Pasta, pizza, gelato and the mafia are about the only things I know about Italian culture.
With my impressions of Italy shaped by images of dark-haired, tan-skinned men rowing gondolas through Venice, sunny afternoons spent lounging in cafes, and narrow stone-path streets lined with tile-roofed buildings, Italy, in my mind, maintains a romantic, breezy mystique.
Yet informed knowledge of Italian culture happens to be right around the corner in Westwood at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles on Hilgard Avenue. A stark, clean-lined, white building that sticks out from the rest of Hilgard’s warm-colored apartment buildings covered over in foliage, the IIC is a sophisticated little beacon of Italian art, film, theater and language classes.
A government cultural agency established in 1984 by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the IIC strives to raise awareness of Italian artistic influences in the U.S. and provide a place for Italian-Americans to connect with their roots and culture.
Pristine white walls, smooth wooden floors, and long airy windows on the sides of the buildings are testament to simplicity and elegance that ““ excuse the generalization ““ seems quintessentially European.
Visitors are greeted with pamphlets written entirely in Italian detailing upcoming events at the institute, including Italian language classes, Italian cooking classes, Italian theater performances, and screenings of Italian films.
I tried reading the pamphlets, hoping that my knowledge of Spanish and French, other romance languages, could carry me through, but I could only understand portions of the text. What translated most clearly for me was the warmth of the language itself; the cadences of certain words when read out loud (Don’t worry: I only read a sentence under my breath so as not to creep out the one worker there too much.) sounded like dancing. The language’s inherently upbeat quality proves instantly charming.
Unfortunately, I was the only one visiting the Institute on a Friday morning, giving the art gallery space an eerily pristine tranquility. Lining the pale blue walls of an empty, open gallery were still photographs of scenes from films shot in Italy. Young Sophia Loren smiles in a white peasant blouse and a tied-up corset in one photo while Ingrid Bergman steps into a paddle boat with Cary Grant on a little Italian river in another.
While these Old Hollywood starlets seem to be the focus of several of the gallery’s photos, the most affecting are those in which the photographer captured the Italian people gawking at the film crews or stars in their midst.
One particular photograph features Italian director Vittorio De Sica yelling into a megaphone on location while several groups of Italian people behind him interact in the scene. A group of young girls huddle behind his back, loose stockings bunched at their knees as they seem to be giggling. Two elderly, round, hearty-looking women unabashedly stare in the direction that De Sica yells, trying to get a glimpse at the glamorous event happening in their quiet Italian town while a group of men in clean-pressed pants and button-up shirts huddle in a door frame off the side of the road.
Perhaps because the photographs were primarily film stills, the gallery seemed to maintain my image of Italy as a quaint, warm, friendly place to visit. I left a little disappointed, somehow expecting to leave feeling as though I had just spent a few hours in Naples.
Yet I realized that the museum was not necessarily trying to evoke Italian or even European culture, but rather was encouraging awareness of what makes Italy special and how to further appreciate Italian culture. The Institute seemed to strive not to recreate a particular atmosphere, but rather to showcase it in a simple way.
Sure, my image of the rural Italian countryside may still be mostly romanticized, but in a way, it doesn’t matter. Appreciating that romanticized image within the artwork and maybe at some point in some of the films or performances at the Institute seems like sufficient insight until I can manage a plane ticket to Europe.
If you want to arrange a trip to the rural Italian countryside, then e-mail Cohn at jcohn@media.ucla.edu.