Embassy of Italy Wellington New Zealand

A Cultural Agreement between Italy and New Zealand is in existence since 1979.
It is a typical "Framework-Agreement" which has not been followed up with Executive Protocols; this notwithstanding the cultural relations between the two countries, even given the geographic distance that separates them, seem to be in continuous development.

Accademia della Cucina Italiana in New Zealand

Portal "Davinci". A Database of Italian Researchers Working Abroad
Exhibition on Italian Immigration
Lyrical Season 2005
Language Courses
Appointments
News

Accademia della Cucina Italiana in New Zealand

The Wellington Delegation of the Accademia della Cucina Italiana was established on 18 December 2004 and on being officially recognised by the Accademia’ s President, Giuseppe dell’Osso, held its first meeting on 4 March 2005.

The Accademia della Cucina Italiana is a no - profit organisation that was founded in Milan in 1953 by a small group of high – ranking representatives of various organisations, among whom Orio Vergani, a writer and journalist. Their objective, which was considered almost a moral obligation, was to take immediate action to protect a cultural heritage of great importance that of Italian cooking threatened by the historical and social events of the 1950’s. Since its establishment the Accademia has been considered the only institution to devote all its activities to preserving the pre-eminence of gastronomic culture over the disheartening commercialisation of food and all forms of ignorance regarding nutrition.

The Wellington Delegation’ s main objective is not only that of celebrating Italian culinary culture through its various convivial meetings, but also of fostering information and education in culinary matters.

The Embassy of Italy in New Zealand firmly believes in the various aims of the Accademia because safeguarding and strongly supporting the Italian culinary culture is another way of showcasing Italian culture.

Portal "Davinci". A Database of Italian Researchers Working Abroad

The Italian ministry of foreign affairs, in collaboration with the Ministry of education, University and research, has released a new version of the portal "DAVINCI" (www.esteri.it/db/davinci), which is an internet accessible database of the Italian researchers working abroad.

Italian Governmental authorities have focused on the project "DAVINCI" because it represents an important stimulus to the bilateral cooperation and to help concrete collaborations between Italian universities, researchers working abroad and the centres where they work.

Access to DAVINCI is open to everyone. The free on-line registration also provides access to the Forum and Newsletter and the participants voluntarily provide information on the activities, research interests and competences of Italian researchers working abroad.

Researchers are invited to register to the on-line database.

Exhibition on Italian Immigration

On November 12^th2004 the National Museum in Wellington “Te Papa Tongarewa’ has opened the exhibition “Qui tutto bene – The Italians in New Zealand” which captures the history of the Italian settlement in New Zealand until nowadays, providing with a historic and anthropologic path through the use of objects, videos and witnesses.

The Exhibition has been realized through the cooperation between the museum and the Italian community whose members, set up into a committee, have generously accepted to share their experiences and offered a rich collection of photos and objects.

The event showcases a community that, although quite small, embodies a significant presence in the New Zealand territory. Notwithstanding the distance from the native land, located exactly at the antipodes, and the modest size of its unit, it has managed to keep a close relationship with its origins in a spirit of strong cohesion and vitality, and, at the same time, has enriched the country that welcomed them with its own style, its own taste, its own abilities achieving to become a vital cell of the New Zealand society, whose tribute is expressed in the same exhibition.

Visitors are guided into a path which starts in 1860 with the arrival of the first adventurers to the South Island, driven by the gold fever, and goes on from 1880 to the end of the First World War with the settlement of whole families, led by misery and poverty - chain migrations of people joined by a common birth place or working activity. Visitors can then get acquainted with the communities, which started to dot New Zealand landscape and still characterize it, first of all the fishermen community in Wellington, coming from Massa Lubrense in the Bay of Naples and from Stromboli Island.

The exhibition also shows how, during the Second World War, the community, although it had acquired esteem and respect, was nonetheless discredited as being suspected of pro-fascism and then lebelled as potential enemy. The end of the conflict signed the reaffirmation of the group that, during the years, has kept increasing its vitality and nowadays is periodically enriched by the arrival of Italians who move out fascinated by the New Zealand lifestyle, but, at the same time, always ready to highlight and make known their being Italian.

In the exhibition it will also be possible to find out about the original union between Italian culture and the maori one through the singular history of an Italian who, emigrated in 1860 from the neighbourhood of Naples, married a native woman giving rise to the Maori tribe Sciascia.

Qui tutto bene will be open to visitors until March 2007.

For further information check the Museum website:
http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/TePapa.

Lyrical Season

This year again the national Lyrical Season will offer in the bill an Italian opera:

“ La Traviata”, by Giuseppe Verdi, which will be shown in September/October and it will represent the debut of the stunning Russian soprano Elvira Fathykhova playing the role of Violetta.

The opera will be performed at the “Aotea Centre” of Auckland and at the Westpac St. James Theatre of Wellington accompanied by the Philarmonia Orchestra and the NGC Wellington Sinfonia.

For any further information, please visit the website http://www.canterburyopera.com

Giacomo Puccini will be the main protagonist of the bill of the Canterbury Opera, a company from Christchurch, with his masterpiece “Tosca” in July and with the two favourite, one-act Italian Operas “Suor Angelica” and “Pagliacci” in October.

These shows will be held at the “ James hay Theatre” in Christchurch.

For any firther information, please visit the website http://www.canterburyopera.com

Language courses

Italian is not on the New Zealand Secondary schools curriculum, but there are two university departments that offer Italian language and modern literature courses at beginners, intermediate and advanced levels.

- Victoria University of Wellington

- University of Auckland

Language courses are also organized by the Dante Alighieri Societies and the Italian clubs

Auckland: http://www.dante.org.nz
Christchurch: http://www.dante.org.nz/chch
Wellington: http://www.circoloitaliano.org.nz

Appointments

Italian Music Concert

For the third year, Wilma Laryn, president of the Christchurch Dante Alighieri Society, organized an Italian Music concert in order to promote the radio program CARTOLINA and more generally Italian culture.

The event took place at the Provincial Chambers in Christchurch on Sunday 24 at 4.30 pm under the patronage of Her Excellency Liana Marolla, Ambassador of Italy.

This year the concert was realized in collaboration with the School of Music of the University of Canterbury (Christchurch) and was dedicated to Claudio Monteverdi’s music which was performed by an ensemble of four elements: the contralto, Anne Lemont-Low, the theorbo, Jonathan Le Cocq, the bass viol Rhona Lever and the soprano Dinah Wright.

The radio program CARTOLINA, dedicated to Italian culture and life, is broadcast by the community radio PLAINS FM 96.9 every second Wednesday at 7.30 pm and is repeated on the following Monday at 9.30 am. For the last six years the program has been bringing a bit of Italy to the county of Canterbury and dealing with local events and people related to Italy.

CARTOLINA is under the patronage of the Dante Alighieri Society of Christchurch and is funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

For further information about CARTOLINA:
http://www.dante.org.nz/chch/index.html

Cinema

As for cultural events, the most promising sector is that of cinema. Its strength lies in the Cooperation Agreement approved in 1998 and renewed on May this year on the occasion of the visit to Italy of the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark. The new agreement pursues further aims and projects, even though the potentialities of the sector are not fully exploited yet.

The Italian Film Festival, the most important initiative of Italian Culture Promotion and showcase of the new Italian cinema, registers this year its 9^th edition. For the first time the event concerns seven cities (they were six in 2002 and 2003, five in the previous editions), as a proof of the increasing interest in our filmmaking. The Festival started in Auckland on October 6 and will end in Hamilton on December 8. In Wellington the event took place from October 20 to November 3.

The organizer, the New Zealander Tony Lambert, has already assessed the event. A result that is more than positive having exceeded the already optimistic expectations.

The 2004 edition of Festival has offered a remarkable programme. Confident of the increasing support by the Italian distributors and sponsors, it was possible to guarantee the presence of a bigger number of movies, as well as, for the first time after years of vain attempts, the screening of classics of the Italian filmmaking.

The lineup of films of the most recent seasons stood out for the high quality, thanks to the presence of productions which were all major successes, both at an Italian and European level, contributing remarkably to the attempt of the Italian cinema to move back to the forefront of the international cinema. Among these, “Don’t move”, the directorial debut for Sergio Castellitto, enriched by the extraordinary performance of Penelope Cruz. “Agata and the storm” which has marked the return of a director, Silvio Soldini, and an actress, Licia Maglietta, whom the New Zealanders had already acquainted and fallen in love with in the box-office success “Bread and tulips”. Still, “Remember me” by Gabriele Muccino, “Facing Windows” by Ferzan Ozpetek and “The Heart Elsewhere” by Pupi Avati, that is, other works that have brought the return of directors discovered and appreciated in the previous editions of the Festival.

As to the classics, the Festival has offered to the New Zealanders the chance to enjoy the new prints of two masterpieces of the icon director of the Italian cinema, Federico Fellini. Namely, “La Dolce Vita” and “8 ½”, the last one supported by the screening of a documentary about the alternative conclusion Fellini is supposed to have shot and which offers, from a wider perspective, an intriguing insight into the making of a big screen masterpiece.

In Auckland the Festival has been marked by a fantastic participation having registered a 75 per cent increase in terms of admissions over 2003. The stand out movies were “La dolce vita”, “Facing Windows” and “Agata and the storm”.

In Wellington, compared to last year, the Festival’s admissions were up 25 per cent, relevant if considering the hosting movie theatre was in the middle of its refurbishment. In the capital the stand outs were the same movies that shined in Auckland and it was also registered the night with the biggest crowd ever of this event, namely on October 20^th at the Festival Gala Opening Night, where 404 people, among guests and paying public, gathered to see the screening of “Agata and the storm”, selected as the inaugural movie in all the cities.

It is worth to stress the favour paid by the New Zealand public to the inaugural lecture series about the Italian filmmaking which made the programme of the capital Wellington and of the economic-financial centre Auckland richer. A whole of 409 people took part to the three events held by Professor Bernadette Luciano, head of the Italian Studies Department at the University of Auckland.

Further information is available on the Festival Website: http://www.italianfilmfestival.co.nz/home.htm.

Italian Language Week in the World (month of October)

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in collaboration with the “Accademia della Crusca” and under the patronage of the Ministry for Italians in the World, organized for the fourth year the Italian language Week in the World, an event which offers new opportunities of cultural spreading and promotion.

The 2004 edition took place from October 18 to 23 and its main subject was Italian poetry, also on occasion of the commemoration of the seventh of Francesco Petrarca. Other topics were “Italian language in music” and “theatre language”.

During the Week it was held again the Day of the Lector of Italian, an initiative that is meant to make the best of the language teaching at a University level. In that same day, the results of the competition addressed to the students of the departments of Italian in foreign Universities were made known. In this competition students were expected to draw up a paper titled “Project of a trip to Italy”, where every student had to develop the aspects of the Italian reality, past and/or present, which arise so much their interest and their curiosity to become object of their trip. The students who were placed among the first ten were awarded with a scholarship for an Italian language and culture Summer course at a university in Italy. The second ten students received a collection of books about Italian language, literature and culture. Among the latter ones, a prize was awarded to a New Zealand student, Tomoko Kuipers, at the second year of the course held by the Italian Lecturer, Professor Giovanni Atzeni, at Victoria University of Wellington.

Carrying on the tradition inaugurated four years ago, the Club of Italian language students at Victoria University in Wellington organized again the staging of a play in Italian with the support of the teachers and the lectors of the Department.

After Carlo Goldoni(2001, “La Locandiera”), Dario Fo (2002, “Non tutti I ladri vengono per nuocere”) ed Eduardo De Filippo (2003, “Sabato, Domenica e Lunedi”), this year the club has opted for “Amore Italiano”, a witty comedy written on purpose by a student of the Department, Oliver Dean. Although it represents one of the most important events inside the Italian Language Week in New Zealand, the performance was anticipated to September 11 because of reasons related to the local academy calendar.

This year the Week included a significant connection with the Italian Film Festival (see the paragraph above). On October 7 and 8 in Auckland and on October 21 in Wellington, the projection of the film scheduled was preceded by a conference about Italian cinema presented by Professor Bernadette Luciano, Head of the Italian Studies Department at Auckland University, as well as author of books and papers on Italian cinema. The intervention of professor Luciano aimed at providing New Zealand audience with a view on Italian cinema, drawing connections between past and contemporary Italian filmmaking with specific references to some of the movies screening in this festival.