When the Past was Present: an early representation of the deportation of the Jews of Rome
February 01, 2023, 05:30 PM – 07:30 PM
General Admission Ticket: $5 Members & Students: Totally free
Ruth Ben Ghiat (New York College), Alexander Stille (Columbia University), Raffaele Bedarida (Cooper Union), and Natalia Indrimi (Centro Primo Levi NY) will present a exceptional 1948 film and suggest some hypotheses on its historical past and output.
This distinguished team of students will explore a little-acknowledged 1948 limited movie, a single of the earliest community recollections of the deportation of the Jews of Rome, the exile, and the beginning of the State of Israel. A certain set of circumstances would make the film intriguingly enigmatic. It was directed by Romolo Marcellini, a star of colonial cinema who, soon after the war, observed his way into the movie sector promoted by the American Business office of Strategic Products and services and aimed at portraying the rebirth of a country. The script is by Luigi Barzini Jr., scion of a prominent family that loomed significant in the Italian press since the Belle Epoque. Barzini Jr. graduated from Columbia University at a time when the institution’s management flirted with the Regime. He went on to be the correspondent of Corriere della Sera in Fascist Italy. His father, Luigi Barzini Sr., was a senator and remained on Mussolini’s aspect during the Italian Social Republic becoming director of Italy’s main press company, Agenzia Stefani. Immediately after the war, Luigi Barzini Jr., with clearance from the Allied authorities, established the push company Libera Stampa and ongoing his job as a screenwriter and one of the editors of the prestigious media team La Settimana Incom.
The context that originated this movie is unknown. Without doubt an individual guided the director and the author by the modern memories of Roman Jews. Somebody who realized effectively not only the tale and the wounds, but the streets, the areas, and the spiritual rituals. A person who helped mediate involving the little Italian Jewish earth brutally betrayed by its individual country and a new republic that reluctantly had to come to conditions with the sight of its modern past.
This function is organized in collaboration with Centro Primo Levi, New York.
