Monday, February 8, 2016 – 6.45-8.45pm
Join documentary filmmakers John Maggio and Cristian Piazza and filmmaker-photographer Michele Petruzziello for a round table discussion of issues related to past and present Italian immigration to the United States. As a country of historical emigration from which young people are currently leaving once again to find opportunities abroad, Italy constitutes a unique lab to discuss issues of mobility and relocation.
New documentaries and photographic works capture the tension between outbound and inbound flows as well as the reverberations of the past onto the present.
Blending a desire for documentation and a search for a dynamic aesthetic expression, these documentaries and photographs are both personal and collective. They speak eloquently to migration in the U.S. as well as global migrations. The panel will also include the screening of excerpts from the speakers’ works and a photo exhibition:Michele Petruzziello.
Program
- Introductory remarks: Dr.(Inserra Chair, MSU)
- Speakers:
John Maggio(Executive Producer, Producer/Director, Writer at): “Filming and Producingfor PBS”
Cristian Piazza(Filmmaker): “The Making of: Stories from Recent Italian Immigrants”
Michele Petruzziello(Filmmaker/Photographer):“The Past in the Present: Photographs of Recent Italian Immigrants”
PRESENTERS’ BIOS
has spent a decade making documentaries hailed for their social impact and exceptional craft.Maggio’s films have been honored with the National Emmy Award, Writers Guild Award, an Independent Spirit Award, a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Award, as well as multiple News and Documentary Emmy Award nominations.His work has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and has been shown at film festivals around the world.Hemost recently wrote and directed the landmark four-hour PBS seriesThe Italian Americansin 2015.He’s currently at work onInto The Amazon,a two-hour exploration of Theodore Roosevelt’s fateful 1914 trip down the River of Doubt in Brazil.Maggio has also made several films for FRONTLINE (College Inc.,Growing up Online, The Private Life of Bradley Manning) and American Experience (Billy the Kid,The Lobotomist, The Boy in the Bubble, Kinsey).
is a filmmaker and the founder ofCity People Films, his own film production company. He practicallygrew up inside a movie theater, like the protagonist of Tornatore’s classic filmCinema Paradiso. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Literature and he has studied Film Directing at New York University’s School of Professional Studies. Piazza has published articles about films and books in Argentina, Venezuela, the U.S., and Spain, including interviews with James Lipton from Inside the Actors Studio, Franco Battiato, Paolo Sorrentino, Enrique Vila-Matas and Alberto Manguel. Born in Venezuela to Sicilian parents, he moved to New York City in 2001 and visits Italy on a regular basis. He feels as South American as he is an Italian and a New Yorker. He likes to paraphrase Bob Dylan by saying: “He’s convinced that he was born very far from where he’s supposed to be, and so, he’s (always) on his way home…”(2015) is his first feature documentary. Selected for the 12th Edition of the Big Apple Film Festival in Manhattan andfeaturing a voice over by actor John Turturro, ittells the story of three Italian immigrants in New York City.
Filmmaker and photographerwas born and raised in Rome where he studied at The Roberto Rossellini School for Cinema and Television. While acquiring experience working for local TV channels, he studied acting and worked both as an actor and a director across Italy. In 2003, he moved to New York City to work as a reporter for RAI TV, covering politics, entertainment, sport events, natural disasters and more, in the U.S. and South America. His first photography exhibit in New York entitled“Man Against Nature and Nature Against Man” (2005) centered on the Terry Schiavo case and Hurricane Katrina. Petruzziello’s passion for and research on the history and the stories of Italian immigration to the United States inspired his most recent effort, “”, a photographic project in which hope and anguish emerge as the past and the present overlap. “Good Bye My Love” was hosted at the Italian Cultural Institute of New York in the spring of 2015. In the same year, in recognition of this project, Michel Petruzziello was awarded thefor best photographer.
- The program is spearheaded and sponsored by() at vlog with the co-sponsorship of
Photo credit: Michele Petruzziello.
Resources
with John Maggio aboutThe Italian Americansdocumentary (in Italian)
(full photography project)
with Michele Petruzziello aboutGood Bye My Loveexhibit (by RAI correspondent in NY, Giovanni Botteri)
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