a lot of attention for the Sassi district, the abandoned town of Craco and the beaches and Greek ruins of Metaponto, the province of Potenza has its own breathtaking spots such as the Dolomite mountains, Pollino National Park and the seaside town of Maratea, nicknamed the pearl of the Tyrrhenian. Little known, especially here in America, is a vast land of vineyards located in the province of Potenza. Many of these vineyards are located in various towns surrounding the great Monte Vulture, a dormant volcano, which houses two small lakes....

Lucano filmmaker Nicola Ragone will present his latest film "Urli e risvegli" at the Bari International Film Festival.  The film is a  portrait of Carmine Donnola, a bearded and silent man with wide eyes full of life lived. As a young man he wanted to be an actor, but no one ever believed in his talent. Today he is in his '60s and lives in his hometown of Grassano, a small town in Basilicata. Through travel notes between ancestral places among the infinite landscapes of Lucania, Ragone takes us on an intimate adventure full of paradoxical encounters and grotesque characters that make up the fresco of a mythical civilization in conflict with modernity. Watch the trailer... 

" Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.”  -Albert Einstein My great-grandparents shortly after arriving in America Most Italian-Americans in their 40’s are third generation, which means our great-grandparents were part of the 12,000,000 people with hopes and dreams who arrived on Ellis Island during the mass immigration of the early 1900’s. Many of us are lucky enough to have known at least one of those brave souls. In my case, it was my great-grandmother Rosa Maria Nigro who immigrated to western New York from Rionero in Vulture, located in Italy's southern region of Basilicata. She came to America as a teenager in 1906. She married, raised four children (one of whom was killed on D-Day in World War II) and modestly lived the American dream. She passed away in 1980 when I was 8-years-old but she made a lifetime impression on ...

Video artist and animator Donato Sansone has made the short list for Oscar contention with his latest work, " Journal Anime ." He has joined the ranks of an emerging generation in Italy's southern region of Basilicata that has received international acknowledgement for their work as filmmakers.  Sansone is from a small town called Bella. By coincidence, I recently spent a week in his charming hometown, and I can say that it's what many of us Italian-Americans imagine when we dream of the land of our origins.. quaint and lovely with warm, kind people, delicious culinary products and gifted chefs who know well how to utilize them. I spent an unforgettable week there attending the town's exceptional film festival, which showcased compelling topics and filmmakers from all over Italy. So, it's no surprise the town has produced a talented filmmaker of its own. I asked Sansone about his work and his origins in this beautiful, justly named town of Bella. Our inte...