This year, Sao Paulo recorded an August dense with Italian cultural events. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Primo Levi, the Tapera Taperá Cultural Centre hosted the presentation of the new Portuguese edition of the poetry by the great Turin-born writer (‘Mil Sois’, published by Todavia). Brazilian translator Mauricio Santana Dias curated the event which also featured readings from the work of three Brazilian poets. In addition, the photographic exhibition ‘Viaggio per l’Italia ebraica’ (‘Voyage across Jewish Italy’) by Alberto Jona Falco is still running at the Holocaust Memorial at the Jewish Museum of Sao Paulo. Again, in the area of literature, Igiaba Scego, an Italian writer of Somalian descent, met with her readers at the Biblioteca Mario de Andrade, the most important public library in Sao Paulo, and at the LiterCultura Festiva in Curitiba, ahead of the upcoming launch of the Portuguese edition of her novel ‘Beyond Babylon’. Reading groups were also re-established in view of the Italian Book Fair organised by the Italian Cultural Institute.
In the promotion of cinema productions, the highlight event was the
Festival 8 ½ hosted at the Espaco Itau’ Cinema Theatre in Sao Paulo, at the presence of Consul General Filippo La Rosa and of film director Marco Tullio Giordana, who was the guest of honour. The Festival 8 ½, which tours 12 Brazilian cities, is confirmed to be the Country’s leading Italian film festival programming more than 300 screenings of the latest releases. The festival opening ceremony was hosted at the Italian Embassy, which sponsors the Festival.
The range of cultural events closed with the 5th edition of the cycle of Baroque music entitled ‘Itinerancia Musical Ruspoli’, dedicated to Prince Francesco Maria Ruspoli, a great patron of the arts in the early 1700s. Recitals and arias in Italian, composed by Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) and Georg Friedrich Haendel (1685-1759), were performed in the presence of the Consuls General of Italy and Hungary in the Church of Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte in the historic centre of Sao Paulo.