A Rather Rude Rientro
Plus, some esoteric electoral candidates and the Venice film festival's opening night
Hi everyone, I hope you’ve enjoyed the summer break and found some time to relax ahead of what - alas - promises to be a pretty grim autumn for Italy. If you follow me on Instagram (not, admittedly, a platform I use much) you may already know that I’ve spent the past two weeks island-hopping around Campania and Sicily. Despite an over-ambitious itinerary and various mezzogiorno transport hic-ups I had a wonderful time. Procida was charming, though noticeably unprepared for the suddenly-inflated visitor numbers. Ischia, with its bustling beaches and quiet hilltop villages, proved a perfect destination for seeing-in Ferragosto. Anacapri was a revelation: cheaper, more peaceful, and even more beautiful than I’d been led to believe. The highlight, however, was Salina, in the Aeolian islands, where my partner and I spent a week in a guesthouse by the sea. If you’re looking for a place to swim, read, BBQ and so on, with some spectacular views, trust me: this is one for the bucket list. Speaking of which, for any readers here planning a trip south anytime soon, let me just make a small plug for the Albergo Il Monastero in Ischia, an affordable hotel in a converted monastery right in the heart of the Aragonese Castle; Casa Isabella a comfortable self-catering villa away from the crowds; and last but not least Casa LuLu, a guesthouse in Anacapri whose host, Luisella, and her mother, are probably the most hospitable people I’ve ever met and almost - almost - restored my wavering faith in humanity…
I say almost because - holiday or no holiday - it has proved sadly impossible to escape Italy’s ongoing toxic election these past weeks. Georgia Meloni’s face was omnipresent in the Phlegraean ferry terminals; her posters noticeably outnumbering those of the other candidates. And I have to say, having experienced a fair few Italian elections, this one feels particularly disturbing. Not only is a far-right victory all-but guaranteed, nobody even seems particularly invested in either supporting or preventing such an outcome. As things stand an astonishing 35 to 40% of voters are expected to abstain on 25 September… a figure which, to my mind, makes it all the more frustrating that the centre and left have so dismally failed to mobilise even a modicum of public support. Tone-deaf Enrico Letta has been framing the entire contest as a Manichean conflict between “Putin or Europe” despite the fact that Meloni actually supports sending arms to Ukraine; Calenda, a ‘liberal’, has spent most of his energy lambasting the Greens for opposing nuclear power; and Matteo Renzi and Giuseppe Conte have been glued to social media slandering their immediate rivals. A few days ago, Luigi Di Maio, the outgoing Foreign Minister, offered a quite reasonable prediction that Meloni’s government will fall in a matter of months and a new Draghi administration will be appointed to clean up the mess. The fact that this now seems the probable ‘best case scenario’ is, I’m afraid, a grim indictment of where things are at vis-à-vis Italian democracy in 2022.

Name-calling, backstabbing and talk-show soundbites are part and parcel of politics anywhere and everywhere, but there’s one aspect of Italian elections that I, for one, find particularly novel: and that’s the sheer number of minor parties that make it onto the ballot. If you’ve ever had the experience of spending time in an Italian polling station you’ll surely have noticed the abundance of logos and insignia pasted about the place, many of which can boast some pretty insane designs. This year, ahead of the vote, VICE’s Leonardo Bianchi has compiled a list of some of the strangest including no-less than four anti-vax parties, a “Health Revolution Party” (with some bizarre guillotine branding) and my personal favourite, “The Holy Roman Catholic Empire Party” which has apparently been running for 30 years without any stated policies. Yes, it’s easy to laugh at these idiosyncratic movements. But as a reflection of Italian society there’s perhaps some kind of covert significance here too, hidden within the absurd symbology… scroll down here for some more extraordinary specimens. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Arts and culture: culture wars on the silver screen
Yesterday evening the 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival kicked-off on the Lido with the first red-carpet event; thereby inaugurating proceedings which, if previous instalments are anything to go by, will have no small bearing on what we all end up watching over the next year. Top of the bill is Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise starring Adam Driver which, as anyone who’s read the book will know, is a prophetic text that anticipated our own time with disturbing prescience. The Italian offerings are also looking strong, which is always good to see. Gianni Amelio’s ‘Lord of the Ants’, about homophobia and the justice system, has received a lot of hype, as has Roger de Paolis’s Princess, which follows the story of a Nigerian sex worker living a clandestine existence in the suburbs of Rome. Then of course there’s Luca Guadagnino's latest romance, Bones and All, a love story about two ‘drifters’ (Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell) which is hotly tipped to win the Golden Lion. For day-by-day updates, and first impressions as they come, follow Peter Bradshaw’s coverage for the Guardian or my favourite indie film magazine Little White Lies.
Speaking of Bradshaw, and Venice for that matter, the Guardian has just published his highly complementary review of documentary-maker Mark Cousins’s latest offering: The March on Rome. As the title suggests this is a “documentary essay” about the rise of fascism in 1920s Italy, consciously composed - apparently - to make parallels with the capitol riots in the United States and the rise of new right wing nationalisms in Europe. I love Cousins’s work. The Story of Film: An Odyssey fundamentally transformed how I see the medium and if you haven’t watched it - and you’ve got a spare 15 hours to kill - you absolutely must. Bradshaw’s piece, though, is also worth reading in its own right not least because it offers such an eloquent analysis of the challenges that Italian artists are going to face in the months ahead as they fight to maintain freedom of expression in a climate of conservative revisionism and neo-fascist nostalgia. So read the review, and - if you’re interested - check out this short presentation by Cousins for a little more background info about the documentary.
Recipe of the week: o’ pistu linusaru
Linosa is probably one of the least known of the Italian islands. Located between Pantelleria and Lampedua, 100 miles from both Sicily and Tunisia, it has a year-round population of just 400 people. Tourism is virtually non-existent and the economy is entirely taken over to fishing. Nevertheless, despite this, the ever-adventurous Katie Parla visited the small rocky mound as part of her research for her forthcoming book Food of the Italian Islands and - gosh - I’m glad she did as she seems to have unearthed a truly niche and delicious sounding recipe. Pistu linusaru is, from what I can gather, a variation on pesto Trapanese; which means it includes tomatoes, almonds, and plenty of garlic. Unlike their Sicilian neighbours, however, the Linosani seem to omit cheese altogether – perhaps on account of their island’s isolation – instead adding parsley and whole pine nuts to eek out some extra flavour and texture. Having enjoyed similar flavours in the Aeolian islands, including a sugo with gargantuan quantities of capers in Salina, I’ll be whipping this up over the weekend in an effort to transport myself back to the south. The recipe, if you’d like to try it, was published in Saveur magazine last week and is available online here.
About Me
My name is Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) and I’m an author, editor and translator based in Florence. I’ve been writing about Italy for a decade for international media including The Guardian, The Economist, Frieze, and Art Review. I launched ‘The Week in Italy’ to share a more direct and regular overview of the debates and dilemmas, innovations and crises that sometimes pass under the radar of our overcrowded news feeds.
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