Presentation of the movie

                 LA VITA E' BELLA

Original title: La vita è bella”

Country: Italy

Year: 1997

Director: Roberto Benigni

Genre: Dramatic

Length: 110 minutes

Setting: V. Cerami

Music: P. Piovani

Photography: T. Delli Colli

La vita è bella is a famous film whose director is Roberto Benigni.

We can divide it into two distinct parts: the first, which is typical of a COMEDY, and the second, which clearly shows the DRAMA lived in a concentration camp in Trieste by the Jews in 1930s.

It's the story of Guido, an Italian man, whose origins are Jewish. He lives in Arezzo (Tuscany) and he falls in love with Dora; she likes him too.... They get married and have a child, Giosuè.

Suddenly, Mussolini's racial laws passed and Guido and Giosuè are brought into a lager. Guido knows the huge cruelty of Shoah, but he makes his best every day to let his child believe all what he sees is part of a game, a game where people are eliminated and final prize is a tank.

We can't help being moved by the poet Benigni who, in this film SINGS HIS HYMN TO LIFE, even when the world where he lives is the worst one!!! Guido wants to save his child by horror letting him believe they all are playing.

There is a perfect equilibrium between drama and comedy; the audience cries and laughs at the same time.

Guido is a fantastic father, who even when he is going to die laughs and jokes because he wants his child continues to believe that........ LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL!

STUDENTS' COMMENTS ON THE MOVIE

It is really a moving film, which perfectly faces an event that dramatically affected so many people. Acting is perfect and makes you live each single scene as if you were personally involved in it. 
 

As Primo Levi says “ we have to remember everyday the history of dictatorship and every evening, when our children go to bed, we have not to tell them fairy-tails, but History, so that they can know it and such events will not occur anymore”. This movie does that excellently.

This movie really touches people souls, because it tells the misfortunes of a Jew family, that represents the whole Jewish people and what they had to suffer.

I think that this is one of the most beautiful and the most significant movies of recent years. It is a story that communicates to us the infinite beauty of life, in spite of the tragic period in which it takes place. It deals with such a hard matter with simple and hilarious messages, in a way that only the great Roberto Benigni can do.

After seeing this movie, I have become more and more aware that life is like a mirror: the more you smile at life, the more it will answer with a smile, perhaps not immediately, not the way you would like........but anyway, there will always be something that will make you happy and that will make you appreciate more and more the beauty of life.

Watching the movie, what most impressed me was Benigni's ability in facing the themes of suffering and love. There is a double kind of suffering in the movie: the first related to the imprisonment in a concentration camp, and the second – a greater one - related to the concern of the protagonist for his son's and wife's lives.

One could wonder how it is possible to entitle “Life if beautiful” a movie about the Holocaust! You can't help being moved by the “poet” Benigni, who during the movie sings his hymn to life, even though his world may seem like the worst of all possible worlds. After all, the movie is an extreme act of acceptance of life.

The idea of saving his son from the horror making him believe that everything is a game, is both an original and strong way to blame Nazism.

Love is … a husband who adores his wife and a father who laughs and jokes up to the end, even when he is going to die, in order to allow his son to keep believing in the beauty of life.

What is surprising in the movie is not only its sweetness, but also its ability to arouse emotions and thoughts, without any triviality.

The movie succeeds in describing this huge human tragedy in such an extraordinary lightness, that the audience is drawn into a kind of suspended world.

I think that this kind of movie can teach us to don't have fear of the enemies and I think it has been done to let us understand the meaning of love.

Meeting in Italy

Images and materials from our meeting in Italy - November 2011

Photographs

INTERNATIONAL LUNCH

OPENING CEREMONY

Gümüşhane

Gümüşhane (Greek: Αργυρούπολις) is a city in northeastern Turkey and the east of Gümüşhane Province. The city lies along the Harsit River, at an elevation of 5,000 feet (1,500 m), about 40 miles (65 km) southwest of Trabzon. The name literally means "silver town" and is derived from the silver (Turkish gümüş) mines nearby. Its name is a direct translation of the ancient Greek name of the city, Argyroupoli 'silver city'. Other "silver" localities include Argentina, Argenteuil and Srebrenica.

The old city was first settled ca. 700 B.C.E. by Ionian Greek traders from Trapezus who were the first to find silver in the region. They called the settlement Thyra or "doorway" in ancient Greek. The silver mines were mentioned by Marco Polo and the medieval North African traveler Baṭṭūṭa.

After the mines were worked out, Gümüşhane became a fruit producer (chiefly apples and pears); its position as a transit station between the port of Trabzon and western Iran also contributed to its prosperity. Russian occupation during World War I (20 July 1916 - 15 February 1918) left half of the old city in ruins; the new city built since then is now the commercial and administrative centre. Nearby historical buildings include partially ruined castles, Turkish baths, mosques, and several Byzantine churches. In 1911, "the population was about 3000, who were mainly Greeks, who had emigrated great distances to work in the mines, and supplied virtually the whole lead and silver mining labor in Asiatic Turkey. The Greek bishop of Gümüşhane had under his jurisdiction all the communities engaged in this particular class of mines". Some of the Greeks who were expelled during the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey settled near Athens, where they called their neighborhood Argyroupoli.

LOGO CONTEST

Just be aware of our blog new entries! as in some days you will have news about our international logo contest!

Romanian video

It was a pity, the video was just included as a comment. I have added it in an entry:

Sessa Aurunca is a town of Campania, Italy, in the province of Caserta. It located on the south west slope of the extinct volcano of Roccamonfina.
It is situated on the site of the ancient Suessa Aurunca, near the river Garigliano. The hill on which Sessa lies is a mass of volcanic tuff.
The ancient chief town of the Aurunci, is believed to have lain over 600 m above the level of the sea, on the narrow south-western edge of the extinct crater of Roccamonfina. Here some remains of Cyclopean masonry exist; but the area enclosed, about 10 m by 50, is too small for anything but a detached fort. It dates more probably from a time prior to Roman supremacy.
In 337 BC the town was abandoned under the pressure of the Sidicini, in favour of the site of the modern Sessa. The new town kept the old name until 313, when a Latin colony under the name Suessa Aurunca was founded here. It was among the towns that had the right of coinage, and it manufactured carts, baskets and others. Cicero of it as a place of some importance. The triumviri settled some of their veterans here, whence it appears as Colonia Julia Felix Classica Suessa.
From inscriptions it appears that Matidia the younger, sister-in-law of Hadrian, had property in the district. It was not on a highroad, but on a branch between the Via Appia at Minturnae and the Via Latina crater mentioned.

The town contains many ancient remains, notably the ruins of an ancient bridge in brickwork of twenty-one arches, of substructures in opus reticulatum under the church of S. Benedetto, of a building in opus quadratum, supposed to have been a public portico, under the monastery of S. Giovanni, and of an amphitheatre.
The Romanesque cathedral is a medieval basilica with a vaulted portico and a nave and two aisles begun in 1103, a mosaic pavement in the Cosmatesque style, a good ambo resting on columns and decorated with mosaics showing traces of Moorish influence, a Paschal candelabrum, and an organ gallery of similar style. The portal has curious sculptures with scenes from the life of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. In the principal streets are memorial stones with inscriptions in honour of Charles V, surmounted by an old crucifix with a mosaic cross.

The hills of Sessa are celebrated for their wine.

GÜMÜSHANE

CLUJ-NAPOCA

Cluj-Napoca  German: Klausenburg; Hungarian: Kolozsvár, Medieval Latin: Castrum Clus, Claudiopolis; Yiddish: קלויזנבורג, Kloiznburg), commonly known as Cluj, is the second most populous city in Romania and the seat of Cluj County in the northwestern part of the country. Geographically, it is roughly equidistant from Bucharest (441 km / 276 mi), Budapest (409 km / 256 mi) and Belgrade (465 km / 291 mi). Located in theSomeşul Mic River valley, the city is considered the unofficial capital to the historical province of Transylvania. In 1790–1848 and 1861–1867, it was the official capital of the Grand Principality of Transylvania.

As of 2010, 305,636 inhabitants live within the city limits, marking a decrease from the figure recorded at the 2002 census. TheCluj-Napoca metropolitan area has a population of 379,705 people, while the population of the peri-urban area (Romanian: zona periurbană) exceeds 400,000 residents. The new metropolitan government of Cluj-Napoca became operational in December 2008.Lastly, according to the 2007 data provided by the County Population Register Service, the total population of the city is as high as 392,276 people. However, this number does not include the floating population of students and other non-residents—an average of over 60,000 people each year during 2004–2007, according to the same source

PROGRAM AND SOME MORE USEFUL INFORMATION FOR OUR VISIT TO ITALY

Here we have the program for the visit to Italy and some more useful information:

Program

Material and tasks Italy

Selection Process (2)

Some of the videos are quite large, so it takes me a time to upload them, but here we have another video, thanks to Lorena who was patient enough to upload it in youtube.

Selection process

In Spain, we have organised a contest to choose the students who are going to participate in the Comenius project. All students in our schools are invited to participate or collaborate in every activity, but we have chosen 29 people who are goint to be more directly involved in the project. Each student will introduce him or herself in some days. Here you have one of the videos prepared for the contest:




Or this other video snatch...





Or these picture presentations:

WELCOME TO OUR PROJECT