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...
Yto Barrada, photographer and filmmaker: “My look at a changing Morocco” You are famous as a photographer as well as for other things. What else do you do? I am also a sculptor and filmmaker. I showed a film at the Venice Biennial, at the Arsenale, which was chosen by...
“Fellini taught me how to dream.” Dante Ferretti is a three-time Oscar winning Italian art director and production designer. His work with directors from Fellini and Pasolini to Gilliam and Scorsese has earned him an array of industry awards and nominations. Ferretti...
After Dominguin, my heart beats for no one. Lucia Bosè has just arrived in Capri. It is May, 1994. Why Capri? I return here whenever I can. I’ve been coming since I was twenty when I would come with Tirelli, Esa De Simone, and Dino Trappetti. We would rent little...
Painter and director Julian Schnabel, wearing a white robe and velvet slippers fit for a Venetian gondolier, opens the door of his extravagant New York home in downtown Manhattan during October 2000. This is where the most important scenes from his first film...
Wim Wenders inaugurated a photo exhibition called “Images of Planet Earth” in the Scuderie del Quirinale (Quirinal Stables) in Rome, 2006. The great director is walking through the enormous spaces of the Quirinale, putting the final touches on the exhibition and...
The French actress, who has been an idol for two generations, tells about her life in this interview, starting with her girlhood on the outskirts of Paris to how she became a cinema star, all the way to her years out of the spotlight in Saint-Tropez. On 28 September...
Catherine Deneuve is working on a film set in Paris. She sounds a bit annoyed on the phone. She hesitates and asks how I got her phone number. She is suspicious. "It’s not possible. If you want to do an interview, talk to my press office." Before she hangs up, I am...
Actress Mia Farrow is in Venice for the first time as a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF. She looks rejuvenated. Her hair is long and loose and she’s wearing an antique pink t-shirt, black pants and sandals. Accompanying her is her son Seamus, the child she had with...
Amira Casar regularly comes to Salzburg for the Festival. This year the actress has just been performing at the Festival d’Avignon. Soon she has to be back in Paris where she starts a new role in Versailles, a television series about the life of the young Louis XIV....
Isabelle Huppert is petite. She practically tiptoes into a salon of the Hotel de la Ville in Rome, wearing grey pants, a beige pullover and a red scarf around her neck. Her hair hangs long and loose. It is a reddish brown, and her eyes are large and brown. She seems...
Alberto Barbera, you have been Director of the Venice Film Festival twice, from 1999 to 2001 and now since 2012. What has changed in the film industry during that time? A great deal, much more than one would imagine. The digital revolution has transformed the film...
Dennis Hopper (1936 - 2010), a director and first and foremost an actor, is in Salzburg in October 2000 to show some of his works of art. Showing art is rather a different experience. Are you satisfied? Yes. I sold two of my works for the first time, including a...
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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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