Politically Correctness, Winners & Losers, Cinema: Let's Talk About it at Le Conversazioni

Natasha Lardera (May 18, 2013)
Le Conversazioni, created by writer and professor Antonio Monda and film festival organizer Davide Azzolini, is a literary festival that every summer, since 2007, brings together international writers, journalists and intellectuals on the Isle of Capri. A preview took place at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò and at The Morgan Library.

Philip Gourevitch, Pierluigi Battista, Lila Azam Zanganeh, Paolo Mieli, Larissa Macfarquhar, Diego de Silva, Stefan Merrill Block, Gaetano Cappelli, Wole Soyinka, Federico Rampini, Jamaica Kincaid and Leonardo Colombati are the writers who participated to the 2012 edition of Le Conversazioni in Capri and had to talk about politically correct.

  Le Conversazioni, scrittori a confronto (Conversations between Writers), created by writer and professor Antonio Monda and film festival organizer Davide Azzolini, is a literary festival that every summer, since 2007, brings together international writers, journalists and intellectuals on the Isle of Capri. In the last few years some of today’s great writers have come together to discuss engaging and challenging topics that are chosen for each year: identity, the relationship between the word and the image, memory, deadly sins, human rights, sexuality and politically correct. The festival, organized by  may be an exclusive affair, but it gets lots of attention by international crowds and the press. It is financed by the Italian government and several major corporations.

Antonio Monda himself presented the theme, Winners and Losers, of Summer 2013 at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimò followed by a screening of the documentary about the previous edition directed by Carlotta Corradi. “The expression Politically Correct is an elegant way to refer to Censorship,” journalist and writer Gaetano Cappelli is captured saying, while novelist Jamaica Kincaid was strang in her belief that “you have to say what you think, no matter the consequences.”

“For anyone who has an immanent concept of existence, victory and defeat tend to assume an absolute value, while for those who have a transcendent concept the value becomes relative and, in the case of those who have a deep faith, it can become even irrelevant,” this is the issue that Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman, Stephen Sondheim, Alessandro Baricco, Jhumpa Lahiri, Adam Johnson, Elizabeth Strout, Claudio Magris and Michael Ondaatje will discuss this upcoming summer. “How important is the human factor in victory or in defeat? Is there room for mediocrity in our lives? “Our goal this summer is to follow, listen, respect yet affirm our thoughts,” Monda affirmed at the event.

“Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory,” John Steinbeck wrote in The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights and Mr. Monda quoted him during his enticing presentation to the upcoming season.

Le Conversazioni is the ideal setting to hear your favorite, or not, writers speak with candor and humor. You might get an idea of them and their opinions by reading their stuff but listening to them express their ideas is a quiet different thing. Plus, Capri needs to introduction. It simply is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Back in 2007, the New York Times wrote about Monda and this wonderful festival: “The Capri festival is the glamorous summer-vacation edition of an ongoing conversation Monda holds in his Upper West Side apartment, where major literary and film figures mingle with Monda’s less-famous friends and random Italians.”

Admirers of the Conversazioni series who did not get enough at Casa Italiana, and who are unable to travel to Capri in the summer, had an additional taste of the program at The Morgan Library, where Le Conversazioni, films of my life took place. In a series celebrating the relationship between art, architecture, literature, and film, acclaimed artist Marina Abramović and award-winning architect Daniel Libeskind talked about some of the films that have influenced their lives and work and discussed their relationship with cinema. Film clips were shown to better illustrate the discussion, so the audience was treated to scenes of Italian classics (Teorema by Pier Paolo Pasolini) of new Italian cinema (Le Consequenze dell'Amore by Paolo Sorrentino), of old French horror (Eyes Without a Face by Georges Franju) and of an Iranian documentary (This is not a Film by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb) among others.

They both were amazing nights and, as we said in the past, it is extremely rare to know what inspires the literary minds of our time, and Le Conversazioni is a real treat.

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