/ Director
Giuseppe Gagliardi
/ Cast
Peppe Voltarelli, Totonno Chiappetta, Dario De Luca, Cristina Manti, Saverio La Ruina, Roy Paci.
/ Music
Tony Vilar, Peppe Voltarelli.
/ Producer
Gino and Sarah Pennacchi / Andrea Kerkoc
/ Length
93 mins.
/ Year
2006
/ Sponsor
June & Mark Fabiani Family
/ Co-Promoters
Date :: Friday, November 6
Time :: 7:00 pm
Location :: The Birch North Park Theatre
Cost :: $8.00 donation suggested
Language :: Italian with English subtitles
Tickets :: On location
La vera leggenda di Tony Vilar
The True Legend of Tony Vilar
Italians have poured into every corner of the world. And here we are, immigrants, children of immigrants, grand children of people who left Italy, and we think of ourselves as those who somehow left a home. And yet we seldom dream of how those left behind think of us. Are we still part of them? Is their home still home to us? And then what about all those others who left and didn’t end up with us? Are they somehow part of us, too? Oh such serious questions.
The charm of La Vera Leggenda di Tony Vilar is that it takes these questions and turns them on their heads. Nothing serious here, except for the vast migration of Italians and the desire to track it, not for something academic or selfish but purely to find the creator of beauty. And there is charm. And irony. And a love of all things Italian, even when it shows itself as silly or over the top. The term Italian seems to cover it all.
"A love of all things Italian"
Italians do not make mockumentaries, but Giuseppe Gagliardi has done exactly that. This is an Italian MTV-like take on a simple story, a search for a lost icon, over three continents, tracing the Italian diaspora, but as a long musical joke. And it is so full of bounce that the clichés Gagliardi and co-writer Voltarelli use are never offensive but fun, puppet characters in a young person’s theater of the absurd, a sing-along Punch & Judy show but all based on this extraordinary movement across continents and through cities and into little neighborhoods we all recognize and yell out for: “Hey, I used to go there!”
Of course, if we ask why Italians do not make mockumentaries, we raise very serious questions which we really won’t answer here, but from our perspective (Italians, children of Italians, etc.), it’s because truth may never be as important as the style in which the story is told. It’s not that Italians don’t want the truth, they just don’t want to be bored to death waiting for it.
Here the truths are simple: Italians everywhere love secrets, Italians everywhere have the same drive to connect, and they want to sing in the streets (I wonder if they like “Singing in the Rain?”) even if the reality behind all this is foolish, painful or even at times too difficult. It’s no wonder one of the important sayings I learned stresses this: Se non e’ vero, e’ ben trovato: Even if it’s not true, it’s well told. And why’s this? Because the stories we tell are often remembered long after the real moment has passed.
BRANDING + MARKETING: MIRIELLO GRAFICO // SITE DESIGN + DEVELOPMENT: ALONSO CREATIVE
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