L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2019 www.italoamericano.org 6 NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS Continued from page 4 d'Or at Cannes in 1991, revolves around three Italian-American brothers who want to start a con- struction company in the new residential areas of New York in the 1950s, while Romance and Cigarettes (2005) evokes the anguished lives of a Queens' working class family. Turturro is Italian-American by personal background and artistic choice. His parents never severed their ties with the moth- erland and he has a natural and cultural attraction for his own roots, which explains the origins of strong relationship eventually officialized in 2011, when he obtained the Italian Citizenship by direct ancestry. Turturro likes to strengthen this bond through several trips to the Belpaese, always out of the limelight, speaking a bit of Italian and working here. In the 1990s, he developed a passion for Italian literature and then, in 2006, he interpreted and directed Questi Fantasmi, by Eduardo De Filippo, at the Teatro Mercadante in Naples. In 2008, he worked with Spike Lee in Miracle at St.Anna, a movie almost entirely filmed in Italy, just like 1997's The Truce by Francesco Rosi, where he took up the difficult role of Primo Levi, for which he had to lose a great amount of weight to make his interpretation more realistic. In 2003, he also lent his voice to the characters of Opopomoz, a cartoon by Enzo D'Alò set in Naples. In 2009, he played in Italian Folktales, inspired by Italo Calvi- no and Giuseppe Pitré's works. This journey to rediscover his Italianità continued with the doc- umentary Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy, a distant child's decla- ration of love for the land of his ancestors, narrated by the intense voice of Sicilian author Andrea Camilleri — who recently passed away — and shot by Marco Pon- tecorvo. In 2010, he returned to Italy and to the Mostra Inter- nazionale d'Arte Cinematografi- ca di Venezia with his own docu- mentary, Passione, dedicated to Naples — which he defines the place of the heart — and its music. In 2018, he directed opera for the first time: he chose Verdi's Rigoletto for the beauty of its music, the modernity of its themes, the wealth of contradic- tions in its plot. Turturro also took part in several Italian pro- ductions: in 2015, he was in Mia Madre, directed by Nanni Moretti and presented at Cannes. In the same year, he was in Marco Pon- tecorvo's Partly Cloudy with Sunny Spells, set in the region of Marche. And it isn't certainly a case he interpreted Guglielmo of Baskerville, the monk-detective protagonist of the tv series The Name of the Rose, inspired by Umberto Eco's novel translated in 40 languages and with more than 50 million copies sold around the world. "In Italy, I lived very impor- tant professional experiences. In Mac, the first film I directed, I told my father's story: a builder, a very traditional man. My moth- er, on the other hand, was a jazz singer who performed in a big band with her brothers, but she wanted a family so she kept on singing only in church and at home. My father used to sing, too: he knew all Il Trovatore by heart. Both of them — Turturro explained in an interview a cou- ple of years ago — left an indeli- ble mark in me. When I directed the movie-documentary Sicilia, in 2008, I ended up knocking at the house where my grandparents used to live. Discovering my roots has been essential to under- stand who I really am." Since the 27th of December 2018, Turturro is a Commenda- tore dell'Ordine della Stella d'I- talia. This came after obtaining his Italian passport and becoming a citizen of Aragona, the place his grandmother Rosa Terrasi left John Turturro became a honorary citizen of his father's hometown of Giovinazzo this year © Depergola Fotografia-Ufficio Stampa Comune di Giovinazzo John Turturro spent time with locals and with his extended Italian family from Puglia © Depergola Fotografia-Ufficio Stampa Comune di Giovinazzo Continued to page 8

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