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USA – A TASTE OF
LITTLE ITALY Nov 1999 DUR 8’33” ABC AUSTRALIA SINGER AND DRUMMER – GODFATHER THEME PEOPLE ARRIVING WITH CHAIRS BIG W/S SQUARE “WELCOME TO LITTLE ITALY” SIGN The Godfather
“Apollonia” music The Godfather
“Connie’s Wedding” music CHURCH DISSOLVE IN FR RINALDI Name super: Fr PIETRO RINALDI St Leo’s Church,
Baltimore OLD LADY FEEDS PIGEONS RESTAURANTS NAME SUPER: JONATHAN HOLMES CIAO BELLA DISSOLVE IN GAMBINOS W/S PAN TO PARKING LOT MURALS Name super: TONY GAMBINO Joint-owner, Ciao
Bella Restaurant BOWLS COURT THEN DISSOLVE IN GIA BOCCE (BOWLS) GAME Name super: GIA BLATTERMAN Little Italy’s
Residents’ Association The Godfather “Love
theme” music Father Rinaldi listening PLASTER SAINTS ETC. W/S SQUARE GUY WINDS HURDY GURDY DUSK SCENE IN SQUARE PAN DOWN TO DA MIMMO’S DISSOLVE TO MARIAN ON PORCH NAME SUPER: Marian Criccio Restaurant Owners’
Association SENATOR MOVE THEATRE DISSOLVE IN TOM KIEFABER TOM IN WIDE SHOT NAME SUPER: Tom Kiefaber Owner, Senator
Theatre MARIAN Tilt down from screen Tom in vision KEEP ZOOM INTO WINDOW GOING Pente’s house JOHN PENTE HOUSE DISSOLVE IN JOHN PENTE ZOOM IN TO JOHN ON ROOF GARDEN NAME SUPER: John Pente Little Italy
resident GINA AT BOCCE COURT (DURING JH QUESTION) NAME SUPER: Gia Blatterman Little Italy
Residents’ Association PROJECTOR BEING LACED UP Cinema Paradiso
“Cinema Paradiso” music MOVIE STARTING |
GODFATHER MUSIC It would be no big deal in Palermo, Sicily. But in inner city Baltimore, it’s a revelation. People cramming the streets and the central square. Free popcorn, free sodas, free movies, and no one at all making money. Baltimore’s Little Italy hasn't seen anything like it for decades. It’s just a few blocks long and a few blocks wide – and mostly, these days, it’s deadly quiet. But once, its narrow streets swarmed with raucous Sicilian life. The Catholic Church of St Leo is its heart – or it was, when Father Rinaldi arrived here in 1939, fresh from his ordination in Rome. RINALDI: It was a
thriving community of poor people who mostly had come from Europe and they
were striving to make a name for themselves, educate their children so their
children would be somebody. And they succeeded. So now it’s mostly the old folk who still live in Little Italy. Their sons and daughters have moved to big houses in the suburbs. And as the families moved out, the restaurants moved in – sixteen Italian restaurants, and counting. FATHER RINALDI The restaurants
began with one or two and slowly the restaurants grew in numbers and the
Italians reduced in numbers, but the restaurants depend upon the name of
Little Italy, and Little Italy depends upon the restaurants// they depend one
on the other very much so, it has to be that way. PTC: But you know it
is with change. Some people love it, some people wish things would stay the
same. There was a dispute over progress here in Little Italy, which had a
happy ending, after a while. But it all started when Tony Gambino, father and
son, wanted to expand the Ciao Bella Restaurant. The Gambinos bought the house next door – and that house had a great big wall that faced a parking lot. In other parts of Little Italy, there are murals commissioned by the Restaurants Association. Why not do the same here. Then we approached a
couple of artists, and then the one artist that we felt most comfortable with
felt that it would be a better idea to build that, instead of putting it on
the brick// know his point was it will last a lot longer// and that’s what
happened, we bought it, we had that built for him, and then everything is down
hill. The restaurants hadn’t reckoned on the opposition of the formidable Ms Gia Blatterman, of the Little Italy Resident’s Association, and with her connections at city hall. Those connections had helped Ms Blatterman get the Bocce court built, at no cost to the residents at all. So she’s a respected figure in Little Italy. And as Gia saw it, a mural is one thing, and a billboard is quite another. GIA: Once the owner of
that building decided that he wanted more money for the use of that billboard
he could lease it out to anyone, and we could never control what signs went
up there. So I gathered the
residents together and I said this is a no-no.// So we went to court,
we fought it and we won. The judge agreed that it is a billboard not a mural,
so they had actually been told to take it down. The harmony of Little Italy was rent in two. Residents versus Restaurants, Comeliness versus Commerce. Father Rinaldi was very distressed. I would say it
caused a lot of animosity between the two groups, yes. If he offered up some private prayers for divine intercession, Father Rinaldi isn’t saying. But somehow, out of a nasty conflict, a lot of happiness has come. HURDY GURDY MUSIC Each Friday night, hundreds of people converge on the parking lot beside Ciao Bella’s. There’s music, and laughter and good feeling. People who left the neighbourhood years ago are back. It’s amazing how many people claim to have been the first to think of showing movies on the big white hoarding. But the one who really got the ball rolling was the owner of Da Mimmo’s restaurant, and President of the Restaurant Owners’ Association, Marian Criccio. MARIAN CRICCIO: Here we had this
white elephant hanging over us, what were we gonna do with it? But the year
before I had gone to Italy to visit my in-laws, and in the piazza in Palermo
Sicily they were showing films on the wall of the piazza, and the piazza was
filled with people watching these films, and so I immediately phoned Tom
Kiefaber. And he’s the owner
of the Senator movie theatre and I ran the idea by him. At first, Tom Kiefaber wasn’t enthused. These things never
work out; we get these contacts all the time. There’s usually not
a both to project from or a place for the audience to sit but we had ‘em up
to the theatre for a meeting to discuss it with them basically to you know
let ‘em down easy, and they presented me with this photograph. MARIAN: And when he
sat down he looked down into the photos… it was like there was a sparkle in
his eyes and then he became very interested in it. TOM: The first thing
that jumps off the photograph is the billboard which I saw was the perfect –
just by eye I could tell it was the perfect ratio for a 16mm frame it was
extraordinary, and that was an indication that we may be onto something and
we’d better go and check this one out. MARIAN V/OVER: By
that afternoon at 2 o’clock Tom was here in this very parking lot. TOM: And the first
thing you see of course is this beautiful motion picture screen, exact 1-3-3
ratio, that's perfect, a perfect position in this parking lot here and the
street behind it to seat people, and the next challenge became where do you
project from, and the obvious candidate is that third floor window of that
house, right up there. (CONTINUE V/OVER) We measured it and
it’s a hundred and three feet from here to three and fortuitously we have the
right focal length lens to go in our Bauer projector to project a perfect
image on this. It’s a whole series of fortuitous coincidences, which is just
extraordinary. And the luck didn't end there. Because the owner of the house is Mr John Pente, the most amenable man in Little Italy. Mr John, as every calls him, has lived in the neighbourhood for all of his 89 years – most of them right here in this house. His two boys have left home, his top bedrooms empty, and he jumped at the chance to make peace in the neighbourhood. I asked ‘em one
question: before you go any further I just wanna ask you, is the parties in
consent with the whole thing, everybody has to be together in consent,
otherwise I don’t want it. So Marian Criccio went back to Gia Blatterman. So she contacted me,
she said how do you think the residents would feel? I said, “Now you’re
talking, now you’re doing something for the whole community”, I think it’s a
great idea. MR JOHN: I say if
that’s the case, put the projector up there, yeah. CINEMA PARADISO MUSIC And so Baltimore’s Little Italy Summer Film Festival was born. Every week now for ten weeks they’ve shown movies with an Italian flavour. Every week the audience has grown, from a couple of hundred the first week, to fifteen hundred tonight. And everybody, it seems, is happy. The movie tonight is Cinema Paradiso. It’s a very appropriate film. But if you want to see it, you’ll have to get the video, or start your own open-air festival. Here in Baltimore’s Little Italy, there isn’t a spare seat in the house. |