The Italy in Toulouse

Despite the hard time and the elements being exerted against it, Venice does not die yet. This force, she owes to his serene soul, product of a long history built by a people out of the ordinary : the Venetians. The Serenissima book us so exciting lessons : lesson in democracy through different forms of power that it has experienced, economy lesson because Venice had a specific place during the Italian miracle, lesson of geography and urban planning, with the originality of Campi, These plots that animate the city, and especially lesson about art and the way of living together, in harmony and cooperation.

This untold story of Venice could not be told that by someone who lived there and was fascinated by the fragility of its elegance. Jacques Prades has conducted research in economic anthropology for four years in the North of the Italy. He has published numerous books, including 'all in cooperatives. ! "by the same Publisher. He teaches social economy at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès. The preface is signed by Serge Latouche, Professor at the Université Paris-Sud and "growth objector..

A large and beautiful book to its second draw…

Interviews with the main players, actresses and Italian directors, conducted by journalists who are not only specialists in Italian cinema, but true "feathers"., reporters, writers, Essayists, that have marked the major pages of Italian and international of the period journalism : Oriana Fallaci, Alberto Moravia, Oreste Del Buono, Claudio Carabba or Lietta Tornabuoni.
A collaboration with the publishing house Rizzoli/Corriere della will be.
The first book talk :
«Neorealism"with, among others, Roberto Rossellini, Giuseppe De Santis, Luchino Visconti, or Toto and Anna Magnani.
«The Italy of the boom», Autour by Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni, Giulietta Masina and Claudia Cardinale or Sophia Loren, the comedy with Dino Risi and Mario Monicelli and the beginnings of political film by Francesco Rosi.
«The Italy of conflict"and an iconic actor, Gian Maria volonté, but as directors such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, Marco Ferreri and Elio Petri, Michelangelo Antonioni or the young Marco Bellocchio.
Soon pending the second volume dedicated to contemporary cinema (working on the drafting of RADICI), I recommend this first part in order not to lose this duo unpublished editorial with an iconography of exception.

By Riccardo Borghesi :
” The portrait of the 'eternal city' in fascinating Suburra, is so extreme, mid way between Grozny during the war for Chechnya and Medellin in beautiful times of Pablo Escobar, or, If you prefer, mid way between Sodom and Gomorrah, that might seem a pure fiction.

But unfortunately it is not a fiction. The two authors, Giancarlo de Cataldo (Police judge and author of best sellers, including the very well known "Romanzo criminale".) and Carlo Bonini (journalist for the "Repubblica".) were deeply inspired the reality and inextricable skein which connects circles of crime, Affairs and policy, in the shadow of the Palace of power and the cupola of Saint Peter.

The story it tells here, is the ideal suite of "Romanzo Criminale".. It is the story of how the banditry of the last century has managed to survive, to reinvent itself and to take possession of Rome in the new context of the globalization of crime, the berlusconisme and the decline of the Catholic Church.

Talking about corrupt politicians, large property speculation, micro and macro banditry, drug, prostitution, violence extreme and free, regulations of accounts, massacres, high clergy corrupt and inhuman, Police bastards and sold, mafias from all sides and provenances. But also from men of idealistic acts of great moral rigor, and poor human wrecks, crushed by this corrupt system.

The story revolves around a huge real estate speculation, in the period preceding the collapse of the berlusconien regime, but the spine of the novel is a duel. A duel between a 'bad master' and his pupil betrayed and wounded in his deepest feelings. The first was far-right ideologue, fascist revolutionary and "surhommiste"., which, gone are the days of ideologies, will become, passing through the 'Banda della Magliana., the most influential bandit of the capital.

The second was his favorite pupil, pure in his ideals and his faith (EH Yes, in Rome existed as pure and idealistic fascist!) which, Once betrayed by the criminal path of the master, will become the most seasoned policeman on duty in Rome. Master and pupil engage battle until the last page.

Some things of the novel have not convinced me. I'm talking about excessive and caricatural characters, as the pugnacious Alice, so pure and ingenuous that it becomes unbearable. Or the use of some of the more mundane topos of the detective novel in Italian: the love between opposites, dedicated to the sinking by misunderstanding; characters who tell the pieces of music they are listening (unbearable!); the hackers use to search via the internet on the servers of the wicked; the young and good police officer of Friuli, naive and integrated. Worthy of a student's first year of school of screenwriter ingenuities.

Whatever it is, and despite this, the novel is leading and taking, We read of a single milking. It is epic, rich in stories more appalling than the other one, full of worthy of the adventures of Spiderman super-mechants. The reader who does not know Rome and its recent history, could remain amazed.

PS 1: the release of the novel follows two months of its film adaptation. I have to say that, even if De Cataldo has participated in the writing of the scenario, the book is extremely rich and interesting. In the film the police disappears leaving the city completely in the hands of the bandits; the role of the Vatican becomes erased, even if it is the motor business and corruption. Also disappears the duel, that is the heart of the novel.

PS 2: for those who would like to better understand what is meant by revolutionary fascist ideology, and how it is possible to feel pure while adoring the Duce, I advise reading the beautiful novel of Antonio Pennacchi, "He Fasciocomunista". ("My brother is only son.", It is the unfortunate title of the French translation), which recounts the extreme right to extreme left ideology war in Rome of the seventies. “
Riccardo Borghesi