Italian Film Festival: Paolo Rotondo on food, love, culture and identity

The King of Laughter features at the Italian Film Festival this year.

Food is at the centre of Italian culture, and Italian films have been the perfect vehicle to express Italy’s culture, chaos, beauty and variety. Award-winning NZ-Italian film director, writer and actor Paolo Rotondo, is artistic director and curator of the Italian Film Festival. He talks about some of his of his favourite films.

Paolo Rotondo. Photo / Richard Brimmer

Food so often marked my Italian identity. Growing up, I was nourished by Italian food and culture, on weekends, we would lunch at Nonna’s house, where the television was always loud, the tablecloth was always lace, and Papa would always offer a digestive after a meal. At school in New Zealand, I began feeling different because of my foreign name and habits (I used to eat frittata di spaghetti for lunch and drink a caffe latte for breakfast). I felt proud of my Italian culture but, simultaneously, was aware of being different; an outsider.

Nowadays, when I cook at home for my family and friends, my Italian heritage is expressed through my food: the baking learned from Zia [my aunt], the recipes of Nonna, the pasta tricks of her mother, eating together, and talking about food from morning until our eyes shut.

In Italy, eating is given a sacredness that I sometimes fear has been lost here. In New Zealand, we eat while working, we eat in the street, and we eat in the car. During hectic weeks, food is degraded to mere sustenance instead of something to be enjoyed. That is not to say Italians are not just as busy or that their deadlines are less pressing. Italians recognise the importance of stepping away from the laptop and remembering how having a laugh over lasagne can re-energise and re-inspire you for hours of afternoon work.

I hope that this Italian “sacredness” of eating inspires a deeper appreciation of food - the experience of eating, not just the food itself, but the being together is something to be savoured. I often find a parallel feeling to this when enjoying a hakari with Māori friends and family.

So many of this year’s outstanding films seem to be set in my hometown of Napoli, as hard as it may seem to believe, I am not being especially biased, but instead, we are representing Napoli as an emerging city of cinema in Italy … and it also happens to be a culinary capital.

One Neapolitan word, difficult to paraphrase, embodies how Naples feels and why it offers such rich cinematic gems. Ammuina is the spirit of Naples and its people. Ammuina is the chaos of excitement, the chattering voices that turn into nonsense around you, the swarms of Vespas in the street, weaving in and around cars with friendly honks, the bickering on a corner, interspersed with curses, the lady shouting from her balcony before throwing water on your head, kids playing soccer in the narrow streets and accidentally kicking the ball into the church. Ammuina is an uncontrolled joyful confusion, and it’s ingrained in the fabric of the city. Ammuina is more than just a word: it’s a state of mind, a way of being and living, of coping with difficulties. Without falling into the usual clichés that want Neapolitans to always be cheerful and smiling, there is no doubt that ammuina is an entirely Neapolitan feeling.

One only has to wander through Naples’ ancient neighbourhoods to find this cheerful confusion, this pleasant, folkloric disorder. It is an inherently cinematic energy.

Ammuina is the theatre of the charming salesman or the caricature Pucinella dancing on the Mergellina seafront. But it not only exists in the public sphere, it is found in homes, especially around the table, where families gather and talk over each other, shout, sing and swear. You can even “get” that feeling when excited about a dish, a trip, a visit to a museum, an evening with friends or a film. Ammuina is a contagious feeling that acquires value when shared. Ammuina is a thread woven into the tapestry of the city, it is hospitality, good food, and humour. It is a rebellion against stereotypes, tragedy and difficulties.

All of our films set in Naples in this year’s Festival are infused with ammuina.

In Aotearoa, I sometimes feel it when I am with tāngata whenua, in any kind of setting. I don’t know what the word would be in Māori, but it is an energy, a wairua that, like ammuina, is impossible to translate and yet impossible not to understand – a force to recode assumptions, a shaking-off of what everyone tries to define, to really see how rich and deep the rebellious, proud and welcoming soul of its people are.

There is a scene in the film The King of Laughter (2021) where an entire chaotic extended family sit down for a Sunday lunch. Across the spaghetti, tortellini, carne glassata and rum baba, theatre shows are planned, marriages are arranged, illegitimate children are discovered, wine is tasted, and even lunch is enjoyed.

Happiness is a plate of spaghetti

For us Southern Italians, the family table is the centre of the universe.

The King of Laughter is a biography of Neapolitan comedic theatre legend Eduardo Scarpetta, the father of the famous playwright and screenwriter Eduardo de Filippo, who wrote some of Italian cinema’s most engaging food-oriented scenes. One of my favourite scenes is in a film written by both of them, Miseria e Nobilita (not in the festival this year). Although released almost 10 years after the end of World War II, Miseria e Nobilita told the story of paralysing hunger and misery that was still fresh in the minds of many Italians. When Marquis Eugenio Favetti delivers a banquet to the penniless Sciosciammocca family, the family’s deprivation is palpable. Although comedically ending with Felice Sciosciammoca

The king of Laughter

(played by iconic Neapolitan comedian Toto) devouring a dish of spaghetti in tomato sauce with his hands, dancing on the table and stuffing the rest into his pockets, this scene struck a deep chord in the older generations. Happiness is a plate of spaghetti. Impossible not to be grateful for our fortunes and full bellies.

Can you go home again?

Another film that delves into Napoli is a film I could profoundly relate to: Nostalgia. It asks a question I ask myself whenever I return to Napoli: Can you go home again after so long? Is it still home? Nostalgia is a truly absorbing, finely tuned drama that was Italy’s official selection for this year’s best international film Oscar. It tells the story of a man returning to his hometown after 40 years away, arriving on a plane from Cairo: Felice Lasco, played by the craggily expressive Pierfrancesco Favino. Nostalgia is tremendously shot and terrifically acted. It challenges the idea of the nature of “nostalgia”: it isn’t simply that nostalgia is delusional or that the past wasn’t as great as it appears when viewed through rose-tinted glasses. It is that there is no past.

Naples then and Naples now are the same – and for Felice, his fears and loves never really went away or even changed that much. As a Neapolitan living in Aotearoa, I could relate to the intangibility of a past place that one longs for. Of course, my story has fewer criminal underworld connections and mysterious intrigues.

Nostalgia regia di Mario Martone. Photo / Getty Images

Equal amounts of passion and love

In The Perfect Dinner, the protagonists - Consuelo, a chef who aspires to earn a Michelin star, and Carmine, a camorrista (Neapolitan gangster) - are forced to run a restaurant in Rome to launder dirty money, and they are united by a love of cuisine. It is a charming love story, a hymn to Italian food and restaurants, an exploration of loyalty and family, and an all-around satisfying piece of storytelling. Since this is a real foodie movie, the food component is visually and philosophically essential. Although Consuelo will do anything to get a Michelin star, in the course of the film and with an enormous effort, she will understand that to become a good chef, the technique must be matched by equal amounts of passion and love. She realises that to become a master chef, she must find her roots. Her and Carmine’s love of food and the desire to build something important will give them both a second chance and a chance to redeem themselves.

The Perfect Dinner. Photo / Getty Images

The things we leave behind

Belli Ciao is a comedy about the fateful dilemma that grips the young people of the South of Italy: give up everything in search of a better life in the prosperous north or stay at home and try to build a future? I think the food back home in the south is probably tastier … Belli Ciao is unashamedly entertaining and great fun. Writer-actors Pio D’Antini and Amedeo Grieco bring the laughs in this feel-good comedy about the things we leave behind when looking forward.

Belli Ciao

The Italian Film Festival/Cinema Italiano 2023 promises to be the best yet, with an impressive lineup of acclaimed and award-winning films on the theme “love”.

Twenty-two films will screen at 21 independent cinemas across the motu from May 2023 through to January next year.

For dates and tickets visit: italianfilmfestivalnz.com