Chandi’s favorite contemporary Italian films

Lets talk about Italian Films! We all love them, don’t we? Since the title of this blog is Italian Dreams,  (which I seem at times to stray from) lets share some dreamy Italian movies! One clarification: True devotees of Italian cinema are well aware of the films from Italy’s post-war Neo Realist period. My intention here is to share the ones that I have loved since I became an adult (since the 80s) and that I feel would be most useful for my audience.

Chandi’s favorite contemporary Italian films

(Either Italian made, or filmed in Italy)

2003 — The Best of Youth (La Meglio Gioventù) —An Italian epic that follows the lives of two brothers, from the 1960s to the 2000s.  I adore this 6-hour movie! Woven into the film are all the important Italian historical events from the 60s to the 90s. As a history nut I love that aspect of it. But the romance and the heart-ache parts of it are wonderful too.

2003) — Facing Windows (La Finestra di Fronte) —A gem of a film. Giovanna Mezzogiorno is great as usual. The camera loves her face and the viewer can’t help but love it too. A transformative story about an ordinary mother who finds out how to live her passion.

2003  — I’m not Scared (Io non Ho Paura) —The cinematography in this movie completely blew my mind. I’ve seen it twice due to the cinematography alone. Set during Italy’s anni di piombo (1970s kidnapping & terrorism) it’s the most beautiful depiction of the countryside of summer and the imagination of children—and this is set against the evil world of kidnapping and the disturbed world of adults. I find it to be absolutely fabulous.

2001 — Bread and Tulips (Pane e Tulipani) — A married woman rediscovers herself. Stars off slowly, but becomes totally charming. Takes place in Venice. I love it, and have seen it a few times.

1996 — Stealing Beauty — Liv Tyler plays Lucy, an American girl in Tuscany in this artist and visually lush movie. I love Bertolucci’s sensuous and alluring way of filming this movie, but I will say that Lucy isn’t some one we really come to know, she’s more of an idealization of beauty, like Botticelli’s Venus. I recommend it if you want to vicariously experience a sybaritic Tuscan summer.

1996 — The English Patient — This achingly romantic movie won 9 academy awards. The abbey of Sant’Anna in Camprena near Pienza was used for scenes where Hannah takes care of the English patient—a location on the Tuscany retreats I lead. Definitely one of my top two my favorite movies along with Room with a View—and it has a stronger theme, that of unrequited love, making it more powerful than Room with a View. Here’s a reason why the English Patient is my favorite and something I’ll see over and over again: It values history, literature, eloquence, and travel to far flung places, and it values living deeply and loving passionately.

1994 — The Postman (Il Postino) — nominated for Best Picture Oscar. How can you not love a movie that is about Neruda’s poetry? I walked the beach on the island of Salina where it was filmed.

1992 — Enchanted April — Lonely British women rent a castle on the Ligurian coast and as the magic of Italy works its spell, they discover what matters, and become more loving. Filmed in beautiful Portofino.

1991 — Mediterraneo — It is 1941 and a small group of undisciplined Italian soldiers is dispatched to a tiny Greek island. This charming movie is filmed on the totally untouristed Greek isle of Kastelorizo, off the southern Turkish coast where I spent time in 1989 while going around the world. Oscar winner Best Foreign Language Film.

1988 — Cinema Paradiso — What can I say about how good this movie is? A classic. Do NOT see the 2002 version! See the ORIGINAL! Giuseppe Tornatore’s Oscar winning Best Foreign Language Film. The most incredible nostalgia is achieved at the end—it gets me every time!

1986 — A Room with a View —Adapted from the E. M. Forster novel by directors and producers Merchant and Ivory, and it’s their best work. Has there ever been a movie with that many strong actors all at once? Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Julian Sands, Daniel Day Lewis, and Rubert Graves are all utterly wonderful. A classic and the best “Brits in Italy” film!

A Tribute to Tuscany

Tuscany 2011

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A tribute to a glorious part of the world, to a gorgeous week in Tuscany and to the wonderful participants who made the retreat possible. I hope my video will be able to demonstrate the beauty of the Val d’Orcia, the riches of the land and the charms of its inhabitants, and how much we relished every minute of it.

Money and Beauty in Florence

By the great grace of the gods, my third attempt at a selling an Italy Retreat was successful and I was able to take a quick trip to the bel paese. After leading a delightful retreat with a wonderful group in the Val d’Orcia, I scooted up to the love of my life—Florence. There I saw a wonderful exhibit at Palazzo Strozzi, called Denaro e Bellezza (Money and Beauty) which felt like a consummation of so much of my studies. Prior to last week, I hadn’t been to an exhibit, or any museums, in Florence, since I received my MA in Florentine Renaissance History. My attempt to do so, in the summer of 2008 was quickly aborted by the disastrous burst appendix, which occurred two days after my arrival.

This suberb show, curated by Tim Parks, a British writer based in Italy, and Ludovica Sebregondi, an Italian art historian, affirms the crucial link between banking and beauty in Renaissance Florence. The wealth from the city’s banking industry funded the intellectual innovations of the humanists as well as the artistic innovations of painters, sculptors and architects of 15^th century Florence.

The show spans the exact period I cover when I teach the Florentine Renaissance: from the mid-thirteenth century, when the florin was first coined, to the burning at the stake of Savonarola at the end of the 15^th century. And to stand before the gold florin, and the works of Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Piero del Pollaiolo, and the Della Robbia brothers—LIVE—was thrilling. Molto emozionante. I visited the show from 6:00 to 8:00pm, a time of very few visitors. I was able to stand alone, in front of these Botticellis:

Noting with delight that my face was a mere 12 inches from these master-pieces!

The show begins appropriately with the Florin. The tiny 24-carat gold coin shone up at me and reminded me how much interest is generated when I tell my students that it quickly became the international monetary standard soon after it was minted—and how this coin, and the Florentine banking system, supported the greatest artistic flowering in the history of the Western world.

At the end of the first room was a stunningly beautiful panel painting by Fra Angelico. I guessed it to be less than two feet high. A distinct gravitas of Giotto could be seen in the rendering of her lap and knees, and I was struck by colors he chose for the Virgin—an orange garment underneath a moss-colored robe.

A primary theme of this exhibit is the attempt to reconcile riches and power with the teachings of the Catholic Church. The Church deemed it sinful to charge interest on loans, viewing it as profit without labor. Bankers made money by moving it from place to place, which was seen as a dubious activity. Usury was a sin because the usurer trades time, which belongs to God alone.

To repent for this sin, the wealthy Florentines threw their financial weight into the beatification of religious monuments—renovating churches, donating to monasteries, hiring the best artists to fresco chapels. The exhibit explained how the Florentines circumvented the strict ban on lending money at interest and I learned an Italian proverb that I believe is still commonly used today:

Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno

Make a law and a way around it will be found

 When I moved into the room on Sumptuary Laws, I noticed the Botticelli paintings showed lavishly attired Madonnas, which must have encouraged the desire for luxurious dress—and certainly did not remind viewers that Christ was born in poverty. And I recalled sitting with six fellow classmates and Professor Dale Kent, around a table at UC Riverside, discussing these laws that forbade Florentines to wear the very items that city produced. I remembered Dale explaining that those responsible for enforcing the laws were called Officials of the Women, as these laws were particularly directed at women. She explained that the fluctuations in the sumptuary laws illustrated the tension between seeing women as objects of desire, (the man’s desire for his wife to display his wealth on her body) and the fear of not getting into Heaven due to excessive ostentation. Yet the Florentine upper class women persisted in finding ways to dress fashionably, which of course, incited the wrath of Savonarola, the fire-and-brimstone Domincan Friar.

The show ends with Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities and the subsequent bonfire upon which he was burned when his followers turned on him.

Exhibit Info
Money and Beauty. Bankers, Botticelli and the Bonfire of the Vanities
Until Jan 22 2012 Palazzo Strozzi
Opening hours
Tuesday–Sunday 10.00–20.00
Free Thursdays 18.00–23.00
Monday closed

Flow and the Florentine Renaissance

October was quite a difficult month. But I won’t go into that. What is intriguing is to note the one time during the month when I felt “flow.”

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The metaphor of flow describes the sense of effortless action that makes an experience genuinely satisfying. During flow, one experiences deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life–similar to what athletes refer to as being in the zone.

In October I gave a talk on the Florentine Renaissance at the Las Campanas Club in Santa Fe. The dynamic audience of thirty people, were well-traveled, well-educated, and so appreciative of my talk that many informed me during the dinner after,  that they’d already said to the Event Coordinator that they wanted me to come back and give another talk. My mother happened to be visiting that week and was pleasantly surprised that her week coincided with my talk. She was brimming with enthusiasm as we sat down for a lovely dinner with the rest of the audience in the grand and ever-so-tasteful Club House. I replied to her, “Most of what you saw, I owe to Dale Kent.” (The professor under whom I studied.)

My sister gave her best shot at filming some of it on a little Canon camera. The battery ran out half way through. Thus, there’s no recording of when I covered Botticelli’s paintings, and how they relate to the particular brand of Humanism of Lorenzo dei Medici’s court. This is a wonderful topic and I was probably even more in the flow by then, so it’s a shame we didn’t get it on tape. However, below is a link where you can view some pieces of the talk.

Unfortunately I rarely have the opportunity to teach my topic, because the community colleges want me to teach the “bread & butter” history classes, and even if I did teach a Florentine Renaissance course for a community college, I’m not convinced I’d have the same “flow” experience because my audience would be different.

To give these talks, to a dynamic audience who is almost as excited about this topic as I am, allows me to experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and total involvement with something I love. I want to mention Dale, my professor, once more here, because I couldn’t have done it without her. I’ve long-loved history and I used to study the Florentine Renaissance as a hobby, but I couldn’t have achieved the deep intellectual understanding of it without her. And I couldn’t have arrived at the position of professor of this topic, without her. When I was in the flow that evening at Las Campanas, doing what I love, I was aware that I owe so much of it to her.

Lastly, I’d like to suggest the importance of noticing when we’re in that kind of flow. If you feel confused about the direction your life should go, if you’re feeling burdened by life’s challenges, if you want to feel more awake, more engaged, and want to feel more flow and ease in your life, I encourage you to   look back at the last few months or years, and ask yourself “was there a moment, or a few hours, or a few days, when I was in the flow?”

Pinpoint what you were doing when you felt that flow, and figure out how to get more of that in your life.

Florentine Renaissance Talk

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Remembering Tanya

As you danced in the light with joy,
love lifted you. As you brushed against
this world so gently, you lifted us. 

Remembering Tanya

Gratitude for a year in Santa Fe

It was a year ago I arrived in Santa Fe, so I’ll gather some threads from the past year and set some intentions in this post.

Regarding my prior post, here’s the thing about my health; I’m not going to talk about it anymore. If this quote has validity:

“What you are today is the result of all of your self-talk from the past. When you change your self-talk, you change your life.”

Then I will change my thoughts about my health. Now, I thought I’d done that. When I recovered from the medical upheavals of ’08 and ’09, and got out from under the divorce and moved to Santa Fe a year ago, I began to practice changing my thoughts. But I probably wasn’t consistent enough or didn’t truly FEEL IT.

There were times in the past year when I had ailments I’d never had before, like bronchitis, and I “believed” that it meant my lungs were weaker because of the sepsis from the burst appendix 3 years ago. And during the the stomach ailment a month ago, I noticed how “triggered” I got. As much as I tried the positive thought process, I was flung back into a difficult place emotionally. This never used to happen prior to the last 3 years, but now, if my health is bad, BAM! I’m triggered.

That’s my main trigger to work on. I have to not believe any longer the thought that my immunity is low. I need to replace that thought with one that’s about radiance and strength.

Along those lines, I’ve been working more on visualization and manifestation with my women’s group. It’s a group I started last March with some of the awesome women I’ve become close to here in Santa Fe. We meet once a month, and support each other in manifesting our passionate lives. Right now we’re listening to Andy Dooley’s CDs. A short summation of his coaching:

First, start believing in yourself, believe you are smart enough, creative enough. Believe you are worthy.

Second, activate the vision see yourself being, doing and having your desire and feeling the good vibrations of success.

Third, make a decision about what you want or which road to take. Make a DECISION and follow it with inspired action and you’ll start manifesting satisfaction!

He also states, “You can’t live the life of your dreams while living in fear of making a wrong decision.”

So true! That fear thing is a BIG one. My fear, with regards to manifesting my passionate life, (I’ll take a plunge and name it here,) is that I will move to Italy and it won’t work out. I fear that because I’m not EU, and because their economy is bad, I won’t be able to support myself. My fear is that I’ll fail at my dearest held desire.

Whew! OK, said it. Does the fear have less power now? I’ll tell you what does have power. The fact that in my group, we collectively visualize for each other, the health, the passion, the walking in beauty and fulfillment that we each desire. As Katherine Woodward Thomas says,

It’s important that other people hold the vision of the future you are creating along with you. It’s too easy for self-doubt to undermine our efforts if and when we experience a disappointment or a setback. A strong circle of support can help us to stay in a place of faith.

It’s no surprise to me that it is the women who’ve been the best part of my year in Santa Fe. To celebrate them and to celebrate my gratitude for all the good times with them, I’ll post a few pictures here.

Gratitude… one of my

intentions is do a gratitude practice more consistently.  I’m grateful for these women, for a healing year in Santa Fe, for my sister, my cat, my health, and for Italy.

Thirty dollar colonoscopies and Lindsay Lohan

It all started ten days ago when I went out dancing here in Santa Fe. Well, first I had the fated green chili at the St. Francis, and met the Indian guys. Then I rocked out to Vanilla Pop at Tin Star. Fun band, plays 70s and 80s music. Nothing gets me leaping around more. It was surprisingly appealing to hear the Bee Gees! Oddly enough, I got in free because the door guy said I look like Lindsay Lohan. That was a good thing because I forgotten to bring any cash, never mind the pathetic state of my income.

I thought, I’m going to be 47 in two weeks and I’m getting in free because I look like Lindsay Lohan, now that’s not bad. Not that I necessarily see what the guy was talking about. It must have been dark!

me that night-- Lindsay anyone?

The Santa Fe scene sometimes is such a kick. I was dirty dancing with the two Native American guys who had picked me up at the St Francis. Meanwhile next to me were a few cowboys, complete with spurs on their boots, cowboy hats, and ratty jeans, getting down to the Bee Gees too.

When I lived in Boulder, there was all this “wild west” marketing in Denver, but I tell ya, I never even MET Native Americans there, never mind danced with them, and few cowboys thrown in.

That was the last good day I had. I had a bad stomach the next day and could intuitively tell it was from the green chili. Problem is, it never cleared up. For 10 days I’ve not been able to retain my food. I tried the BRAT diet for about a week. I saw an acupuncturist. I took probiotics, I tried charcoal and apple pectin. Nothing worked.

I finally went to a regular doc and got a stool test, which typically showed nothing as we used a regular lab. I asked my doc about using the Great Smokies lab (which I remembered from a hundred years ago when I returned from India with a zoo in my intestines.) She said, “That costs $400.”

Now here are the differing opinions I’m juggling. The guy at Pharmaca says that since the acupuncturist has had me on Oil of Oregano for four months (ever since the bronchitis) that it has probably stripped my good flora.

The guy at Vitamin Cottage didn’t agree with that. He says to take the Oil of Oregano. He thinks I obtained, unfortunately, some kind of bug/parasite from the green chili. He says the BRAT diet is OK for diarrhea that lasts a few days but since I’ve had it for 10 days, he says to do the exact opposite. No sugars and starches, because that feeds the proverbial intestinal critters. Lean meat and leafy greens, plus taking Parazyme is his recommendation. I’m going to give that a try.

My doc wants me to get a colonoscopy. According to Blue Cross Blue Shield: For those not covered by health insurance, the cost of colonoscopy varies by provider and geographic region, usually ranging from $2,010 to $3,764, with an average of $3,081. No way Jose!

And I just have to say, when I got one in Italy (as a non resident which meant paying full price,) it cost THIRTY DOLLARS.

Next time I go to Italy I should get myself one of those thirty buckeroos!

Lastly this illness is continuing as my birthday approaches and I’ve got special plans. Please VISUALIZE that I’m all better by my birthday! I get so pulled down by having health issues so often! My birthday wish this year is that I could have a whole year free of any health issues. A whole year of robust, shining, radiant health. That would be such a gift! And getting in free to bars because I look like Lindsay is good too!

Preserving summer’s bounty

It doesn’t feel like summer is complete unless I’ve canned something. Since leaving my house in Colorado last September, I’ve not had a garden, but my mom, in California always has one. On my recent visit I saw that her huge Eureka Lemon tree was covered, as usual, in immense yellow orbs. That tree has always been so happy.

The problem is, my mom is barely 5 feet tall and in her 80s, and at least 50% of the lemons are high up in the tree. I found myself thinking, I’ve got to do something with them!

My mom has a few compact Meyer lemon trees, which are easy to pick, but aren’t as prolific. For preserving lemons, Meyers are indicated. But I wanted to make use of the Eurekas. They look similar to the famous Amalfi Coast lemons, with their thick skins and immense size. In fact the Eureka originated from seed taken from an Italian lemon, and was planted in Los Angeles in 1858.

At first I cut them half way down one side, and half way down the other, keeping them intact, as recipes indicate. But try fitting one of those gigantic Eurekas into a regular size mason jar–it doesn’t work. So I fudged the recipe a 2nd time. Not only did I use Eurekas instead of Meyers, I had to cut them up into pieces to fit them into the jars.

I covered them with lemon juice and salt and now they’re sitting my mom’s cupboard and I’m back in Santa Fe, which means that my mom will have to make the Moroccan dishes that call for preserved lemons, without me. But isn’t there something so satisfying with “putting food by” during the summer? It’s a memento from that slower life that we all seem to miss.

Santa Fe’s International Folk Art Market

Last weekend I volunteered at Santa Fe’s international Folk Art Market. It’s the largest folk art event in the world. Artists and craftspeople from 180 countries attended, traveling from far corners of the globe, some leaving their villages and taking an airplane for the first time. Others are celebrated cultural artists, who’ve attended this event for years. Most are from developing countries where the average income is less than $3 a day. By selling their work at this festival, they can earn enough to make significant changes in their lives and their communities.

The market also encourages peaceful relations. It couples cultures who’ve been in conflict with one another: Israelis and Palestinians; Kyrgyzstani and Uzbeks; Tibetans and Chinese. All of these artists find common ground in their work and their dreams for the future.

What I loved most about volunteering was meeting the artists who created the products that I was selling. I worked on Saturday with a lovely man from the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan, (which was recently renamed Khyber-Pakhtunkwa.) He is Pashtun, and in meeting him and admiring his lovely energy, I felt I was breaking down a stereo-type. Pashtun people don’t have the best reputation right now, in this country, but obviously there’s plenty of them who hope for peace, and who don’t wish to harm anyone, like you can find any where in the world. I found this young man to be beautiful and elegant, and his energy was lovely. It was a treat to work with him for the day. He’s part of an organization called Poetic Threads of Pakistan whose mission is to preserve and promote the traditional hand-made arts of Pakistan’s remote provinces.

On Sunday I worked with a woman from Kyrgyzstan who makes beautiful scarves combining silk and felt. They sold like hot cakes which kept me very busy. She uses natural dyes, hand-made yarn from sheep and sheep’s wool. I was able to talk with her a bit, via the Russian woman who was the translator, although it was too busy to talk much. It was very fun to work at her booth. My sister and I both bought her scarves.

I bought my mother a scarf from the charming man from Bhutan. What a kick he was. I loved his ceremonial boots!

Remembering Joe

Dear Joe, I’ve been thinking of you a lot for the past few weeks, knowing this anniversary was coming up. I think of you dancing with angels, surrounded by the purest, deepest, loving energy… a place where great joy and total harmony are abundant and constant. I wish, for the sake of your parents, your sister and brother, your wife and your children, that you were still with us. It’s so hard for us here on earth to explain a loss like this. But you are in a place that is full of an abundant love beyond what most of us have experienced here… and I know you’ll send it to us in whatever way you find possible.
Love Chandi
June 22nd, 2011

This day last year