The I.C.B.I.E. Blog

A large part of the ICBIE’s financial support has come from the paintings of Ele D’Artagnan, the eccentric artist who befriended Pietro from earliest childhood. Pietro inherited all his works when the maestro died in 1987, and since then, he has worked to establish a posthumous reputation for him, as a precious testimonial of the Dolce Vita days of Cinecittà . The success of Pietro’s campaign culminated in the famous New York showing in 2003, when the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) grabbed a handful of the best paintings, causing their market value to skyrocket (and our ICBIE dreams to materialize).

In a few days, the most important showing of D’Artagnan art works ever held in Europe will take place in Amsterdam, thanks to the efforts of a wonderful lady named Ella Arps, who Pietro met in Salvador, where she was seeking to help the Alagados, the awful favelas built on stilts over the bay, about a mile away from the ICBIE. Their encounter began ICBIE’s rapport with the venerable capoeira master, Mestre Pedro, and led to Ella’s passion for D’Artagnan.

The Amsterdam show will be a week long festival held in various venues, under the august auspices of the Italian Cultural Institute, where, on June 7, Pietro Gallina will give a lecture, presenting his biography Ai margini della dolce vita: Il pittore/attore Ele D’Artagnan. The evening will also include the projection of D’Artagnan filmclips and a live concert dedicated to Nino Rota, Fellini’s musical alter-ego. On June 10, the Film Museum of the Vondelpark will show more D’Artagnan filmclips, together with integral projections of both Amarcord and the amazing short film Toby Dammit.

The Arps Gallery website has all the information about the exhibit in English. Just go to www.arpsgallery.com, and remember to tell your art-loving friends.

Complete information (in Italian) from the Italian Institute of Culture can be found here.

By the way, Pietro’s biography is also, rightly, the first book to be published by the newborn ICBIE Editore. (Beware of ICBIE’s omnipresent conglomerate tentacles!)

Last June, at the Angelo Mai social center (now sadly closed), a benefit event was held to mark the opening of a Roman office for the ICBIE.  Its success was twofold: it proved to be a lucrative source of funds, but it was also great to see all the Italian ICBIE supporters together in one place.  So this year, Pietro has arranged a bigger show, and it will be held at the Casa del Jazz (Viale di Porta Ardeatina, 55  00153 Roma Tel. 06 704731  www.casajazz.it).  There will be music, food, and a chance to hear the latest ICBIE news directly from Pietro Gallina himself.  A participation fee (minimum contribution five Euros) will benefit the ICBIE directly, so bring all your friends! In the next few days he will decide between Thursday, June 21 or Friday, June 22, and the precise date will be posted here.  At any rate, mark your calendars now, and plan to attend!

Hi,

I am Luka Mestrovic, a student at AOSR. I would just like to say something about this project. The first time when I attended the ICBIE meeting in my school it looked like it would never start. It looked like an obstacle course. There were so many problems and so few of us that I, personally, did not believe that we would make it. After a while more and more people joined and we started to spread around the school with some information about our project.

Finally, Mayfair came and we had one of the strongest weapons in our hands: information. Everyone knew about Bridge to Bahia and more and more people came to help us in different things no matter how easy or difficult they are. Some of them helped in preparations, some of them in preparations of brochures and some of them worked on the web page.

My point is that you do not need to bring 5000€ in order to help us (…you can…), but it is enough to leave a post here and spread the word around. As much we do this for poor people we do it for ourselves and so that we can say in 10 years, “look what we did: a web page, raised 5000€, created a community…” if you are part of a community so that the community becomes part of you and you will never forget what you learned…

Thank you…

P.S: If you want to ask me some questions you can send it to my address: lukalilo@gmail.com