The Italian Cultural Centre is back in action after the summer break. We hope that you have all had the opportunity for a great holiday. We are proud to present our rich autumn programme.
Category Archives: Mediterranean Remapped
Mediterranea by Jonas Carpignano
CHAPTER ARTS CENTRE
Saturday 8 October 6:30pm
Ayiva and Abas have fled Burkina Faso, dreaming of a better life on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. After a death-defying crossing they arrive in southern Italy and must quickly readjust to life in Europe which is more violent and hostile than they imagined. An unsentimental and creative look at the refugee crisis. Watch the official trailer here
Join us after the film for Skype Q&A with actor Koudous Sehionan and an interview with Domenico Lucano, Major of the Town of Riace in Calabria. Our members get 10% discount on tickets.
For more information and tickets click here.
This event is organised in partnership with Watch-Africa
In the Sea There are Crocodiles : meet author Fabio Geda
Our next Book Club event will be on Saturday 1 October from 6-8pm at Octavo’s Bookshop in West Bute Street, CF10 5LJ. Celebrated writer Fabio Geda will be joining us from Italy to discuss his acclaimed book In the Sea there are Crocodiles. This event is in English and Italian. Tickets are £3 for members and £5 non members (includes discount on signed copy).
In early 2002, Enaiatollah Akbari’s village fell prey to the Taliban. His mother, fearing for his life, led him across the border. So began Enaiat’s remarkable five-year ordeal—trekking across bitterly cold mountains, riding the suffocating false bottom of a truck, steering an inflatable raft in violent waters—through Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, and Greece, before he eventually sought political asylum in Italy, all before he turned fifteen years old.
In the Sea There Are Crocodiles Fabio Geda delivers the moving true story of Enaiat’s extraordinary will to survive and of the accidental brotherhood he found with the boys he met along the way. Geda brilliantly captures Enaiat’s engaging voice and humor, in what is a truly epic story of hope and survival, for readers of all ages.
Fabio Geda is an Italian writer who formerly worked with children in difficulties. He writes for several Italian magazines and newspapers, and teaches creative writing in the most famous Italian school of storytelling, the Scuola Holden in Turin. Since the international success of his best selling novel In the Sea There Are Crocodiles, Fabio devotes most of his time to writing and attending literary festivals around the world. In the Sea There Are Crocodiles is his first book to be translated into English and won the 2013 Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation.
Italian Film Festival Cardiff Taster
Fire at sea (Fuocoammare) by Gianfranco Rosi
Friday 24 June, Chapter Cinema 8:45 (book tickets here)
On 24 June, during Refugee Week, we have organised another special event around the premiere of Fire at Sea (Fuocoammare) by Gianfranco Rosi, winner of this year’s Golden Bear in Berlin. This intense and beautiful docufilm, part of our Mediterranean Re-Mapped project, will be introduced by migration adviser and co-founder of S.O.S. Mediterranée Prof. Udo Enwereuzor. Prof. Enwereuzor will also be present at the Q&A with film editor Jacopo Quadri after the screening of the film.
Tale of Tales (Il racconto dei racconti) by Matteo Garrone
Saturday 18 June, Chapter Cinema 7:45 (book tickets here)
We have organised a special event around the Welsh premiere of Tale of Tales (Il racconto dei racconti) by Matteo Garrone. The gaudy and dazzling adaptation of the seventeenth century folk-tales by Giambattista Basile will be introduced by Domenico Basile (descendant of the writer and curator of the latest edition of Lo cunto de li cunti) and followed by a Q&A with actor Guillaume Delaunay.
In My Mother’s House by Ákos Östör & Lina Fruzzetti
On 2 June in partnership with Cardiff University and Transnationalizing Modern Languages we will screen In My Mother’s House by Ákos Östör and Lina Fruzzetti a new documentary in Italian, Tigrinya and English (with English subtitles) on the many sides of multiple identities, familial bonds, and ambiguities of colonialism, stretching from the Horn of Africa to Italy and the USA. Book free ticket here
Ákos Östör and Lina Fruzzetti are university-based filmmaker-ethnographers (Brown and Wesleyan in the USA). They authored numerous distinguished films and publications. They collaborate closely with participants in their films and often with other filmmakers. Their films are visually interpretive, respecting the integrity of the culture and the locality. They use narration or not, subtitles, voice over, and inter-titles, or no words at all, just as a particular film demands it. This is their first, deeply personal film.
Their previous films in India and Tanzania concern individual lives in small communities, in contexts ranging from sacred rituals and festivals in a town, to women scroll painters and singers in village West Bengal; from fish markets in Dar es Salaam, to a cooperative of disabled people in Zanzibar.
All were shown at festival around the world and won numerous awards.
Their written work is independent yet related to the films. They also participated in creating museum exhibitions and catalogues (Helsinki, Lisbon, Geneva) as well as websites around their work.
Voices and Faces of a Post-Colonial Heritage, Cardiff
On 27 February 2016 the Italian Cultural Centre Wales (ICCW), in partnership with Transnationalizing Modern Languages and Watch Africa, held a one-day event in Cardiff on the history of Italian colonialism in the Horn of Africa and transnational mobilities from this region to/from Italy. The event, aptly called Voices and Faces of a Post-Colonial Heritage, was organised around the screening of the new Italian docufilm Asmarina (Alan Maglio e Medhin Paolos, 2015) with the support of AISCLI, l’Università degli Studi di Milano, il Centro di Studi Postcoloniali e di Genere at the University Orientale in Naples, Docucity and Dizioni Diasporiche. As Caterina Bertelli and Luca Paci from ICCW explained, this event is part of a larger project called ‘Mediterranean Re-mapped’ started during the Italian Film Festival, Cardiff with the screening of Io sto con la sposa (Del Grande, Augugliaro, Al Nassiry 2014) and born from the urge to show a different image of the Mediterranean from that available in the media today. The project also aims somehow to shrug the veil of collective blindness that permits a tacit acquiescence to the thousands who drown while crossing the Mediterranean. Understanding the reasons behind our callous blindness involves exploring both our identity as Italians, a product of many different cultures mostly originating from across the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, and our personal and national (hi)stories and heritage in an effort to redress the ongoing silence and cultural amnesia revolving around Italian colonial history. Continue reading
ITALIAN CULTURAL CENTRE WALES LAUNCHES IN CARDIFF
[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”15″ gal_title=”ICCW Team”]
27.05.2015
Press Release
ITALIAN CULTURAL CENTRE WALES LAUNCHES IN CARDIFF
The Italian Cultural Centre Wales was launched on Friday 22 May 2015 at an event held at Butetown Arts & History Centre in Cardiff.
At the event attended by representatives from a number of arts organisations in Wales, Directors Dr Luisa Pèrcopo and Dr Luca Paci outlined their vision for the Centre as a lively connecting hub and resource centre for Italians in Wales and everyone interested in Italian culture.
The evening included performances by the Italian poet and translator Cristina Viti and by Baritone Richard Parry, who sang Italian and Welsh arias accompanied by pianist Chris Glynn. A documentary on Italians living in Wales directed by Paolo Viel was also shown. Refreshments were provided by Calabrisella, and sponsored by Orangebox and Vinitalia.
The Centre is run by a team of enthusiastic Italians based in Wales from a variety of different backgrounds and regions in Italy including video editor/VFX generalist Paolo Viel, and Italian tutor Caterina Bertelli.
Luisa Pèrcopo and Luca Paci said: “Our purpose is to discover and create new connections between Italy, Wales and the rest of Europe and to reinforce existing ones, particularly those born from the well-established Italian-Welsh communities who have played an important role in contributing to and shaping present day Wales.”
The centre will host regular cultural events such as book launches, poetry reading, a film and a book club, food tastings and concerts. The next event will be held at Butetown History and Arts Centre on 2nd June (Republic Day in Italy). The event called #GranaJazz will feature a live performance by Gyazzoband (an Italian Jazz band based in Caerphilly) and wine and Grana cheese will be available for tasting.
The event also officially launched the first Italian Film Festival in Cardiff, which will take place in October 2015.
There are also plans to run an educational programme for children and adults learning and maintaining Italian as a second or first language in partnership with The Italian Job.
Follow ICCW at @IccwHere and www.facebook.com/ItalianCulturalCentreWales
For images and further information contact mail.iccw@gmail.com
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