Female self portraits (Florence, 12/17/10-1/30/11)

Autoritratte (Female self portraits)
“Artiste di capriccioso e destrissimo ingegno” (Lady artists of inspired and most dextrous ingenuity)
Florence, Uffizi Gallery, Sala delle Reali Poste, from Dec. 17, 2010 until Jan. 30, 2011

"Eighty female self portraits – sixty from the Vasarian Corridor and from the repositories and the twenty new ones brought in for the exhibition – lead us to reflect on the meagre 7% represented by the self portraits by women, lost amidst the vast Uffizi collection as a whole, now numbering 1,700 artists’ self portraits.
It was extensive reflections on these figures that triggered the research that has been translated into a chronological display itinerary which – in addition to fostering an interpretation through names and numbers of the historically subordinate condition of women artists, at length confined to areas that limited their expressive capacities, at least in comparison to the opportunities offered to men – also led to the inclusion of portraits of female artists from the seventeenth century up to the present, selecting works variously illustrative of quality, naivety, academism or fashions, but frequently also strokes of genius.

Strikingly, the Uffizi collection numbers some of the female artists who were acknowledged as worthy of mention between the sixteenth and the eighteenth century. A few who managed to emerge at that time, a considerable number fully recognised today, and a few to be restored to the light of lost identity or fame, as in the case of Maria Hadfield Cosway, whose youthful self portrait has recently been identified in the portrait of an unknown young lady.
Starting with the mirror self portraits which, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century tended to be admired because apparently produced “by the brush of a man of outstanding talent rather than that of a woman”, we arrive – also through the use of the new media – at the attempt at mimesis and deconstruction of the identity that traversed the twentieth century, rendering the image no longer a duplication of the model but rather its equivalent.
The ‘disrespectful’ number of contemporary female portraits, which failed to reflect the actual evolution of the arts in the twentieth century, led us to request new self portraits from women artists in Italy and abroad of our own times – also with a view to updating and to the future of the Collection; they responded with enthusiastic and generous donations. Carla Accardi, Vanessa Beecroft, Mirella Bentivoglio, Nadia Berkani, Antonella Bussanich, Lynne Curran, Berlinde de Bruyckere, Niki de Saint Phalle, Marilù Eustachio, Esther Ferrer, Giosetta Fioroni, Jenny Holzer, Yayoi Kusama, Ketty La Rocca, Lucia Marcucci, Elisa Montessori, Patti Smith, Tinca Stegovec, Alison Watt and Francesca Woodman. The twenty new self portraits hence assume a symbolic role of offsetting, exemplifying the myriad shifts of thought and style which, through both new and traditional media – painting, sculpture, drawing, tapestry, photography, visual poetry and video – made the just-closed century so fertile and did so precisely through the endeavours of a host of determined and committed women, eminently capable of expressing their creative ingenuity."

* Article by Valeria Ronzani [Il Sole 24 Ore]

The Global Gender Gap Report 2010: Italy

According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2010, the Gender Gap Index 2010 places Italy at the 74th position out of 134 countries.

* Read more at the World Economic Forum's website.

An open letter by Elvira Dones

The Albanian writer Elvira Dones, author of the novel Sole bruciato, wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It could open our eyes about the life of some women migrants in italy.

* text [from teologhe.org, one of a large number of sites publishing the letter]

"Christine Cristina" by Stefania Sandrelli

«After growing up at the court of Charles V in France, where her father was court astrologer and physician, the Italian Cristina da Pizzano, also known as Christine de Pisan, is left completely destitute during the struggle between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. Forced to survive by her wits amidst the dregs of society, Cristina discovers she has a talent for poetry thanks to Charleton, a minstrel who tours the taverns, and Gerson, a theologist. Stefania Sandrelli makes her directing debut with a true story about the gentle sex (but she wrote the script with Giacomo Scarpelli and Marco Tiberi, under Furio Scarpelli's supervision). She wanted to capture " the Middle Ages according to women, with their colours, their lullabies, their human warmth. Cristina becomes a writer when that career was precluded to women, and just because she has to make a virtue of necessity. A magical adventure that completely won me over, one that I can relate to." The Cristina of the title is played by Sandrelli's own daughter, Amanda». [Cinema e Medioevo]

* trailer
* listen to a ballad and more [Radio Emilia Romagna]

Poverty among Mothers in Italy

In commemoration of Mother’s Day, Save the Children is publishing its eleventh annual State of the World’s Mothers Report.

According to Save the Children's State of the World's Mothers Report 2010 and Cittalia Foundation Report - ANCI Researches for Save the Children on Poverty among Mothers in Italy, there are 4.2 millions poor women in Italy. 1 million and six hundred thousand are mothers.

* News in Italian

The Global Gender Gap Report 2009

According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index 2009, Italy holds 72nd position in the ranking.
"The report’s Index assesses countries on how well they are dividing their resources and opportunities among their male and female populations, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities."

Material Girls!

Material Girls! is a downloadable collection of the most interesting posts about women published during the last two years by Nazione Indiana.

Index:

donne e immigrazione

Emilia, Helena Janeczek
Donne immigrate e processi di inclusione: il caso delle donne albanesi, Claudia Cominelli
Vittime collaterali, Tiziana de Novellis

femmine toste

Rosaria Capacchione: Io, condannata a morte e a vivere sotto scorta, Fulvio Bulfi
Donne e fascismo, Bianca Madeccia
Le pupe, Donata Amico
Mano libera ai killer per sfidare lo Stato, Rosaria Capacchione
I pirati della spazzatura, Loretta Napoleoni

il corpo delle donne

Il mio piccolo mostro, Irene Gironi Carnevale
Il corpo di Antigone e la 194, Marco Rovelli
194: dall’interno, Francesca Matteoni
Sfinge bluastra, Ulrike Draesner traduzione di Camilla Miglio
Finestrella viola, Simona Baldanzi
La materia umana, Sara Palombieri

donne, arte e letteratura

Un requiem per Misia, Tina Nastasi
La bellezza andrà all’inferno? Lettera a Ornela Vorpsi, Massimo Rizzante
Il mondo di Elizabeth Bishop, Nadia Agustoni
Scriverei anche di un sasso, Franz Krauspenhaar, Cristina Annino
L’anima ardita di Björk e l’animismo islandese, Viola di Grado

paesi altri

Turchia: Le donne di Istanbul, Lorenzo Bernini, Giovanni Hänninen
Fard Times and War Crimes, Azra Nuhefendic

donne e scienza

Una barca senza più cielo, Antonio Sparzani

scritture e storie di donne

Passi spiegati, Mariasole Ariot
sette quattordici ventotto, Chiara Valerio
“…cercando primavere di viole”, Orsola Puecher
Sei autrici per margini, frontiere – anteprima Sud 11
Suora carmelitana, Franco Buffoni

"The White Space" by Francesca Comencini

Lo spazio bianco

* synopsis
* interview with F. Comencini [video]
* trailer

The movie is based on a novel by Valeria Parrella.

"Il corpo delle donne" by Lorella Zanardo

Lorella Zanardo, a member of W.I.N. Women's International Networking, wrote the text of a highly recommended documentary, made in collaboration with Marco Malfi Chindemi and Cesare Cantu'. Its title is Il corpo delle donne (Women bodies) and it is a collection of TV fragments with a commentary made by the author. In addition to the questions that the author asks to the audience, the documentary could help to realize what Italians watch every day in Italian commercial and public channels.

* video: Lorella Zanardo talking about the documentary

Italian Women Rise Up

Chiara Volpato, professor of social psychology at the University of Milan, has published an op ed essay in the New York Times in which argues that a new feminist movement in Italy may be one of the lasting consequences of Berlusconi's years in power. The article is posted below.


"Italian Women Rise Up"
MANY outside Italy seem to assume that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gets away with his sexist behavior because Italian men condone it and the women at least tolerate it. But this is no longer true. Today there are two Italys: one Italy has soaked up Mr. Berlusconi’s ideology either out of self-interest or an inability to resist his enormous powers of persuasion; the other is fighting back.

It’s about time. Mr. Berlusconi’s behavior has been outrageous. When a female student asked him for advice about her financial troubles, he suggested that she marry a man who was rich like his son. (Mr. Berlusconi claimed he was joking.) He has bragged about the beauty of his party’s female parliamentary candidates, and raised eyebrows by putting former starlets into the government. He designated a former model with whom he had publicly flirted to be Minister of Equal Opportunities. This spring, his wife accused him of cavorting with young women and declared that she wanted a divorce.

Why have Italians put up with all this? Compared to those in other European countries, conservative ideas in Italy die hard, in part because of our famously patriarchal culture but also because of the huge influence of the Roman Catholic Church, whose political and social interference in public affairs seems to have become even stronger since Mr. Berlusconi first became prime minister in 1994. (The church, for example, has threatened to excommunicate doctors who prescribe the abortion pill as well as patients who use it.)

Furthermore, Italy’s glass ceiling has proved to be more resistant than it is elsewhere in Europe. Italy ranks 67th out of 130 countries considered in a recent report of the World Economic Forum on the Global Gender Gap Index, ranking lower than Uganda, Namibia, Kazakhstan and Sri Lanka. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, just under half of Italy’s women have jobs, compared with an average of nearly two out of three. At the same time, Italian men have 80 more minutes of leisure time per day — the greatest difference in the 18 countries compared. This is probably explained by the additional time that women devote to unpaid work, like cleaning the house. It is no surprise, then, that many Italian women are unwilling to take on an additional burden of raising children. As a result, the country has an extraordinarily low birthrate.

The Italian media only exacerbate this bleak reality by presenting a picture of women that is incomprehensible to the rest of Europe. Private TV channels have started to broadcast images of women who are typically lightly dressed and silent beauties serving as decoration while older, fully dressed men are running the show. (It is worth noting here that Mr. Berlusconi owns the leading private television networks.)

The impact of years of brainwashing is plain to see: recent research demonstrated that the most popular ambition among female teenagers is to become a velina (basically a showgirl). Young women and girls are consistently taught that their bodies, rather than their abilities and their knowledge, are the key to success. At the same time, the sexism portrayed on TV reinforces chauvinistic ideas among the culturally weakest parts of the population. Researchers who study female body objectification need only look to Italy to witness the sad consequences of this phenomenon.

The portrayals of women bring to mind darker moments in our country’s past. During Italy’s Fascist era in the first half of the 20th century, there was no shortage of derogatory images of people from its colonies in Africa. Women were portrayed as sexual objects and the men as barbarian enemies. In recent years, as immigrants have been flocking to Italy, these kinds of crude stereotypes have been coming back. To give just one example: The leader of the Northern League Party, Umberto Bossi, has called immigrants “bingo bongos.” These attitudes in part reflect the feelings of economic and social insecurity that have only deepened over the past decade or so. The responses to this, namely sexism and racism, are just two sides of the same coin.

These days, however, there are signs of change. Italians are denouncing Mr. Berlusconi’s sexist behavior through various strategies: by bringing their grievances to the European Court of Human Rights and by making a documentary about the objectification of the female body like “Il Corpo delle Donne” by Lorella Zanardo.

In June shortly before the G-8 meeting in L’Aquila, a small group of Italian academic women, including me, invited the first ladies of the participating countries to boycott the event as a sign of protest. In just a few days, 15,000 women and men signed our petition to get the first ladies to boycott. Obviously, the main aim was not to persuade the first ladies to modify their travel plans, but to speak out against Mr. Berlusconi’s sexist behavior.

Today those who dissent have a hard time gaining visibility. The aforementioned appeal to the first ladies, for instance, got great attention from the international news media, but not much ink was spilled by national papers on this issue, and radio and television were generally silent.

Despite these obstacles, it feels as if Mr. Berlusconi has gone too far, and the recent sexual scandals are chipping away at his popularity. Just look at the polls. Traditionally, women, together with low-income and older people, have been great supporters of Mr. Berlusconi, presumably because they tend to watch his television channels. Although Mr. Berlusconi still enjoyed considerable support at the time of this year’s European elections, recent scandals brought his approval ratings to below 50 percent, with a notable drop in approval among women.

The willingness to speak up and to mobilize that is spreading among us is well summarized in a letter that an Italian woman recently sent to the newspaper L’Unità: “I am ready. Just decide: the place, the day and the hour. I am ready to rally.”

But what can Italian women actually do? An important step is to make dissent known, a difficult task considering that true free speech is largely limited to only a few independent newspapers and, importantly, the Internet. We need to start working on a systematic documentation of incidents of discrimination against women.

We also need better organization. Existing groups that would be the most naturally engaged in the emerging dissent (like the opposition Democratic Party, which seems distracted by internal fights) have not been sensitive to the many signs from below. Women will need to exert greater pressure on the opposition parties to represent their demands.

But first of all, dissenting women (and men) must speak up with greater confidence. Our country, long defined by its old-fashioned attitudes toward women, is finally ready to rally.

"Il mio cuore umano" by Costanza Quatriglio

Based on the book by Nada Malanima [video 1 and 2], Il mio cuore umano is the last work by Costanza Quatriglio.

* article by Boris Sollazzo

Capri Award 2009

The Capri Awards Foundation, a cultural institution dedicated to the celebration of international poetry, EPT Neaples and Regione Campania Assessorato al Turismo organize every year a festival.

2009 edition will honor Rita Dove and Robert Pinsky.

This year's festival is also dedicated to women-martyrs, and Neda -the girl killed during Tehran massacre- in particular. A poem, written by Iranian twitters, will be read [in Italian: "Resta qua, Neda, guarda la città/ nelle fondamenta scosse dei palazzi/ all`altezza degli alberi di acero./ Loro ci chiamano polvere,/ se è così lascia/ che noi sporchiamo l`aria/ e l`oppressore./ Non andartene, Neda”]

The Festival's Director, Claudio Angelini, who recently ended a 4-year term as director of the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, said that Rita Dove has written several poems about women's condition.

Many Italian poets will be present at Capri's Festival. Among them, Maria Luisa Spaziani, Sergio Zavoli, Roberto Mussapi, Corrado Calabrò Giorgio Weiss, Loretto Rafanelli, Renato Minore, Andrea Di Consoli.

Marco Nereo Rotelli will present the video “Save the poetry” with Edoardo Sanguineti's voice.

Italia, Etiopia e Gabriella Ghermandi

Italy has a complex relationship with Ethiopia because of (1) the loss of the battle at Adua in 1896 and (2) Mussolini, who was determined to vindicate the loss at Adua and reestablish the Roman empire by conquering countries in Africa which were not yet colonies of Britain or France in the pre WWII era, and Ethiopia was the jewel in that crown, if only briefly, if never really, if done brutally. As the 20th century approached, Italy found itself without African colonies and only the kingdom of Ethiopia and the tiny republic of Liberia were yet to be claimed. Italy first went after Ethiopia at this time with arrogance - after all they had supplied arms to the emperor and he would capitulate, but, after advancing deep into Ethiopia, the Italians were forced to withdraw to defensible positions in Tigray, where the wor armies faced each other, and, even with its army of 17,700 and 56 artillery, they ultimately lost to Ethiopian forces under Menelik, mostly riflemen - a humiliating defeat. A good article on the situation leading up to and the battle at Adua is found at: http://digilander.libero.it/fiammecremisi/adua.htm An excellent YouTubeshort feature with images of the Adua battle can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id_3pzPjTd0

As a result, Mussolini sought to heal that humiliation before the second World War ended. An excellent historic film on the colonization of Ethiopia by Italians, historic, in Italian, can be found at: www.lastoriasiamonoi.rai.it/puntata.aspx?id=515.
"A partire dal 1929 il governo fascista di Benito Mussolini dà inizio al progetto di conquistare un “proprio posto al sole” sulla scia di Gran Bretagna e Francia: l’aspirazione del duce è, in altre parole, quella di avviare una politica imperialista che sia in grado di dare lustro al regime, di conquistare terre ricche di risorse naturali, di ricostruire un impero sullo stile del grande impero romano. L’Abissinia sembra subito, alle alte gerarchie politiche e militari fasciste, l’obiettivo giusto; è uno Stato ancora indipendente e l’invasione italiana non avrebbe con tutta probabilità provocato reazioni internazionali. Inoltre il livello militare delle truppe etiopi è basso: la guerra di Etiopia sembra l’occasione adatta per vendicare la sconfitta subita dall’Italia, nel 1896 in Africa orientale."

Many immigrants from Ethiopia are now in Italy, amongst them the brilliant writer Gabriella Ghermandi whose novel about that colonization, entitled, Regina di Fiori e di Perle, is a literary masterpiece and a mirror for Italy to see itself, then, and now.
Ms. Ghermandi has her own website, with many pages and links worth exploring: www.gabriella-ghermandi.it/ . Ms. Germandi has lived in Bologna since she was a child, the product of an Italian father and Ethiopian mother who could not wait to get out of Ethiopia and to Italy to try and erase the stain of having lost so much in that period. Ms. Ghermandi, in spite of her mother's efforts, speaks not only a perfect Italian, in which she also wrote this book, but also the language of her mother's people, which she used when she returned to gather their stories for this oral history of a book.

Professor Federica Sossi of the University of Bergamo and webmistress of the site highligting stories of immigrati from many countries - wrote a provacative recensione of Ghermandi's book on the website for La Libreria delle Donne di Milano.

Gabriella Ghermandi saw the review and contacted Prof. Sossi which led to a Dialogo a Distanza molto interessante.
Ms. Ghermandi also reads her stories, sings and presents music of Ethiopia in free "concerts/readings". Here is a video link to one such spettacolo; there are other links to others on her website. http://www.culturaspettacolovenezia.it/show_img.php?id=29092&name=linkfoto&thumb=1

Oggi, Italy seems to be working to help Ethiopia with several worthwhile initiatives like this one:
http://www.itacaddis.org/italy/index.cfm?fuseaction=basic_pages.lang&page_name=1&lang=fr ; - la cooperazione fra l'Italia e Etiopia
La cooperazione tra Italia ed Etiopia ha una lunga storia. Il primo accordo di cooperazione è stato firmato il 5 aprile 1973 tra il Governo italiano e il Governo imperiale d’Etiopia con lo scopo di avviare progetti tra i due paesi. Il 24 ottobre 1986 è stato firmato un ulteriore accordo che ha gettato le basi per l’istituzione dell’Ufficio della Cooperazione allo sviluppo all’interno dell’Ambasciata d’Italia di Addis Abeba.

How Italy treats the immigrants from Ethiopia, and elsewhere, is the topic for another blog. Per adesso, c'e' molto razzismo, forse sempre di piu', per alcuni motivi. Punto e basta.

"Sidelki/Badanti" by Katia Bernardi

* video

Produced by Provincia Autonoma di Trento in collaboration with KRMOVIE, the documentary approaches the world of immigrant women from West Europe living in Italy.

Caos Calmo special

A widower spends his mourning days on a bench in front of his daughter’s primary school in Antonello Grimaldi’s Berlinale Competition title Chaos Calmo (Quiet Chaos). With Nanni Moretti as the widower and co-screenwriter, the film will of course recall Moretti’s own Palme d’Or winner La stanza del figlio (The Son’s Room), but Grimaldi’s adaptation of the bestselling Sandro Veronesi novel is different enough to stand on its own. Pietro is a successful TV executive whose company is working out an important merger deal when his wife’s death leaves him to care alone for their 10-year-old daughter Claudia. On his daughter’s first school day after the funeral, Pietro promises to wait for her at the gate until school is out, something that might have been decided on a whim on that first day but quickly turns into a habit, much to the astonishment of his family and colleagues who nevertheless respect the right of father and daughter to deal with their grief in their own way. “Caos calmo” è un tuffo nell'anima infantile, anarchica e digressiva di un autore che racconta una quiete senza la tempesta e approda ad un ordine dinamico, cioè provvisorio, della vita. Senza più indugiare in alcune finzione sociale o psicologica." Il Riformista

The author shares his thoughts in the following piece: intervista con l'autore [Sandro Veronesi] del libro che ha vinto il lpremio Strega in 2008: http://libri.bompiani.rcslibri.it/docs/4116.pdf ed altri pensieri Veronesi: http://libri.bompiani.rcslibri.it/docs/4497.pdf


Three aspects of the film merit special mention and links - the rapport between the book and the film, the park bench, and the treatment of the feminine:

libro-film - "Mi si nota di più se scrivo o se giro?" di Andrea Dusio
Le differenze possono essere anche notevoli (una per tutte, l'ambientazione geografica), ma il rapporto tra libro e film è molto stretto. E trova proprio in Nanni Moretti, nella sua storia di attore e regista, un legame profondo -
http//://www.giudiziouniversale.it/30web/dusio/libro-film


la panchina - Sedendo e mirando di Antonella Giani
Una pellicola, e una vita, che gira tutta intorno a una panchina. Con illustri precedenti nella letteratura e nel cinema: www.giudiziouniversale.it/30web/giani/panchina

Tra maturità e infanzia - di Stefania Stecca

Da Isabella Ferrari a Valeria Golino, le figure femminili di Caos calmo hanno una disperata autenticità. Mentre le adulte sono fragili e disordinate, la più solida è proprio una bambina.
http://www.giudiziouniversale.it/30web/stecca/donne


Inoltre, ci sono i pensieri dell'attrice Isabella Ferrari su "la scena più forte della mia carriera", cioe' la scena del sesso in questo film-
«Abbiamo girato, con assoluta verità e realismo: un unico piano sequenza, senza stop, di quattro minuti»
www.corriere.it/cinema/08_gennaio_29/ferrari_scena_caoscalmo_4ff5fd3e-ce5e-11dc-b326-0003ba99c667.shtml

Mater Festival and Migrant Women (Tuscany, 3/14-22/09)

MATER FESTIVAL - Italy
March 14-22, 2009

First stage of "MIGRANT WOMEN", first meeting point with migrant women of Montepulciano and Siena territory, the absolute première of the project's four productions.

The festival will migrate to Portugal as MIGRANT DAYS LISBOA (June 2009), then to United Kingdom as MIGRANT DAYS LONDON (July 2009).

Italianistica online

Italianistica online is a project dedicated to the promotion of Italian Studies through "digital humanities", or informatica umanistica, using the Internet as the primary vehicle for research and publication. The site offers articles and critical essays pertinent to present day Italy.

Parola di Donna

The website Parola di Donna provides an open forum for aspiring writers and literary critics alike. Focusing specifically on, but not limited to, the works of women authors, the site seeks to promote a passion for writing and the sharing of ideas. Contributions of all types are encouraged, from poetry to critical essays to short stories.

'Women in Power' (Florence, 10/24/08 - 2/8/09)

Women in Power: Caterina and Maria de' Medici. The Return to Florence of Two Queens of France
Florence, Palazzo Strozzi - Oct. 24, 2008 - Feb. 8, 2009

"The event is a tribute to Caterina and Maria de’ Medici, queens of France yet both imbued with a fresh and innovative cultural approach. They were energetic regents: two women in power, both controversial, both emblematic, and both of whom left their mark on a century of European history.
400 years on, Florence is celebrating their legend by "virtually" bringing them back to their home city in a fascinating exhibition taking its cue from the recent reassembly of a series of monumental tapestries previously displayed in a very popular exhibition at the Galerie des Gobelins in Paris, and in the Château de Chambord."

* virtual visit
* article by Valeria Ronzani (Il Sole 24 Ore)
* slideshow

'A Multitude of Women' by S. Lucamante

A Multitude of Women: The Challenges of the Contemporary Italian Novel
by Stefania Lucamante
Toronto University Press
Released: October 11, 2008