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

The ever-growing ICBIE network is producing news that comes from many different places, and there’s never a dull moment. The operation in Salvador and the people in Rome are constantly cooking up new initiatives, and then there are other developments spattered across the globe: it’s clear evidence of a remarkable rush of vitality.

The first item of note regards the most faithful ICBIE student, Ricardo Gramoza, who everyone knows as “Bogus.” Not only has he been with us from the very start, but he is the most stalwart of all our kids. He takes nearly all the courses that are offered, and he has become our most valuable helper. Bogus loves to drive, and so he’s always ready to take off for the airport to pick up and deliver our guests, or to run errands and do the shopping. He is the best student of Italian, and now, after nearly four years of lessons and conversation with our many Italian visitors, he has developed a love of Italian cinema, and often stays up all night watching two or three films from Pietro’s impressive collection. He is good with technology, and helps with the computers and video equipment, and he operates the projector in the Cineforum. To honor his dedication, Pietro has arranged a wonderful prize for him: a trip to Italy! Building upon the experience of Julio and Bigode’s trip, a long list of Italian friends have both contributed for his air fare and offered hospitality for him. He will arrive in Milan on December 12, the starting point for a whirlwind tour of northern Italy, with stops in Verbania and Reggio Emilia before descending the boot to Rome. For Christmas week, our faithful supporter Marcella will take him all the way down to Ostuni, her beautiful hometown in Puglia, then it’s back to Rome for ten days (with an excursion to Naples) before a second trip north, including Siena, Bologna, Modena, Reggio Emilia (again), Venice, Bassano del Grappa and Milan, until February 11th, when he returns to Salvador. After the success of Julio and Bigode, we are delighted to welcome this new ICBIE ambassador to Italy.

The second bit of news regards the growing presence of the ICBIE on the web. Thanks to an old Italian friend, Marco Chelo, we have built a solid presence on JustOneTV, a community based media site in Harlem that has an extremely popular “Afro” niche, where all news regarding the African diaspora is heartily welcomed. Besides a main ICBIE page (link), there are others dedicated to Julio and Bigode (who dream of visiting New York someday soon) (link), to Mestre Pedro (link) and to our dear painter-benefactor Ele D’Artagnan (link). JustOneTV is a great place to put photos, videos and articles, and all of our friends are welcome to upload fresh material. For future reference, you can find the JustOneTV link in the right hand sidebar, in the group under the banner “ICBIE on the Web.” There are also two new ICBIE videos on YouTube, one dedicated to Mestre Pedro (link) and the other to D’Artagnan (link), and the permanent links are in the same sidebar, but higher up, under the banner “Pages.”

Finally, a word of encouragement for the courageous launch of ICBIE promotion and fundraising in Germany. Thanks to the unflagging efforts of Steve Whitton, the ICBIE story has been translated into German and printed in a sweet brochure. Steve is a core member of Lahn Artists, an artists’ collective in Limburg, and they are holding their annual exhibition from Nov. 30 to Dec. 16. ICBIE information will be disseminated (and donations will be gratefully accepted). Viel Glück, Steve!

Prendo spunto da una email inviatami dal mio attentissimo ex allievo David Angelelli che oggi è una delle colonne portanti dell’ICBIE-Roma, il quale ha rilevato l’errore commesso nello scrivere la locandina di presentazione del nostro CINEFORUM, in cui risulta che Massimo Troisi è un regista. Effettivamente tutti sanno che Troisi è stato un grande attore, ma quando pensiamo al film IL POSTINO non colleghiamo il titolo al regista Michael Radford, ma a Troisi stesso. Come tanti altri casi di film con Marlon Brando o Marylin Monroe o etc. etc. . Nel caso della Dolce Vita o di Arancia Meccanica ad esempio, colleghiamo invece automaticamente tali film a Fellini e a Kubrick. Mettere Troisi come regista comunque non è corretto e scusabile, pure se ciò è entrato nelle conversazioni comuni. In musica si diceva spesso: La Nona di Karajan volendo significare la Nona Sinfonia di Beethoven diretta da Karajan. Noi lo abbiamo messo perché anche qui in Brasile Il Postino è conosciuto per via di Troisi e poi perché non potevamo scrivere FILM ITALIANI con un regista straniero. Altro errore che ci poteva essere imputato. Tra i due errori possibili quello commesso è forse inconsciamente ancora più grave dell’ignoranza, ma ce ne scusiamo con tutti. La cosa migliore sarebbe stata non mettere il Postino in programma e preservarlo per un prossimo Cineforum con un tema diverso nel titolo.

Pietro Gallina

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I am writing because of an email I received from my vigilant ex-student David Angelelli, who today is one of the mainstays of the Rome-ICBIE, and who noticed the error committed in the writing of the poster that presents our Cineforum, where it says that Massimo Troisi is a director.  In effect, we all know that Troisi was a great actor, but when we think of the film Il Postino, we don’t associate that title with the director Michael Radford, but with Troisi.  As we do with films by Marlon Brando or Marilyn Monroe, etc., etc.  In the case of La Dolce Vita or Clockwork Orange, for example, we automatically associate those films with Fellini and Kubrick.  To list Troisi as a director, all the same, is neither correct nor excusable, even if it has become common usage to do so.   In the music world it is often said: the Ninth by Karajan, meaning the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven directed by Karajan.  We have done this because even in Brazil Il Postino is known because of Troisi and also because we couldn’t write ITALIAN FILMS with a foreign director.  Another error that can be held against us.  Of the two possible errors, that one, though inadvertent, is perhaps even worse than ignorance, and we apologize to all.  The best thing would have been to eliminate Il Postino from the program, saving it for a future Cineforum with a different theme as a title.

Pietro Gallina

(Editor’s note:  if “o presidente” has to make a mistake, we’re delighted that he chose to make it in such a tiny detail;  if he has time to defend it so eloquently, we are reassured, because it means that he doesn’t have other, and more grave, errors to rectify.)

After the successful film cycle that was presented last July and August, Pietro has assembled a new series.  This time the subject is The Masters of  Italian Cinema, and it is intended primarily for our many Italian students, as the films will be shown in the original language, without subtitles in Portuguese.  The cycle will present representative films by the giant directors of Italian cinematography, covering half a century, from Rossellini in 1945 to Troisi in 1994, the golden years of Cinecittà.  As usual, each film will be introduced by Professor Gallina.  There will be no charge for admission, and the whole local community is invited to attend.

This cycle, and the next one, which will feature films with subtitles, have been made possible thanks to a generous donation by our dear friend Mary Norris in New York, who, you may remember, already provided the popcorn for the first cycle.

At the ICBIE, the throngs of students are matched by a large number of workmen and laborers, who are working on two big projects.  One crew is busy mounting scaffolding, scraping and repainting the front facade.  Although completely restored only two years ago, the pristine paint job had been gravely compromised by the corrosive salt spray that whips up off the bay, and the big gray blotches were becoming a real eyesore.

With this needed facelift, the elegant facade of the ICBIE will once again symbolize the optimism and the purity of our ideals, besides showing off our beautiful building in the best possible way.

The other project is considerably more ambitious, and it marks a new stage in the Institute’s growth, one that will expand our resources, both culturally and financially, with the reconstruction of a whole block of new mini-apartments in the Art Hostel.  The back courtyard of the ICBIE, when we purchased the property, was inhabited by about twenty squatters, who lived in rows of crude little rooms situated along two sides of the quadrangle.  A complete renovation of the rooms on the back side of the property is now underway.  This is how it looked a few months ago:

Instead, this is how things look today:

In order to protect our current guests from the dust and confusion, a temporary barrier has been constructed, separating the work site from the art hostel.

When completed, the new mini-apartments will double the number of guests that can be accommodated in the art hostel.  This is an urgent necessity, as the new partnership with Rhythm of Hope, but also the growing list of friends who are eager to visit, has exceeded our current capacities.   The socially responsible tourists who elect to stay with us provide a substantial part of our operating income, and if we can significantly increase this financial resource, we can also reward our faithful young people, providing them with paying jobs.

Two other tidbits of news:  Mary Overby has completed her English lessons, and that was occasion for another diploma ceremony and party.   We thank her for her wonderful work, and wish her the best of luck in the future!

The last news is the most tempting of all.  It’s MANGO season, and the tree in the back courtyard is performing admirably!

Visitors to the ICBIE are immediately impressed when they see the beautiful old baby grand piano stationed under the stairway of the entrance hall.  Unfortunately, the instrument is beautiful only in its appearance: it is in terrible mechanical shape and it would be prohibitively expensive to restore it, even if a capable technician could be found.

A long list of pianists have volunteered to come and give concerts, either as solo artists or in chamber music formations, and many would stay to offer lessons and seminars, but without a proper instrument, such a wonderful opportunity is lost.  Even renting a pianoforte in Salvador is terribly difficult and expensive, as we discovered when we presented a concert by the pianist Stefano Greco at the Casa d’Italia in June 2006.

The time has come to remedy this problem, by initiating a fund-raising campaign to gather together 10,000 Euros (which means, unfortunately, very close to $15,000!), for the purchase of a Yamaha baby grand piano, in order to significantly improve the quality of our cultural offerings to the community.  (It must be remembered that there are many fine local pianists, too, who have no good instrument to use, and a no proper concert venues where they can display their talent.)  Because of the ubiquitous presence of the piano in all kinds of music, from classical to jazz and from popular music to avantgarde experimentalism, this purchase would unlock a whole series of cultural opportunities for the ICBIE.

ICBIE President Pietro Gallina will soon be launching a formal appeal, but in the meantime, we ask all of our friends and supporters to start thinking about strategies and initiatives.  You can leave ideas as comments to this article, and if you leave an email address, you will be contacted.  Thanks in advance!

The Italian website MusiBrasil has the ICBIE on its radar. Last February it hosted the wonderful article by Andrea Zeccato (see sidebar), and a week ago a splendid article about Julio and Bigode, written by Gabriella Melli, appeared. For our Italian-savvy readers, go straight to their website by clicking here. For those who can’t deal with Dante’s language, MusiBrasil has kindly permitted me to post an English translation, posted on the sidebar.

Julio and Bigode certainly deserve all this attention, and it’s a great incentive for them to keep working and improving their techniques. Before they left Rome, Julio promised me that he would get a t-shirt printing operation going at the ICBIE within a month’s time, because, although we have produced ICBIE t-shirts from time to time in the past, the quality has not been optimum, and rather than having others produce shirts for us, it would be best to set up an in-house operation. Well, he just wrote me with the good news: the necessary equipment has arrived and the first t-shirts are ready!

This new operation will provide more activities for ICBIE students, and the sale of the t-shirts will generate extra income to finance other initiatives.

At the American Overseas School of Rome, the Bridge to Bahia project, though only a year old, is now a familiar and on-going activity in our community, but this year kicked off with a real bang. Daniele Dattilo and I were fresh back from prolonged summer sojourns at the ICBIE, and before our stories had a chance to become stale, Julio and Bigode arrived. Everyone was so impressed with their beautiful mural, and all the students, big and small, delighted in meeting them, sharing their smiles, and watching them work. At the same time, the two boys were overwhelmed with AOSR’s open embrace and the warmth that they felt during every minute of their visit. The two important officials from the city of Salvador were also very impressed with the school and it’s commitment to helping the poverty of their favelas, assisting through both friendship and fundraising.

The mural continues to bedazzle everyone who visits the school, and during the annual school picnic in October, the students at the Bridge to Bahia table were able to proudly point at it, as concrete evidence of the wonderful work that the ICBIE is doing. Even the most skeptic parents and colleagues found it impossible to ignore the evidence! And with the two lovely girls Sarah Datin and Annie Neumann passing out brochures and explaining our mission, hundreds of people were informed.

Our faithful parent Claudia Sobral has been busy organizing a new campaign, producing and selling holiday greeting cards that re-use the self-portraits we gathered last year (see sidebar for more information). This year we got a head start, and LeiLei Xu made a new design and Claudia got busy printing them up, so they will be ready before the Thanksgiving holiday. Last week, I met with the International Baccalaureate students, who have again chosen the ICBIE as the main focus of their community service obligations. We have a terrific group of kids this year, and they are already at work, cutting the greeting cards and packaging them with envelopes.

They also plan to visit all the elementary classrooms, conducting workshops about third-world poverty and the plight of children. They will also appeal to everyone, that they each bring in one old and outgrown toy or book, so we can have a big toy sale just before the holidays. One of the students, Luka Mestrovic (who has the honor of being the very first person to post an article on this blog!) came up with the great idea of designing t-shirts, using images taken from Julio and Bigode’s mural. With this kind of creative savvy, this year’s Bridge to Bahia project will certainly be one to remember!

Roy Zimmerman

Last week, on November 8th from 2 to 6 PM, after months of planning, the ICBIE presented a high-profile cultural event at the historic São Marcelo fort, perched above the port of Salvador. Celebrating the five-hundredth anniversary of the first use of the word “America” (not the “Indies”) to describe the New World, the Exhibition-Conference marked the first formal collaboration between the ICBIE and the Italian Institute of Culture of Rio de Janeiro, besides involving important people from the Italian Embassy in Brasilia. By placing a spotlight on Amerigo Vespucci, who discovered Salvador and the All Saints’ Bay, the event served to underline the integral rapport that has always linked Italy and Brazil, nurturing the artistic and social development of Brazilian culture.

The conference consisted of speeches by esteemed scholars and historians. Riccardo Fontana, an Italian professor residing in Brasilia, presented a paper entitled Brazil: the America of Amerigo Vespucci; Marli Geralda Teixeira, a professor at the University of São Paulo, offered The Brazilian Lands Seen by Amerigo Vespucci; and Andrea Lombardi, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro spoke on the subject America: a Literary Interpretation.

This event permitted the ICBIE to collaborate with many of the protagonists of Brazilian cultural life. The impressive list includes the City of Salvador, the national tourist agency Emtursa, the Federal University of Bahia, the Italian Embassy in Brasilia, the Italian Consulate in Salvador, and the Geographic and Historical Institute of Bahia.

After a very pertinent question from our faithful reader Mary, I’m adding a photo of the São Marcello fort, which has protected Salvador’s port for five hundred years. It is said to be modeled on the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome!

(foto by S. Amaral)

Things are going well here at ICBIE in Salvador. My students are a wonderful group, lively, cooperative and always ready to help me improve my Portuguese. They are definitely the best part of teaching. Teaching in classes like these is challenging because there is no fixed curriculum and students are at various levels in their ability to speak, listen, read and write in English. They are also learning English for a variety of reasons and span the age range from 15 to 60 years old.

Last Friday we had three English speaking visitors. Two American women from the South and Susanna, an Italian women who speaks English. The students worked in small groups and interviewed the visitors based on a script I prepared. The students took notes and then wrote about the visitors during the next class.

Last Saturday students from both classes took a field trip to a Feira de São Joaquim. We met at ICBIE and rode the bustogether to the market. We saw loads of fruits, vegetables, handmade crafts, meats and tobacco products. The group swelled to 15 at one point and 8 of us stayed and had lunch together.

scuazate per il italiano rustico rupestre um bacio

Noi abbiamo molto a dirvi, a tutti quanti que anno fatto la nostra giornata per itália molto pio vivacia e piena di alegria, scuzate il nostro modo rústico e senza educacione, pero noi abbiamo fatto um grande sforço per no essere pesante a voi, volevamo potere ritribure tutto quello che hanno fatto in questo um mese e 10 giorne inesquecíbile per noi due, ancora me manca tutti, dell corneto di matina all fredo alegre quando eravamo insieme, aspettiamo che il nostro passaggio per itália avete portato pio voglia a voi per venire in brasile, oggi mi sinto uma persona molto felice di sapere que abbiamo amici in um posto tanto figo quanto la itália, la sensacione che abbiamo è che non é sucesso um viaggio in altri posti lontano e sin in un posto dove siamo sempre lê persione dell popolo insieme a tutti altri fratelli, com queste parole finiamo il nostri agradecimenti a tutte voi
Um grande bacio e arivederti il pio breve possível,

Julio & Bigode

We have a lot to say to you, to everyone who made our days in Italy so lively and so full of joy, and excuse us our simple and uneducated ways, but we have tried really hard not to be a burden for you, we wanted to be able to pay you back for everything that you did for us during the indescribable month and ten days that it was for both of us, and we still miss it all, from the morning cornetto in the cold, happy because we were all together, and we’re hoping that our tour around Italy has given you all more desire to come to Brazil, and today we feel much happier, knowing that we have friends in such a cool place as Italy, and the impression that we have is not that of a journey to some faraway land, but to a place where we are always a part of the people, together with all the other brothers and sisters, and with these words we can end this message of thanks to each and every one of you.

A big kiss and we hope to see you again as soon as possible,

Julio & Bigode

(These photos show Julio and Bigode’s work at the Maffia, a very trendy music venue in Reggio Emilia. Thanks to Claudia Tondelli.)