Films, comics, puppets, conferences, a training course and a pronunciation contest constitute the rich calendar of events organized by the Italian Cultural Institute of Beijing and by the Italian Embassy for the 19th edition of the Italian Language Week. A calendar of in-depth discussions on various topics began on October 11th with the Training Course for Chinese Teachers who teach Italian at the University of Tianjin, in collaboration with the University for Foreigners of Siena. The closing event will take place on 7 November with the puppet show ‘Menelao’ at the Auditorium of the Italian Institute.
On October 14, the conference “Igort, from Comics to Cinema” by Italian director, screenwriter and cartoonist Igor Tuveri (stage name Igort) addressed the relationship between comics and cinema, illustrated in Igort’s film “5 is the perfect number” and presented on the same days at the Pingyao International Film Festival. Three days later the film ‘Cronofobia’ was screened. This is the first feature film by young director Francesco Rizzi from Ticino. Then on October 18 the anthology “Shi Se” containing 16 stories by eight Italian and eight Chinese authors and published by the People’s Literature Publishing House, was presented with the participation of the writers Gabriele Di Fronzo and Feng Tang. Before the event, Di Fronzo met with students from the Italian department of the Beijing Language and Culture University.
On October 20, journalist and writer Beppe Severgnini met the Italian community, while on the next day he delivered a lecture addressed to Italian students at the Beijing Language and Culture University, entitled “Eight words to understand Italy”.
On October 22nd the conference entitled ‘Primo Levi and science fiction: ‘German tales’ in Natural Stories’ by Francesco Cassata, professor of Contemporary History at the University of Genoa, was held at the auditorium of the Italian Cultural Institute. This was followed by the screening, in Italian with subtitles in Chinese, of the television drama ‘Sleeping Beauty in the fridge’ taken from one of the stories written by Primo Levi. Professor Cassata then gave a lecture at the Beijing Foreign Studies University on the 23rd October entitled “Primo Levi and science fiction. Reflections on Natural Stories (1966) and Vizio di Forma (1971).
“The Lupa by Verga: from short stories to the theater” is the title of the conference held on October 23 by Enza De Francisci, professor at the University of Glasgow and a scholar of Verga and Pirandello. And then came the turn of the conference ‘Race and Language’ by Andrea Moro, neurolinguist and professor of linguistics at the University Advanced School of Pavia on the discoveries of theoretical linguistics and neurolinguistics which have overturned the old pseudo-scientific assumptions that justified racist ideologies fueled also by linguistic factors.
On October 25 the Beijing Language and Culture University will host the Italian pronunciation and elocution competition for Italian students from the seven universities in Beijing, Tianjin and the Hebei Province where Italian is studied. Finally, the closing event willbe held on 6 November with the puppets of the Teatrino Giullare in co-production with the Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione.
