Ebrei Italiani durante il Fascismo

Presented in Collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute, SF

Liliana Segre, one of the nine Italian Jews profiled in Volevo Solo Vivere, will appear in person for an onstage interview after the screening of the film at the Castro on Sunday, July 27.

The Italian Jewish experience during Fascism in the 1930s and 1940s was unique and complex. More than 8,000 Italian Jews died in the Holocaust, including 6,806 deportees, according to Italian Holocaust scholar Liliana Picciotto. Italian film directors, Jewish and non-Jewish, have rendered this unimaginable era with courage and creativity. On the 70th anniversary of Italy’s 1938 Racial Laws, we present a sidebar on the experience of one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe. We are showing four films in the Festival and three this fall at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco that explore the Italian Jewish experience of the Shoah, seen through the eyes of contemporary directors.

Millicent Marcus, author of Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz, writes: “Given the relative dearth of films on Fascist anti-Semitism and the Holocaust to emerge from Italy during the postwar era, the interest on the part of directors in recent years is all the more dramatic and noteworthy. . . . This outpouring of films on Fascist anti-Semitism and the Final Solution did not occur in a vacuum, however; it is a sign of what Fabio Girelli- Carasi has greeted as the belated emergence of a Jewish discourse in the Italy of today.” Two top-notch dramas, Ferzan Ozpetek’s love story Facing Windows and Alberto Negrin’s portrait of an “Italian Schindler,” Perlasca, An Italian Hero, are excellent examples of contemporary Italian directors exploring the legacy of fascism.

Volevo Solo Vivere (I Only Wanted to Live) is an outstanding documentary that follows nine Italian citizens who endured the Italian Racial Laws and survived deportation and internment in Auschwitz. Masterfully directed by Mimmo Calopresti and executive produced by Steven Spielberg, it features searing testimonies, including that of survivor Liliana Segre of Milan (who will appear at the Castro screening). Ms. Segre’s articulation of her experience, and her dignity, are quite remarkable.

The Dutch documentary Tulip Time, by Tonino Boniotti and Marco de Stefanis, profiles the Trio Lescano, a musical ensemble of three Dutch Jewish sisters. Stylistically similar to the Andrews Sisters, the Lescanos were enormously popular in Italy in the 1930s, but fled when their fame no longer trumped their Jewish origins.

This fall, please join us at JCCSF for Ruggero Gabbai’s exceptional documentary Memoria, on the impact of the Racial Laws on the Jewish community and the experience of Italian Jews in the camps; and two world-class features by veteran directors: Francesco Rosi’s The Truce, a fictionalized account (starring John Turturro) of Primo Levi’s journey home at the end of WWII, and Ettore Scola’s Unfair Competition, a story of two families in Rome, one Jewish, one gentile. Visit www.sfjff.org in the fall for screening details.

—Nancy K. Fishman, Program Director

Click here for Millicent Marcus's essay "Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz"

SFJFF gratefully acknowledges the following for their support of Italian Jews during Fascism/Ebrei Italiani durante il Fascismo: Valeria Rumori and Onofrio Speciale, Italian Cultural Institute, San Francisco; Craig Harrison’s Expressions of Excellence!™, Ray Lifchez; Deborah Blank and the Bureau of Jewish Education, Jewish Community Library.

Special thanks to: Irene De Francesco and Liliana Picciotto, Fondazione Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC); Onofrio Speciale and Valeria Rumori, Italian Cultural Institute, San Francisco; Susan Filippo, Museo ItaloAmericano; Leslie Kane, Holocaust Center of Northern California; Laura Argento, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale; Stefano Boni, Museo Nazionale del Cinema; Paula Olivetti, Archivio Nazionale Cinematigrafico della Resistenza; Millicent Marcus, Yale University; Sheila Baumgarten; Giovanni Minerba, Torino GLBT Film Festival; and Luca Andreotti, Torino Film Festival.