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MEDIA CONTACTS: Polly Burks
561-297-2595, pburks@fau.edu or
Stacia Smith
561-297-2971, ssmith@fau.edu
FAU's Italian/American Symposium Features Film Screenings and Lectures
BOCA RATON, FL (March 18, 2005) - Speakers and filmmakers from across the United States will focus on the arts and culture of Italian American society during Florida Atlantic University's Italian/American Symposium, "New Expressions - Old Worlds." The symposium will take place on Friday, April 1 from 2:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday, April 2 from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at FAU's University Center on the Boca Raton campus, 777 Glades Road. All sessions on Friday will be held in the Majestic Palm Room and Saturday's sessions will be in the Live Oak Pavilion. General sessions are free and open to the public, though reservations are requested as space is limited (561-297-0155).
The symposium will start with a screening of "Little Kings" on Friday at 3 p.m. This 100-minute film was awarded Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Actress at the Palm Beach International Film Festival in 2004. It is a romantic comedy that tells the story of three Italian-American brothers and their complex relationships with the women in their lives. The film will be followed by a conversation with the filmmakers Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno.
After a 5:30 p.m. reception on Friday, the films "Heaven Touches Brooklyn in July" and "Part of Your Loving" will be shown, followed by a discussion with filmmaker Tony DeNonno. "Heaven Touches Brooklyn" was nationally broadcast on PBS, and "Part of Your Loving" was awarded Outstanding Film of the Year at the London Film Festival.
DeNonno has produced, written and directed more than 50 award-winning documentary films and has written more than seven major motion picture screenplays. While DeNonno writes on a variety of subjects, his work has a common theme of increasing awareness of racial stereotyping. As an Italian-American, DeNonno has felt the effects of this stereotyping and so hopes to encourage dialogue and perhaps change.
On Saturday at 9:30 a.m., DeNonno's film "Italian American Visions: Portraits of 20th-Century Immigration" will be shown, followed by a panel discussion entitled "The Italian/American Experience and the Written Word." The panel will be led by Emanuele Pettener, visiting instructor at FAU, and will include Ilaria Serra, a Ph.D. graduate of FAU; Paolo Giordano, chair of the Department of Modern languages and Literatures at the University of Central Florida; and Stefania Lucamante, associate professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at the Catholic University of America.
Following a lunch break on Saturday, there will be a screening of "Mother Tongue: Italian American Sons and Mothers," a film by Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno that won her an Emmy nomination. The film will be followed by a panel discussion entitled "The Italian/American Experience on the Silver Screen," led by Pettener. Panelists include Robert Casillo, professor of English at the University of Miami; Anna Camaiti Hostert, a visiting professor at FAU; and John Paul Russo, interim chair of the Classics department at the University of Miami.
At 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, DeNonno's film "Ethnic Sharing: Valuing Diversity" will be shown, followed by a roundtable discussion at 5 p.m.
The symposium is sponsored by the National Italian American Foundation, Il Circolo, the Italian Cultural Society of the Palm Beaches, the Frank Stanley Beveridge Foundation, FAU's Italian Studies Program in the Department of Languages and Linguistics, FAU's Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and Bordighera Press. For further information about the symposium, call 561-297-0155.
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