Una bella
giornata?

Why write your last effort for the big screen Checco Zalone, "What a beautiful day?" Simply said: it was the highest grossing film of last season, reaching, therefore, a considerable slice of the Italian population and advocating its imagination. For those who had not seen the film in question is the misadventures of the "big babies" Checco, thirty from Apulia Installatie long and still firmly in the green Brianza at home with mom and dad. His dream is to become a policeman, but is once again failed the folds in the area and security. Thanks to a recommendation of the priest of his country, is able to obtain a place at the vigilante nientepopodimenoche Duomo in Milan, where he meets a girl falls in love in Arabic, but the student is actually a self-proclaimed terrorist who with his brother plans to blow up Madonna in the air. At the sound of gags and mishaps between Milan and Puglia, we will unwittingly thwart the dark plans of Farah and his brother, and in the end despite his imbranataggine will be promoted to the bodyguard of the Pope Like all products of pop culture, the film offers interesting analysis with respect to social and cultural issues that are addressed in it more burlesque and light-hearted tone: is this frame 'light' is the master key that allows authors to speak to a wide audience, and convey messages in a more underground, implicit and perhaps therefore more strongly than to a treatment "serious", explicitly teaching or Seizure. The main theme here is that of the encounter / clash of civilization: in the film it is synthesized by the relationship between the super-Italian-so-average-to-be-over-the-middle Checco (big babies, terronissimo, an aspiring policeman) and the beautiful and cultured, but deceitful, Farah (who is studying Italian and art is sacred impress the whole family of picturesque Zalone). On the one hand and then yet another repetition of the stereotype of the '' Italian good people ", perhaps messy, perhaps ignorant, perhaps tending to the beam seen his comments (on women," this time I can even speak, "the color of the skin: "is a bit 'black, but do not bother," culture "you study it? eh, there is not shit here in Italy"), but in the end with a heart of gold, and other image typical of colonial '"other", in this case the Arab culture as exotic and fascinating subject, yes, but basically crafty, treacherous, ready to cheat you if you let yourself be seduced instead of maintaining the proper distance and hierarchical gerarchizzante, the underpinning the attitude and practice of colonial and above all from a cultural point of view. At various points during the film the question of comparing cultures (and fight) is themed openly in the dinner scene Zalone home, sit at the table even two Arab terrorists in disguise (posing as friends of Farah) and a soldier of 'Italian army had just returned from Iraq for a license, the father of Checco. When an Arab calls Zalone senior account of his presence in the country of Babylon, he candidly replied that there "must remain forever: just finished paying the mortgage I'm leaving." "That's why were in Iraq? For the mortgage? This is your ideal? "Asked the exasperated Arabic. "Guagliò, give me 6000 euros a month and I'm not a dick ... is ideal for me "gloss Italian. How to read a sequence of this type? Each viewer interprets the law and in its way, according to his cultural trends, political etc.. Here I would just like to point out the density of the film text and meaning can be extrapolated from it (even in a film by Checco Zalone!). While it is possible to give a reading of "dominant" in scenes like the one described above and then read a coma a trivialization of a tragic event as a terrible war that once again brings the whole universe to a joke and basically save morally the soldier because he is a good and nice Christian who kills even if it does for the mortgage, to provide for his family, the other can be read off with an oppositional, and then consider that they are ridiculed for their ignorance, their cynicism and their insensitivity to the attitudes of the Italian soldier and his son (proudly and completely uncritical against dad), while the hardness of the expressions of the guests is in contrast to their Arab cialtroneria.

A school without votes
or failures

You can learn without being forced to attend classes? Without being subject to the vote and the threat of rejection? Free to learn, to Francis and Irene Stella Codello (New Earth Publications, Via Ponte di Mezzo 1, 50127 Florence / pages. 180, € 12.00) says it is through the voices and the concrete experiences of those who animate the democratic schools libertarian in Italy and worldwide. Narrates and describes, not evading critical thinking, a way of life the school built on the belief that every child and every guy knows what he wants to really learn and, if left free and independent, it does so in an original and positive. What is a libertarian and democratic school, what are the main features and what are the nuances that distinguish the different realities in the world? The answers to these questions are offered presenting the projects underway in different geographic areas, leading us on a trip in the archipelago introduction of these practices truly alternative to the dominant system of education. Having provided a summary of the salient features of these educational facilities, are traced, in each distinctive element matrices cultural and historical advances that have stimulated and stimulating, even today, these experiences libertarian. An entire chapter is devoted to a historical overview and theoretical teaching libertarian. In these pages you will find the main theoretical references and the debates that have supported and support the validity of these educational projects. Part of the book gives voice to the stakeholders: students, teachers and parents were interviewed about their experiences and on some controversial issues, such as the ratio of boys with the democratic world outside the school. Thus explains the democratic schools around the world to enjoy the one hand, and the peculiarities of each other, let fascinated by the fact that even very distant cultures found in this way to see the school a common ground. Finally there is a whole part dedicated to Italy: what are the laws, situations, ongoing projects and schools already at work. This book, in short, the first of its kind in Italy, wants to fill a gap, fill a void, acknowledging a history and a present and also like to wish a future libertarian and democratic education, so that the center of the education we are truly children and children, freedom and autonomy, the rediscovery of the true meaning of education. This work has not, however, no claim to exhaust the subject, indeed! It is proposed rather as an incentive for teachers, educators, parents and, above all, for boys and girls who want to experiment and invent libertarian education and create a different school. It is not easy in our country to think and plan an exit from the education system and state bureaucracy, encouraging the emergence of a pluralistic community school and in-denominational and open to the world. But it is perhaps the only way to ensure from now on to ourselves and our children a world a little 'more just and free. This text has the potential to kindle debate, develop new research, ask questions, in short, being a vehicle to bring these issues at the heart of a common sentiment.

With improvised
means

The long way to Kathmandu. When the hippies migrated to the East (Gallino publisher, Milan 2011, pp.. 220, EUR 12.50) by Luigi Guidi Buffarini is the story, not too romanticized (which is good) which he made the trip with a group of Italians towards the fabled city of Kathmandu, landing place on the way sought Indies, discovered by the hippies of the West in search of spirituality denied and scorned by consumer capitalism and materialistic. An inner spirituality that was found, starting with the development of their mental faculties, with the help of drugs of which it was said, partly because that travel and stay in that city would have favored. The author takes back his old notebook propose it as a travel document of a period photographer, the late sixties and early seventies of last century, went to those places one hand, sociologically relevant the youth movement that was challenging the so-called affluent society, the neo-capitalist to use a term dear to the essays of those years. They were hippies, originally born in America in the second half of the sixties, in the wake of student struggles against the Vietnam War and the revolt of blacks in the United States. The company was changed from the adoption of alternative lifestyles, to practice immediately. This led to a sort of secession from the current society, through the creation of community youth who adopted alternative lifestyles. The "escape" from the Western model also featured the search for new worlds of men and women belonging to different companies. So in those years quite a stream of young travelers with improvised means, ventured overland to Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, to India. Same thing they did "our" Italian described herein. On board of a second hand Ford Transit faced a journey of thousands and thousands of miles and a meeting inevitable unexpected humanity of Westerners moving varies, like them, on that route intersects their lives and their attitudes with those of local populations that inevitably interact during the trip. Never yield to call it a novel, the book keeps the tone of a travel notebook where I recorded facts and events related to the everyday lived along the way. The difficulties and problems related to the person: thirst, intestinal diseases, overnight stays in hotels with low price, and unsanitary conditions, the new traveling companions, picked up along the way, almost all with borderline personal stories. The uneasy encounters with local people who are forced into contact with these young Westerners, so different from their customs and traditions, who sought in every way to gain some profit. In the background, between the lines, irrepressibly description of natural scenery drugs, other than those in Europe, lived, however, at least in the experience of the teller, with disenchantment due. For example, the spectacle of beauty represented by a desert or a starry night, he says that in some situations, it would have traded for a bottle of mineral water fresh and clean. Similarly, the social and political life of the various countries that cross remains on the background, some empirically see injustice, poverty, hunger, the degradation of civil costumes, at least according to Western standards. The journey is described in great detail, without making it a myth, however, are not mythologized as the protagonists, caught in their weaknesses and difficulties, and even the local population. Does not grant anything to the myth of the "noble savage", and of primitive society untouched. If ever there is a tendency to measure the distance that separates them from those places and civilizations. Basically their goal is the journey, is to reach Kathmandu. Objective not betrayed, even by the Ford Transit that, apart from some predictable failure to repair, maintain good faith with the technical references that he enjoys and takes them into the city. The author does not draw large conclusions from his account, and sociological. But anyone willing to venture no difficulty because the facts have already narrated, in itself, a social documentary first-hand.

Diego Giachetti

 

 

Don Gallo, prophet
of our time

It recently released If not now, now (subtitle: "Women, young people, sexual liberation"), the last book of Don Andrea Gallo. The volume (Chiarelettere, Milan 2011) has a preface by Moni Ovadia. The priest and the jew Andrea Moni, both of whom we are honored to have among our friends. We reproduce here, with its title, a preface by Moni Ovadia .. Don Andrea Gallo, a priest from the sidewalk as he calls himself, is one of the best known and most beloved priests who inhabit our shattered country. Hundreds of thousands of people experience him as a brother, many among them see it as a guide, a teacher, a fellow militant nell'accezione of the term, but Gallo is first and foremost a human being authentic. They say in Yiddish "to mentsch." Our birth into the world as women and men is an event decided by others, even if the construction of the masterpiece that is in us a real human being largely depends on our choices. The salient feature of this process is the opening where the other is manifested in its most intimate and excruciating truth, which is in its final size, he is the oppressed, the wreck, the poor, the outcast, the despised, the excluded, segregated, the different. The openness to others, it is clear, is not manifest in syrupy charitable act that satisfies the false consciousness and leaves injustice intact and operating perversely, but is expressed in the struggle against injustice and, in the commitment to build a long-continued society of equality, social justice, in a vibrant interplay of thought and practice with a revolutionary perspective, many lay people, the evangelical spirit. The "Rooster" is a radical Christian and knows that the message of Jesus is a revolutionary message, radical and moderate, and that's why they put it on the cross, the destabilization of the radical path indicated. "Blessed are the last shall be first because it" is not an invitation to bask in a permanent minority status for the pleasure of the ruling classes, but it is an incentive to begin a journey to free humanity from the violence of power, to redeem it with Equality. The Hebrew word ashrei, currently with blessed results not treacherously with the march, as suggested by the great translator of the scriptures André Chouraqui. It is this awareness that makes Don Gallo nell'accezione a prophet and not vulgar, and often stereotyped with which you want to belittle or mock the role of this figure, but in the deepest sense of the man who embodies the truth of the great thoughts frequently and speciously pervert of power by officials, whether they are the pundits of the earthly kingdom, be they clerics called the Celestial Kingdom.

Don Andrea Gallo (foto Pino Bertelli)

This is the reason why the Prophet transmitted the word of God and God of monotheism has chosen as his people the slave and the stranger, the outcast, the drifter, the spill, the different, the black guy because those were the casual Jews and non-ethnically homogeneous as a people today want a nasty nationalistic frenzy. In his fundamental work that must be read by anyone wishing to understand the words of this priest to be lit sidewalk, Gallo reminds us that ethics is more important than faith, as the great thinker and philosopher of Judaism Levinas suggests in his essay Loving the Torah more than God As the prophet Isaiah says of Israel with words inflamed the Lord Himself requires men to practice justice and ethics because he despises the faith of the empty and hypocritical baciapile: I care for your sacrifices. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of the bullocks. The blood of bulls, of goats and lambs I do not like it. When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing meaningless offerings, incense is an abomination, new moons, Sabbaths, sacred assemblies, I can not endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates be a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, learn to do good, Seek justice, encourage the oppressed, do justice to the orphan, defend the cause of the widow. The true prophet does not predict the future, is not a vox clamans in the desert, is the passionate critical consciousness of a people, a community, a whole society, and it is this consciousness that is etched in the offspring because words become facts , militant actions at every level of inter-human relationship in words and revert to more pregnant than transforming consciousness. This, in my opinion the way Don Gallo gives the primacy of conscience admirably expressed in the conciliar document Nostra Aetate wanted to come out of the Second Vatican Council by Pope John XXIII, the "good pope", but good because it just. With the powerful instrument of his Christian conscience, anti-fascist, critical, militant, revolutionary secular and Gospel, the Catholic priest Gallo manages to confront the most pressing social issues and ethically the most gory, debunking morality, doctrinal rigidity, the hypocrisies that clumsy disguise intolerance to indicate the path of strong human frailty as the path of liberation. This intimate truth of man, Andrew Gallo knows, feels and finds himself in the words of the scriptures since they provide the most demanding monotheistic humanism, but humanism tout court in its radically disruptive: "Love your neighbor as yourself, love the alien as yourself, what do you do to an alien to me. " The passion for man, for life and for the reception of the combine in this very special man of faith with a brilliant sense of humor that dispels all exemplary preacher to open the door for dialogue among peers to anyone who wants to join, Christian or Muslim, Buddhist, or jew, believer or atheist. Don Gallo in the miracle of ubiquity: he's implacably radical Christian and a Catholic also, but it could also be a Hasidic tzaddik, as is a militant anti-fascist and a very secular freethinker. For me, the Rooster is a brother, a friend, a guide to some, an essential and constant reference. For me personally, hope keeps an ever-present cigar between his lips and the face of this light-hearted rebel priest.

Moni Ovadia