Winner of the 2022 David di Donatello Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, A Girl Returned is both a delicate and raw reflection on adoption, family, adolescence, and identity formation within unexpected human networks.

Do not miss this Oct. 5 screening (5:30pm Presentation Hall 1040 (School of Communication and Media), followed by a conversation with the Italian director Giuseppe Bonito, joining us in person for this special occasion. The Q&A will be moderated by Teresa Fiore (Inserra Chair).

See and WEBPAGE for more information, as well as the flyer below. .

Organized and sponsored by��the��Inserra Endowed Chair��in collaboration with the��Honors Program��and the��Department of Social Work & Child Advocacy��at ����vlog.

Organized by the Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies in collaboration with several units on campus (see bottom of page) and held in the Presentation Hall of the School of Communication and Media, the event included a panel with guests coming from Bolivia and Italy, as well as local speakers from New York, Newark, and ����vlog, who engaged in a comparative discussion about economic and socio-cultural interventions and collaborations.

From left to right:�� Marko Machicao (Consul General del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia); Arian Craig (Director, Red Hawk Fellows); Svetlana Shpiegel (Associate Professor, Social Work and Child Advocacy Dept., ����vlog); Fulvio Diploma (Director, Ciudad del Niño, Cochabamba, Bolivia); Teresa Fiore (Inserra Chair, ����vlog); Father Sergio Gamberoni (Director, Migrant Office, Catholic Diocese, Bergamo, Italy); Elena Bellina (Department of Italian Studies, NYU, USA, and co-writer/director of the documentary Ciudad de los ����ñ�Dz�); and Mario Gallo (Director of Admissions, St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, Newark, NJ, USA).

The event also featured the Consul General del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia in New York, Marko Michacao. He expressed enthusiastic support for this endeavor, and remains available for future collaborations in this and other areas, especially because of ����vlog’s status as a Hispanic-Serving Institution. Before the event, he had a chance to briefly chat with ����vlog President Jonathan Koppell and illustrate the current profile of the Bolivian community in the U.S. and more specifically the one in the NY-NJ area.

Left: Marko Machicao (Consul General del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia). Right: President Jonathan Koppell (����vlog). Father Sergio Gamberoni (Director, Migrant Office, Catholic Diocese, Bergamo, Italy). Center: Father Sergio Gamberoni (Director, Migrant Office, Catholic Diocese, Bergamo, Italy).

After the greetings of the Consul, and WLC Dept. Chair, Kathleen Loysen, the audience enjoyed the documentary��La Ciudad del Niño, which��tells the extraordinary story of Padre Antonio Berta (1927-2007), a visionary man from Bergamo, Italy, who arrived in Bolivia, in 1966 and devoted his entire life to abandoned children. In Cochabamba, he built , one of the largest foster homes and schools in the country. The film documents the experience of Padre Berta, the priests and the lay volunteers who have helped shape Bolivian society during four decades of educational reform, social engagement, and political activism.

Elena Bellina, one of the writers of the documentary, illustrated the long history of foster care in Bergamo dating back to the time of Pope John XXIII (1958-63). A native of the area, this pope was particularly invested in the support of poor children, and launched a program in Bolivia through Father Vavassori, who in turn was active in supporting orphans as early as after WWI. Bellina shared some historical pictures of the early development of La Ciudad de Los ����ñ�Dz�, and then explained how she got involved in the writing of this history through the documentary, which effectively links two really faraway places like Bergamo and Cochabamba (6,417 miles!).

The panel continued with a very informative and moving testimony offered by Fulvio Diploma, current director of La Ciudad del Niño, who sketched the story of the institution from where the documentary left off. He highlighted the introduction of new programs such as the strategy of reintegration of children into the family of origin (supported by UNICEF); the temporary fostering on the part of local families; the creation of twelve self-sustained houses shared by small supervised groups of children on the La Ciudad campus; and a 24/7 open house for high-emergency situations. He illustrated current challenges (while the number of abandoned and neglected children in the system is lower the socio-economic reasons for their conditions are still the same) but also successful interventions (60-70% of the children in the emergency house go back to their families or extended families).

Father Sergio Gamberoni (Director, Migrant Office, Catholic Diocese, Bergamo, Italy) illustrated the demographic movements from Bolivia to Bergamo that were prompted by the La Ciudad project since 1990 (adoption, mixed couples, work, friendship). The resulting community – 1/6 of the local population, primarily female, and almost exclusively Catholic – is made of people eager to keep their cultural roots alive (through dances like morenadas, tobas, chacareras, etc.) and equally committed to work to support the families in Bolivia and be integrated locally. Despite some internal and medical challenges, the community is seen as a dynamic presence in Bergamo.

The respondents addressed issues linked to foster care and education in the US, New Jersey and on our very campus, in order. Svetlana Shpiegel (Associate Professor, Social Work and Child Advocacy Dept., ����vlog) provided a snapshot of the foster care system in the U.S., a really large system (400,000 children any given year, primarily BIPOC), which is state-based even though some regulations are federal. She stated that the main difference with Bolivia is that the U.S. privileges non-relative or relative care over group care (only 10%): its goal is to find permanent caregivers (adoptive parents or relatives), as institutions do not allow children to thrive. Special attention in these days is given to older adolescents (17-21) ready to leave the system and to high-need children, but these are very challenging placements due to lack of qualified families for such a task.

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Arian Craig (Director, Red Hawk Fellows) explained how ����vlog supports students coming from the foster care system, or homeless students and students with no family (170 at the moment): she provides mentoring in housing, finances, and life skills at large during and beyond their experience on campus, and oversees programs that provide food, clothing, books, etc.. Finally, Mario Gallo (Director of Admissions, St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, Newark, NJ, USA) brought the story of an urban school that since 1868 has embraced children with challenging backgrounds and created opportunities for them in education as well as sport and the arts. That evening the school body was represented by a select group of international and Hispanic students including Bolivian ones who came to Newark as part of a partnership with a soccer organization in – not Cochabamba but – Santa Cruz (see photo on the right below)!

The audience was very taken by the stories shared by the panelists, and a woman from Bolivia inquired into ways of helping from the U.S. Equally interesting is the proposal to consider La Ciudad for a research project, as Svetlana Shpiegel suggested. Attending MSU students such as Silvana Wilson and Dante Romero commented that an event about Bolivia and Italy actually made them aware of the U.S. foster care system whose size bewildered them.

As Teresa Fiore remarked, “The words of Fulvio Diploma are the ones that will resonate for a while after this event: ‘My dream is that one day La Ciudad will disappear and that the children will all find a family. We know that this is not possible, though, and the hope is that La Ciudad can become a day center of family support towards reintegration.’ This is the hope for any foster care system, regardless of its geographical location,” Fiore concluded.

For more information see��.

Organized and sponsored by the Inserra Endowed Chair in collaboration with the Italian Program (Dept. of World Languages and Cultures), the Dept. of Social Work and Child Advocacy, and the Red Hawk Fellows at ����vlog. In partnership with Fondazione Patronato San Vincenzo, Bergamo (Italy) and St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, Newark, NJ. The event is included in the series��Dentro/Afuera: The Interconnections between Italian and Latin American/Spanish Cultures��and linked to the research project��Memoria Presente: The Common Spanish Legacy in Italian and Latin American Cultures.

Short link: https://tinyurl.com/MSUCiudad

The Rule, the latest documentary by Emmy-nominated, award-winning, Italian-American, Newark filmmakers Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno, explores how the Benedictine monks of Newark Abbey achieve success in the heart of one of America’s most dangerous and impoverished cities with one of its most vulnerable populations: inner city African American and Latino teenage males. While Newark, New Jersey has an abysmal high school graduation rate, students at St. Benedict’s Prep have defied the odds to achieve a near 100% college acceptance rate. The film details how the monks’ recipe for success, which follows the 6th-century rule of Italian Saint Benedict of Norcia, can serve as a model for inner city school success.

“Reaching a global audience is our goal,” says filmmaker Marylou Bongiorno. “The Italian subtitles will allow us to attract a wider audience, particularly groups in Italy that have screened our past films, and spread our mission to offer the St. Benedict’s Prep model as the solution for urban school reform.”

For Pederiali, who is a native speaker of Italian, taking on the project was an easy decision. “My Italian professor Marisa Trubiano had talked to me about this project and I was so interested in it that I decided to enroll in the class,” says Pederiali.

Subtitling is an exacting process. Pederiali first prepared the full translation of the transcript of the film. She then adapted that translation into subtitles, using time codes and English subtitles provided by the Bongiornos as a starting point. They then inserted the Italian subtitles into the film. The entire process took three months.

“Translating is not as simple as it seems. Cultural and extra-linguistic peculiarities play a big role in the translation process”, says Pederiali. “Perseverance and the guidance of Professor Trubiano got me through.”

For associate professor of Italian and Inserra chair Teresa Fiore, subtitling The Rule has brought welcome attention to issues pertaining to education, equal access to opportunity, and community service in New Jersey. The project is also important for other reasons. “First, it’s in line with our Italian program’s academic focus on training students for a professional field like titling that requires knowledge of the Italian language and culture,” she explains. “Second, thanks to the University’s Co-op Ed program, this project is the result of a collaboration between students, professors and Bongiorno Productions, a film production company with whom we have established a relationship over the years through screenings and panels.”

It is this relationship that prompted award-winning filmmakers Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno to turn to Montclair State for subtitling. “This is all due to our long-standing relationship with the Inserra Chair and Teresa Fiore and the excellent programs they host, including one on subtitling, that inspired us,” says Marylou Bongiorno. “Working with Professor Trubiano and Serena Pederiali was efficient, enlightening and fun — particularly as we discussed the ‘art’ of subtitling and translating idiosyncratic expressions into Italian.”

Trubiano notes that The Rule subtitling project, along with the recent “Translating Voices Across Continents” surtitling project with the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, aligns with the Italian program’s longstanding focus on pre-professional opportunities for students. “These projects also reflect curriculum development in the area of translating and audiovisual translation in collaboration with the University’s new Center for Translation and Interpreting,” she says.

A growing audience is enjoying The Rule, which was screened on campus in November 2014. It was released theatrically in New York City, Los Angeles, and in Ontario, Canada, is broadcast on national PBS, is distributed on DVD and via streaming, and is on a college tour. A free companion Curriculum Guide for High School students is being developed. The film is being broadcast on Hungarian public television. “We also plan to broadcast in other countries,” adds Bongiorno.

The White House initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans will screen The Rule in December. ��The Bongiornos are also working to deliver an Italian-subtitled DVD to Pope Francis. < For Pederiali, subtitling The Rule was a memorable experience. “I enjoyed putting into practice what I’ve learned over the years. Translating is a never-ending journey that is simply fascinating.”

Learn about Montclair State’s of The Rule.

For more about

The Rule

or @TheRuleFilm

The students enjoyed a unique opportunity to link their study of Italian language and culture to New York City-based “Made in Italy” businesses by preparing, conducting, producing and editing interviews with prominent Italian entrepreneurs and creators in the design, fashion, art and food worlds. The result: four subtitled video interviews and related articles published in the daily Italian language online newspaper, , that have received more than 100,000 views since they were published in February 2015.

View student videos and articles on La Voce, focusing on , , and .

An Interdisciplinary Project

Montclair State’s , housed in the Department of Spanish and Italian,�� is ranked as the largest in New Jersey and the fifth largest in the country by the most recent Modern Language Association survey.

“Our program is interested in devising innovative ways of teaching and doing research that align with today’s globalized world,” says Teresa Fiore, associate professor and , who spearheaded “Business Italian Style.”

“I thought of asking people in various professional fields about the role of Italian language and culture in their work,” Fiore recalls. She reached out to Maurita Cardone, deputy editor of La Voce di New York, which focuses on Italian and Italian-American news and culture, about circulating brief video interviews online. “When my department colleague Enza Antenos made her Business Italian class available to the project and when Giuseppe Malpasso, a filmmaker from Art Motion Picture agreed to provide feedback on filming, everything fell into place.”

The students, who were divided into four topic teams – design, fashion, art and food – attended preparatory workshops led by Cardone and Malpasso, before researching their topics. Under the guidance of Antenos, they then crafted sets of questions in Italian for interviewees in each sector, who were chosen by Cardone. The interviews were conducted over two days in both New York City and New Jersey.

“The project gave us the chance to be in places that we would not otherwise have access to like prominent designer Gaetano Pesce’s one-of-a-kind studio,” says Italian major Emilia D’Albero. “The project was incredibly engaging and really opened me up to new opportunities that I had never thought existed. As an Italian-American I was proud to see the culture of my ancestors’ homeland represented so strongly in one of the world’s most important cities.”

Made In Italy

“The way Italians do business is very similar all over the world,” says Italian major and Milan, Italy, native Serena Pederiali. “For me, the biggest benefit of this project was getting involved with businesses that spread and believe in the ‘Made in Italy’ brand, which stands for quality, creativity, artisanship, style and innovation.”

Each group of students created a subtitled video and an article in Italian that were published in La Voce on consecutive weeks during February. In interviewing designer Gaetano Pesce and Federico Materazzi, the vice president of Poltrona Frau Americas, the design team explored the influence of Italian design, while the food team learned about imported and freshly prepared Italian foods through interviews with Sabbia Auriti from the N Beverage Group and Eolo and Pastai Restaurant owner Melissa Daka.

Art team students talked with Highline Art director Cecilia Alemani and Center of Modern Italian Art director Laura Mattioloi about the role of modern and contemporary Italian art in the U.S. Fashion designer Tiziano Zorzan and Alberto Milani, CEO of Buccellati Americas, shared insights about Italian style and its adaptability to the American market with the fashion team.

“Business Italian Style” is a hit.�� “The four-part series as a whole received more than 40,000 views on La Voce by the second week in March,” says Antenos, an expert in foreign language learning and technology. “The immediacy of the delivery mode and the wide online dissemination among an ever-broadening audience makes the project so much more meaningful.”

So far, journalists and educators who are interested in using a similar format for stories and courses in Italian studies have been in touch.

Filmmaking Italian Style

Following the advice of Malpasso, student filmmakers Omar Portilla ’14 and Jarrett Strenner did the bulk of the filming.

“I got involved in this project because as a major in television and digital media who has been taking Italian courses as part of my minor, I thought it would expand my knowledge in both fields,” says Strenner, who helped in both the production and post-production aspects of the project. “On the production side, I helped film some of the interviews and footage. Then, when it came to post-production, I became the person doing all the final edits to the video.” He also came away with a newfound respect for the challenges of subtitling during the post-production process.

Italian major Angelene Agresta, who hopes to become a professional subtitler, subtitled the video interviews. “It wasn’t easy, but it was definitely my favorite part of the project. When translating, you need to take into account how many words need to be put onto the screen and for how long,” she says. “It’s important that you subtitle concisely so as not to lose the audience’s attention.”

D’Albero, who graduated in January 2015, hopes to become a translator. She gained invaluable experience by helping to transcribe, subtitle and edit the interviews. She also translated the food and art articles from Italian into English for La Voce.

Real-World Learning

To Fiore and Antenos, two of the most important goals of the project were to provide students with an innovative real-world learning experience and a dynamic approach to learning a language. “Learning to work as part of a team was as important to the students, as having the opportunity to interact with professionals,” Fiore says.

Strenner particularly appreciated the hands-on learning experience. “For me, this project gave me more experience in working on and producing a video in a more professional setting and on a professional deadline,” he explains.

“I entered this project with only the knowledge of the Italian language. I didn’t know anything about Italian or American business, interviewing, film editing or journalism. I feel like this project and class has allowed me to get my foot in the door,” says Agresta. “I don’t know where it will lead me in the future, but I feel that it’s definitely a start of something big.”

The role of Italian Americans in the mainstream media is often a confirmation of negative stereotypes that recycle the same unflattering images time and time again.�� One possible solution to end the perpetuation of this cycle and to eliminate these ideas is to focus more attention on alternative sources that offer new perspectives on the same concepts.�� Independent film can establish a counterbalance to the images of Italian American culture proposed by mainstream Hollywood-financed films regarding family, the domestic space, and the role of women in professional contexts.

These issues, amongst others, were discussed on November 8 at ����vlog in the course of an event organized by the Inserra Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies, in which two strong female presences in independent film, Nancy Savoca and Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno, shared anecdotes and personal experiences of growing up in Italian American families in New York and New Jersey.�� Thanks to the presence of their husbands Rich Guay and Jerome Bongiorno, whom they work with regularly on their films, the evening also approached the interesting angle of what it means to be partners both in life and on the set.

Nancy Savoca is one of the most important women in independent filmmaking today, having directed films such as True Love (1989), that Entertainment Weekly called “one of the best 50 independent films of all time,” Household Saints (1991) and the recent Union Square (2012). ��Savoca explained that her films do not follow the conventional themes of mainstream movies; however, this is not necessarily a conscious choice.�� She commented that her method is simply to remain faithful to the storyline and to the characters themselves.�� This honest approach renders her characters more genuine and relatable.�� Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno have worked together both on films (Little Kings, 2003) and documentaries (Mother Tongue, 1999), with the latter being nominated for an Emmy in 2000.�� The Bongiornos spoke about their personal and professional ties to the city of Newark, where they currently live.�� They discussed technical aspects of filmmaking in relation to their most recent film New Work: Newark in 3D (2012), a project commissioned by the Newark Museum that makes visitors feel as though they are inside the three-dimensional projection of the city.

Over the course of the evening, the four panelists explained with passion and sincerity to the audience of ����vlog students and community members from both New York and New Jersey the difficulties of becoming a director and in particular the complications of doing so for someone from an Italian American or immigrant family.�� Many students present were interested in beginning their own careers in this field, and the guests openly discussed how much determination and faith in one’s own work is required in order to succeed in one’s chosen field and to overcome the inherent financial difficulties.

Organized by the Inserra Chair in collaboration with the Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience in America and with the Amici della Cultura Italiana Club, the meeting with these directors and producers illustrated the various steps of their creative journey during a lively discussion moderated by Professors Teresa Fiore (Dept. of Spanish & Italian), who is teaching ITAL345 “Italian Americans in Film” this semester, and Roberta Friedman (Filmmaking Program), the coordinator of Film Forum on campus.

Through the screening of various clips, the filmmakers explained how their work subtly engages with the inherent tension between tradition and innovation.�� In one clip from Union Square, Savoca creates an effective contrast between two sisters from an Italian American family in the Bronx.�� Jenny, who is ashamed of her roots and hides her past from her Waspy fiancé, cooks tofu with Indian spices while Lucy, who cannot understand why her sister denies a part of her identity, throws open the window in the middle of the winter because she can’t stand the smell.�� Along the same lines, a clip from the Bongiornos’ film Little Kings introduces three brothers who argue about what it means to be Italian American.�� They throw around ideas of models that range from Al Capone to Michelangelo, all the while cooking tomato sauce and testing pasta for readiness in their mother’s kitchen.

This interesting mix of directors, producers, and experts of both cinema and Italian American culture sparked a conversation that crossed disciplines and engaged a large audience interested in filmmaking and the representation of Italian Americans in film.�� Professor Teresa Fiore, the Inserra Chair, commented that “thanks to a collaboration between the Italian and Filmmaking programs on campus, students from different backgrounds saw their interests intersect at this event.�� Judging from their comments after the evening, in the future it would be interesting to organize an event with some actors that have played stereotypical Italian American roles.�� Through the generosity of the Inserra Endowment, we are already looking in this direction.

Celina Poggiogalle

For more information on this and other cultural events organized by the Inserra Chair, please see .

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