Focus

Paola Randi is not your typical Italian director. She discovered her passion for the movie industry when she was over 30 and no major cinema school would have enrolled her, she is from Milan “where working in cinema is considered for aliens only”, she is a woman, and for her second directorial feature, she chose sci-fi, a very unusual genre for Italian cinema. After all, as she explained, “I was told that I would have failed with my second movie like everybody does, especially when you first film did well. Well, I thought, if this is going to be my last movie, I’d rather be bold.”

Italian presepi -Nativity scenes, that is- come in all shapes, sizes, colors and dimensions. The historic ones in the venerable churches may have over 100 hand-carved figures. In today's presepi, Holy Families, shepherds and sheep may actually be alive - or be made of ice or sand.

Interview with the actress and director who presented in New York her second directorial effort, Euphoria. She talks about women and cinema in Italy and confides a desire: winning one day the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in France. "It took me a long time to do what I wanted to do," she says, "not because I found it difficult as a woman. The problem came from within: I would call it self-censorship."

Matteo Salvini will shortly visit the United States, he told a crowded hall of foreign journalists at the Foreign Press Association Dec. 10. While calling for regular and regularly controlled immigration, he said, "My priority is the 5 million Italians living in poverty."

Family recipes, play a huge part on the holidays; here are some of the mouthwatering classics.

This December's annual Censis Report on the Italian society and economy is not exactly what Santa ordered. Its 52d edition shows an Italy suffering from fear of the future and of migrants, and lax in investing in education.

From Christmas trees like Rome's "Spelacchio" to projects to fight pollution through urban forestry, trees make news, and not only those in Rome which have been neglected and fall across downtown streets.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that New York City's Central Park monument to Christopher Columbus has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The 76-foot rostral column was erected in 1892 in Central Park by New York's growing Italian-Americancommunity, which embraced Columbus as a unifying figure to help Italians overcome discrimination and gain inclusion in mainstream society.

Alessandra Salerno’s new single FAITH WITHIN YOUR HANDS is her first song recorded in New York collaborating with guitarist-producer Fabrizio Sotti

Tragedies of a Ridiculous Man. A retrospective that spans his four-decade career- (December 5–30, 2018 - The Museum of Modern Art)

Bosco Verticale (in English Vertical Forest) is the marvelous masterpiece designed by the Italian architecture studio of Stefano Boeri. This project is part of the architectural renaissance that has been impacting Milan.

For this edition of the renowned Festival, Award-winning actress and director Valeria Golino will be our guest of honor during the screening of her film Euforia along with Director Julie Taymor and Novelist André Aciman. Special guest director Paola Randi will present her movie Little Tito and the Aliens.

Saint Lucy's Day is a Christian feast day celebrated on December 13, commemorating Santa Lucia, a 3rd-century martyr. The feast is a Catholic celebrated holiday with roots that can be traced back to Sicily.

The Neapolitan nativity is The Word made flesh, wedded to the myths, fables, stories and splendors of a culture that continues to preserve the past. And the Neapolitan nativity, now as then, goes beyond religion. Thanks to this identification of our day-to-day lives with God, the sacred and profane, the past and present, history and legend fuse together.

In a 22-year project, 50 classicists and computer experts have for the first time recreated ancient Rome in virtual reality. Thanks to new technology, students and scholars as well as the general public can fly over the Rome of 1,700 years ago.

Associated Press agency album of photos of Rome display huge trash piles, clogged sewers, graffiti and potholes. Going viral worldwide this week, the AP photos shocked even the Romans. Perhaps worse are plans to build a shopping plaza within the Colosseum park.

What happens in an Italian-American household on Thanksgiving Day? Take my family's case...

After a wide-ranging career, Tommaso Cardana, born in Italy 43 years ago, took a Master’s degree in Venezuela, then moved to Miami, where he opened a hotel services company and later expanded to home supplies. A year ago, he was elected president of the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce Southeast, Miami (IACCSE).

Foundation Congratulates President Trump on Selecting Prominent Italian American Jurist. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor for a civilian.

Monica Vitti enchanted cinema and the public. She is perhaps the last great Italian diva, an actress who provoked sympathy and emotion in both cinephiles and the general public. She united the two separate souls of Italian film, auteurist cinema and la Commedia all’italiana.