A few years ago, Italian professor and department chair Graziella Parati stayed in a hotel in Northern Italy run by a family that included a senile 90 year old grandmother who had been in the resistance against fascism. Parati was amused to discover that this memorable hotel would be the setting of the very film she introduced on Sunday, "Hotel Meina" (2007), in Filene Auditorium as part of the New England Film Festival.
"It's a funny story so I have to tell it," Parati said. "In her everyday life, she goes around the corridor walking very slowly with her slippers on. When she saw the [Nazi actors] she started going: They're back, they're back!' The poor woman was in total shock."
"Hotel Meina," which tells the tale of 16 Jews in Northern Italy during German occupation, was as foreign and unimaginable to the majority of the viewers in Filene as it was vividly and disturbingly real to the grandmother.
This exposure to Italian culture in New England was the aim of this year's festival, said Cinzia Del Zoppo, who works at Consulate General of Italy in Boston.
Parati, who introduced the first film of the festival added that the movies are "a way to keep up with culture outside of the United States, to know what are the Italians thinking, what are directors doing?"
The consulate loaned four contemporary Italian films to seven New England universities, including Dartmouth, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the University of Vermont and Northeastern University. This is the second year the program has run at the College in celebration of Italian heritage month.
The French and Italian department helped stage the event, emphasizing global thinking and global learning.
"Some of these films that we have selected are windows to other cultures," French and Italian program director Tania Covertini said. "One of them is the story of a family in Turkey it's not just looking at Italy, but it's looking at a different cultural perspective, which applies really to every culture. It's important to see what happens in the rest of the world and to think critically about it."
These films present an opportunity for language learning outside the classroom, as activities like film screenings are a requirement for students in the department.
Jana Eichenseer, a German exchange student who attended the screening of "Hotel Meina," said the event complemented the introductory Italian course she is taking.
"I really want to learn Italian," she said. "I didn't know anything about what happened. There is so much to know about a culture."
Jarrett Dury-Agri GR, who also attended the film, said he was disappointed in the conventional depiction of history.
"It came across as a very international film. But it stuck to a lot of stereotypes of Jewish culture and Nazis," Dury-Agri said. "It was very much in the vein of recent portrayals of those parties. For example, the representation in Inglourious Basterds.'"
The next film in the festival is "Lo spazio bianco" (2009), directed by Francesca Comencini.
"It's a film about women's conditions," Covertini said. "It's a film about pregnancy. It's about a certain ability to cope with waiting. The experience of waiting and filling certain voids that women experience in society. These are themes that really general and applicable to every culture."
"Lo spazio bianco" will be screened on Oct. 13 at 6:30 p.m. in Filene.
