The producer Jean Doumanian is the founder of Jean Doumanian Productions, an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominated, and Tony Award winning, film, television and theatrical production company. You recently produced the film “Una”. The premiere will be in London in...
Dr. Montefiore is an historian of Russia and the Middle East. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has been awarded the Literary Prize Lupicaia del Terriccio 2017 for his book ‘The Romanovs: 1613-1918’. He is the author of ‘Catherine the Great and Potemkin:...
Anita Pallenberg is an actress, model, and fashion designer. Born in Italy in 1944 she was the partner of the Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones and then the partner of Keith Richards. Anita, you have worked in the worlds of cinema, music and fashion. Would you...
Jon Taplin wrote the book Move Fast and Break Things: How Google, Facebook and Amazon Have Cornered Culture and What It Means For All Of Us. The Guardian newspaper review described the book’s central argument as being that “the titans of the digital age frequently...
"The most famous restaurant space in America." Jeff how many restaurants do you and your partners in the Major Food Group have today? We have 14 including the two new ones that are just opening, The Grill and The Pool, a steakhouse and a seafood restaurant. Are the...
Photo London was created by Michael Benson and Fariba Farshad to give London an international photography event befitting the city’s status as a global cultural capital. Photo London harnesses the city’s outstanding creative talent and brings together some of the...
"Cinema alleviates the pain that comes from solitude." Paolo Sorrentino is an Academy Award winning film director and screenwriter. For the first time he has made a television serial, ‘The Young Pope’ produced by Sky Atlantic, HBO and Canal+. It has had great success,...
The interview with Tom Stoppard took place in the coffee lounge of the National Theatre London in a break in rehearsal of his new play “The Hard Problem”. Your new play “The Hard Problem” opens at the National Theatre on January 31st, 2015. The Director is Nicholas...
Combatting stress, the global epidemic of the 21st Century. Dr. Amit Sood was born and raised in Bhopal, India. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, and he is committed to decreasing suffering and increasing happiness. Dr. Sood is the author of The Mayo...
“...a rare thing, a true renaissance man.” Anna Wintour, Vogue Italia Patrick Kinmonth is an Anglo-Irish opera director and designer, filmmaker, writer, painter, interior designer, art editor, creative director and exhibition curator. He is widely known for his many...
The interview with the actor and author Rupert Everett was made in The Colbert, a French-style café on London’s Sloane Square. Everett recently returned to London from Europe, where he was filming The Happy Prince, his Oscar Wilde biopic. Later on Rupert was going to...
"Dantino, what did you dream last night?" Dante Ferretti is an Italian production designer, art director and costume designer. Throughout his career he has worked with many great directors, both American and Italian, including Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini,...
Hanif Kureishi is the author of novels such as 'The Buddha of Suburbia' and 'Intimacy', story collections, plays and screenplays. 'The Buddha of Suburbia' was made into a BBC TV series with a soundtrack by David Bowie. 'My Beautiful Laundrette', a story about a gay...
The Improbability of Love You are quite eclectic and your work has ranged from documentary films, to banking, to philanthropy, to biography, and now to a novel. Why do you think you have many different facets? I have that kind of restless, inquisitive mind. It’s...
Marcello Mastroianni (1924-1996) I can say that Marcello Mastroianni was a friend. We used to see each other in Dr Severini’s apartment in Rome. He was our doctor and the doctor of Alberto Moravia and Gian Maria Volontè among others. We met for Sunday night dinner and...
"People Pray For My Characters." Did you think Downton Abbey would be such a success? No. The received truth at the time of the film "Gosford Park" was that the audience had gone. It was one of those fabulously inaccurate prophecies that show business...
You started your life as an artist and exposed your work at Mario Tazzoli’s Galleria “Galatea” in Milan in 1974. Then you stopped painting for many years, and worked as curator and director of various museums and art institutions - in the United States, in...
On a rainy April afternoon I met with Jonas Mekas in a little bar in the Lower East Side next to the Anthology Film Archives (AFA), the institution that he founded and has run for very many years. The Anthology Film Archives is at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 2nd...
Sixty Years at the World's Most Famous Pool. Johnny Pigozzi is currently having an exhibition of photographs titled Johnny’s Pool at the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue in New York, and in early May Rizzoli will publish his book with the title Pool Party with a...
The Italian Cultural Institute of New York is an office of the Italian government, dedicated to the promotion of Italian language and culture in the United States through the organisation of cultural events. You have now been Director of the Italian Cultural Institute...
My love for animals made me vegan. People should not buy animal products. You were a famous debutante, and then you became a vegan, interested and deeply involved in animal rights? Yes, and I also became an actress and I still do movies. I have been surrounded by...
“I am a filmmaker. I went to university in London and studied Anthropology and Art History, and then I went to NFTS (The National Film and Television School). They only take five students per year per discipline; I did Documentary Direction. Anthropology gave me...
Life (with a child) is Beautiful. Roberto Benigni won Best Actor for his role in "Life is Beautiful". He was the first actor to win an Oscar for a performance in a foreign language film since Sophia Loren won for "Two Women" almost forty years before. His film...
The cinema is like a wonderful game, but I’m only a diva in love. Do you feel more like an actress or a director? Actress, absolutely. Also because it’s a different type of work. Secret Scandal was something all mine, and so I directed it. But that’s not my job. I...
Mr Disegni, you were recently appointed president of MEIS (which is the foundation behind the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Holocaust) by the Minister of Cultural Heritage and Activities, Dario Franceschini. You’ve taken over from writer Riccardo Calimani...
Sir Norman Rosenthal is an independent curator and art historian. How long have you been living in London’s Soho for? First I lived in St. James’s, and then I moved here in 1989 when I got married. Did you know Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud? They came to the Colony...
Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. Since July you are the new Director of the Italian Cultural Institute in London. How come you made this role your choice when you are a well-known and active photographer? Photography was and is something too...
Nicky Haslam is founder of the London based interior design firm NH Design. A Lucky Life How would you describe yourself? I suppose I am stupidly fearless about doing things. I don’t panic if somebody says to me, “Do you sing?” I wasn’t panicked about going on stage....
“I’ve gone from top models to beautiful homes.” In the early 1980s, photographer François Halard worked for Decoration International in Paris. Then Alex Lieberman, the art director at Condé Nast, called on him and he moved to New York. In May 2011 I asked him: How did...
"I made portraits of Lady Gaga from classical paintings in the Louvre’s collection. Her interior sense became her exterior expression." I arrive in the Watermill Center. Bob Wilson is expecting me in his industrial reconverted building where he lives, where he has his...
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Money Must Stay in the Family
The plot of Money Must Stay in the Family, unfolds around the family matriarch’s last will and traces the story of an upper class Jewish family from Turin, the fictional Ottolenghis. The multigenerational saga begins with the flight from Mussolini’s Racial Laws of 1938 and continues with the arrival in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the dispersion from New York to Rome, Paris, Tuscany, South America, and Jerusalem.
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