L'Italo-Americano

L'Italo-Americano T h e m o s t f a i t h f u l s c r e e n adaptation of Dante's Inferno by Boris Acosta The community of Los Angeles honors the memory of Prof. Gloria Ricci Lothrop Consul General Antonio Verde and Fondazione Italia visited the Italian Dual Immersion Program On Tuesday, February 10 th , the Italian Cultural Institute in L.A. commemorated the 750 th anniversary of Dante Alighieri's birth. However, this is just the first "course" of a varied and rich menu, offered by the IIC, cele- brating the Italian language from next October on. The special screenings were introduced by Prof. Massimo Ciavolella, who taught for many years at Carleton University (in Ottawa) and at the University of Toronto, and is currently Director of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The Professor stressed the huge influence exerted by Dante's Divina Commedia and his other works on every field of the arts, from painting to cinema. In the latter category, he referred to the Dantesque psychological thriller Seven (1995), directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker, whose extremely dark and violent tones have been questioned since then. However, nobody has ren- dered the Divine Comedy more accurately than Boris Acosta. The director and producer, who hails from an Italian-Portuguese fami- ly, studied first-hand Alighieri's literary works in the original Volgare Italiano (Primitive Italian). His broad education boasts a degree in Applied Mathematics (Scientific Programming) and a minor in Italian Literature with emphasis in studying The Divine Comedy. With time, he has earned the respect and admiration of Dantologists around the world for his philologically exact adapta- tion of Alighieri's masterpiece. The Divine Comedy is certain- ly one of - if not the most - ana- lyzed literary works among math- ematicians all over the world, and the one arousing the keenest fas- cination. The fact that Acosta has a mathematical background cor- roborates this opinion. On Thursday, February 19, 2015 the Italian American com- munity of Los A ngeles bid farewell to a leading figure and prominent historian, whose work has mainly focused on the role of women in the conquest of the American West, including the Italian immigration to the U.S. Gloria Ricci Lothrop, Ph.D. and Emeritus P rofes s or of H is tory at California S tate University, Northridge, passed away on February 2 at the age of 80 in Arcadia, California, after a long history of pulmonary dis- eases. Since 1994 until retirement in 2004, Prof. Lothrop held the W.P . Whits ett Chair in California History at California State Northridge, and helped establishing a scholarship in her mother's memory, dedicated to promising students with depen- dent children w ho had been forced to leave school for some time. She was also a professor at California State Polytechnic University Pomona, and actively involved in civic groups as fel- low of the California and Southern California Historical Societies, and President of the Historic Italian Hall Foundation. In the 1990s she contributed to preserve Mother Francis Xavier Cabrini's shrine in Burbank, and she supported the attempt to save the Italian Hall at Olvera Street. In fact, Prof. Gloria Ricci Lothrop developed a great inter- est in her own Italian origins and the history of Italian Americans in the West Coast, writing sever- al publications on it. She was born in Los Angeles in 1934 of Italian immigrants from Tuscany, and during World War II her mother w as lis ted as "enemy alien" due to the fact THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2015 www.italoamericano.com 4 VALERIO VIALE STAFF that she hadn't been naturalized yet. After graduating in 1963 from Immaculate Heart College, Gloria Ricci Lothrop received a PhD in History in 1970 from USC and began her career as a professor. In recognition of her commit- ment to the s tudy of Italian American history and culture, she was titled Cavaliere della Repubblica by the Republic of Italy and presented the awards Targhe D'Oro by Apulia Region and the Columbian Award by F ederated Italo A mericans , among others. Services were held at the San Fernando Mission. Professor Gloria Ricci Lothrop is survived by her brother George Ricci. Preserving the knowledge and study of the Italian language a b r o a d , p a s s i n g d o w n t h i s invaluable cultural heritage to the younger generations through dedicated courses and programs, is one of the main priorities of the Italian Institutions in the U.S. In the Greater Los Angeles Area, the City of Glendale is home of the Franklin Magnet Elementary School, where the students are offered a unique Italian dual immersion program. O n F e b r u a r y 1 0 , 2 0 1 5 , Consul General of Italy in L.A. A n t o n i o V e r d e v i s i t e d t h e School, accompanied by repre- sentatives of the non-profit orga- nization Fondazione Italia. With the goal of supporting the pro- motion of the Italian language in Southern California, they pre- sented the dual immersion pro- g r a m w i t h a g r a n t a w a r d o f $19,000 from the Italian govern- ment. C o n s u l G e n e r a l A n t o n i o Verde was very pleased to spend time with the Italian teachers and students in each grade level, who asked questions and told him about the program exclu- sively in Italian. He congratulat- ed on the students' fluency and the teachers' dedication. Vickie Atikian, Principal of the Franklin Magnet Elementary School, said: "We have been very fortunate to receive support from the Italian government and Fondazione Italia since 2009. The generosity of the Italian government through the grant award to the Italian program has allowed us to have native Italian assistants that provide support to our teachers in the classroom and to order much needed mate- rials. We are so grateful for the partnership and the support we receive from the Italian govern- ment." Since 1998, Fondazione Italia h a s b e e n a d m i n i s t e r i n g t h e I t a l i a n L a n g u a g e I n c e n t i v e Grant, supporting Italian pro- grams in elementary, middle, a n d h i g h s c h o o l s f r o m S a n Diego to Santa Barbara, as well as securing the launch of an online course to prepare high school students for the AP® Italian language and culture exam. Professor Gloria Ricci Lothrop STAFF The first screening of the evening was: Dante's Inferno – Abandon All Hope (2010), an educational documentary, freely available online to students from all over the world. It is narrated by Jeff Conaway and is made of most of 19 th cen- tury French artist Gustave Doré 's lithograph illustrations and excerpts from the first Italian silent feature film ever-made, L'Inferno (1911). This film employed refined special effects and, remarkably, is also one of the few containing a brief unflat- tering depiction of Muhammad. Beware that the legitimacy of similar visual representations have caused lot of controversy among Muslims, leading very recently to the tragic carnage by two Islamist terrorists in the office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in Paris. The plot, told by actors who recite selected passages, unfolds through Dante's and his guide Virgil's journey across the three main partitions of Hell: Upper Hell - outside the city of Dis - for the four sins of indulgence (lust, gluttony, avarice, anger); Circle 7 for the sins of violence; and Circles 8 and 9 for the sins of fraud and treachery. The second screening: Dante's Hell Animated (2014), especially aiming at children, is freely avail- able to all educational institutions worldwide. It is based on an orig- inal 69-piece art collection by Dino Di Durante and retells the same plot as the previous, through a series of frames, ani- mated in an old-fashioned style, in which each one has a fixed landscape background mar- velously drawn, while the charac- ters - voiced by actors - act mechanically in a two-dimension- al space. The next step for Boris is going to be the completion of the feature-length adaptation from Dante's trilogy: Inferno – Purgatory and Paradise. Consul General Antonio Verde visits Franklin Magnet Elementary School

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