L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano THURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2020 www.italoamericano.org 4 MARIELLA RADAELLI NEWS & FEATURES TOP STORIES PEOPLE EVENTS Film's empty Milan in lockdown presented lessons for our times I f statues could talk, what stories would they tell? Massimi- l i a n o F i n a z z e r F l o r y i s a g i f t e d playwright, director and actor who has been promoting Ital- i a n c u l t u r e i n t h e U S f o r years. His new short film Ali Dorate – Golden Wings – filmed in a city under lock- down, animates public stat- ues across Milan during the tragic days when the coron- a v i r u s r e n d e r e d t h e f a s t - paced metropolis silent and p a r a d o x i c a l l y e v e n m o r e beautiful. Nineteen monu- mental and beloved sculp- tures became the protago- nists of the story. Finazzer Flory, born in 1964, in Monfalcone in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region n e a r t h e G u l f o f T r i e s t e , made his acting debut in Milan with leading roles in Viaggio con Virgilio and L'Altro Viaggio di Maria Rilke, both staged in 2005 at Il Piccolo Teatro di Milano. I n t h e U S h e i s b e s t known for his award-win- ning play Pinocchio, Storia di un Burattino, his stage adaptation of Alessandro Manzoni's classic historical n o v e l , a n d h i s m o v i e Marinetti a New York. H e h a s r e c e i v e d r a v e reviews for his plays, which i n c l u d e L ' O r e c c h i o d i B e e t h o v e n a n d E s s e r e L e o n a r d o d a V i n c i . T h e stage-to-film adaptation of the latter in 2019 won inter- national awards. H e d i v i d e s h i s t i m e s b e t w e e n M i l a n a n d N e w York. Mr. Finazzer Flory, y o u s h o w e d M i l a n ' s scenic beauty through its major landmarks and monuments, a selection of 19 statues of famous individuals who played a role in our history and symbols of the city. Why did you focus on those statues in your new film? Light is the ink of cinema that can offer a different point of view on the darkness a n d t h e c u r f e w t h a t t o o k place. Artists see better in the dark. Under lockdown, we confronted the invisible enemy COVID-19. T h e i m a g e s s h o w u s deserted piazzas and empty streets. But it was not actual- ly so, I believe. Both history and the statues remained to defend the city. Against the invisible enemy, what we n e e d e d w a s a m a t t e r o f memories. Did you want to infuse into these specific kinds of sculptures a sort of healing power? Yes, I did. The statues do not save but their embodied and grounded symbols do. To the Ancient Greeks, the symbols were broken objects that needed to be reassem- bled by men to regain life and value. The statues inter- e s t m e b e c a u s e t h e y a r e human-shaped. The human experience is curative. Among others, there are memorial statues of n o v e l i s t A l e s s a n d r o M a n z o n i , p o l y m a t h Leonardo da Vinci, then the leading painter of Romanticism movement F r a n c e s c o H a y e z , t h e great opera composer Giuseppe Verdi, Italy's patron saint Francesco d'Assisi, and of course the statue of the Virgin Mary on the top of the Duomo, which is com- monly referred to as the M a d o n n i n a . W h a t d o these monuments say? I see monuments as docu- ments telling of characters and representing universal values of a character that has been able to interpret and renew. Is there anything they can teach us today? They teach us we don't win on our own. In my film, the statues I selected are a c o l l e c t i v e d e c l a r i n g t h e importance of being "we are one." Each player, each stat- ue, has a competence, a role, and represents an excellent knowledge that needs rela- tionships. Some persons rep- The statue of Emperor Constantine, who allowed freedom of cult in the Roman Empire (Photo courtesy of Finazzer Flory) Continued to page 6

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