Events
Literature
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
ITALIAN IDENTITY/JEWISH IDENTITY
The Italian Cultural Institute will host a conversation with Wiley Feinstein, Associate Professor of Italian language and literature at Loyola University of Chicago about the importance of Jewish identity in twentieth-century and contemporary Italian literature.
Both Giorgio Bassani in Il giardino dei Finzi Contini (The Garden of the Finzi Contini) and Primo Levi in Se questo è un uomo (Survival in Auschwitz) start out by identifying themselves as members of Italy’s Jewish community and victims of persecution following the racial laws instituted in 1938-39. Yet two of the most famous Italian films dealing with the Holocaust-Vittorio De Sica’s Il giardino dei Finzi Contini and Roberto Benigni’s La vita è bella (Life is Beautiful) go to some length to emphasize their protagonists’ Italian identity since both films picture their Jewish protagonists as ideal Italians, victims of an unjust and absurd anti-Semitism.
The conversation will take place in Italian and focus on specific passages from Bassani and Levi along with clips from the De Sica and Benigni films.
Information
Date: Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Hours: 6.00 P.M.
Site: Italian Cultural Institute, Chicago
Organized by: Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Chicago
In collaboration with: Loyola University Chicago
Tipologia di invito (seconda lingua)
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