Addiopizzo Travel will commemorate the assassination of Giovanni Falcone by repainting the sign that written after the days when the Palermitan judge was killed with his wife and bodyguards on May 22, 1993.

Addiopizzo Travel provides ethical tours of Sicily. We do this by taking tourists to those businesses who have said “no” to the Mafia’s requests for protection money. The name given to this protection money is ‘Pizzo’, join us and you will travel “mafia-free” and ‘pizzo-free’! From AddioPizzoTravel.it

Giovanni Falcone (18 May 1939 – 23 May 1992) was a Sicilian/Italian prosecuting magistrate born in Palermo,Sicily. From his office in the Palace of Justice in Palermo, he spent most of his professional life trying to overthrow the power of the Mafia in Sicily. After a long and distinguished career, culminating in the famous Maxi Trial, he was killed by the Corleonesi Mafia in May 1992, on the motorway near the town of Capaci. From Wikipedia.com

Photo credits AstroAlbert

The “Sicilia Queer filmfest” is the first international glbt and new visions film festival in Sicily. It is a completely self-financed festival, focused on quality, heterodox, independent and alternative cinema, as to poetics or language, production or distribution.

For more information, please visit www.siciliaqueerfilmfest.it

The 58th Taormina Film Fest, Italy’s principal summer film event, is going to take place from June 23 to 28, 2012. This year, Mario Sesti is the editor in chief of the festival.

Mario Sesti (born 1958), has worked as specialist in film restoration of Italian postwar cinema, as film critic for Italian news-magazines and newspapers, as film programmer for TV network. He realized and directed films about Pietro Germi, Federico Fellini and the restoration process, which was shown at MoMA, at the Festival of Cannes and at the Locarno Film Festival. [From IMDb.com]

The Nastro d’Argento goes to Cesare non deve morire by the Taviani brothers.

Source: Taormina Film Festival

Carla Accardi (born October 9, 1924 in Trapani) is an Italian painter who contributed significantly to the acceptance of abstract art in Italy. In 1947, she co-founded the Forma 1 Marxist-inspired art movement with Ugo Attardi, Pietro Consagra, Piero Dorazio, Mino Guerrini, Achille Perilli, Antonio Sanfilippo and Giulio Turcato. She first exhibited in the United States in 2001 at MoMA PS1.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

Il Gruppo di Scicli will be exhibiting at the Bernaducci Meisel Gallery in New York.

Founded by a number of young intellectuals around the Giornale di Scicli, the group is characterized by a will to rediscovery and exploit the territory, to preserve and pass on its culture, to have an important and direct role in tracing its cultural and historic identity. The group is mainly composed of painters and sculptors and Piero Guccione was its first President. Its activity, mostly personal or collective exhibitions, started in 1980, with the organization of a conference on Elio Vittorini and an exhibition of graphic and engraving arts. From www.sicilynet.it

Bernarducci Meisel

37 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
Between 5th and 6th Avenues
3rd Floor

Phone: (212) 593-3757
Fax: (212) 593-3933
Website: www.bernarduccimeisel.com

VIEWING HOURS

Tues. through Sat., 10am – 5:30pm
July: Tues. through Fri., 10am – 5pm
August: By appointment only

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For beer drinkers and not, this is the event to go. Si Birra is the beer festival in Modica that gathers thousands of people. The idea is to recreate the Oktoberfest with a local approach with Sicilian food delicacies that go with the beer.

More information at http://www.sibirra.it

Directions:
Piazzale  Ag Distribuzione in C.da Beneventano on the Modica – Pozzallo

Map:

Peppino Impastato was born in Cinisi in a mafia-related family, but he refused this destiny and broke up with his family when he was still a young boy. Peppino Impastato spoke spoke out against the mafia and denounced local politicians for their complicity. This wrote his death sentence.

Peppino Impastato was killed by an explosion on May 9, 1978. The police archived the case as terrorist attack, then as a suicide, but his friends never accepted this fabricated truth.

After 23 years of legal battles, the local boss Tano Badalamenti was sentenced to life prison for this homicide. Each year on May 9, many events take place in Cinisi to commemorate Peppino Impastato. A full week of debates, conferences and workshops end with a march departing from the historic headquarters of Radio Aut station to the Peppino’s house.

I Cento Passi (The One-Hundred Steps), film released in 2000 and directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, tells the story of Peppino Impastato. One hundred was the numer of the steps it took to get from Peppino’s home to the house of Tano Badalamenti.

This movie has won several awards such as the David di Donatello Award 2001, Brussel Film Festival 2001 and Venice Film Festival  and has given notoriety to Peppino’s story who lost his life against the mafia.

Sicily is not really industrial, but some areas have been devastated by industrial developments that have gone badly. Recently, I received a message by one of SicilyGuide followers signaling the article A haven in an industrial wasteland by Sarah Raven. Our follower was upset at the article because it was diminishing Sicily in her own view.

Mrs. Raven talks about how she was convinced by her husband to visit the island and how shocked she was when she first saw the area between Syracuse and Augusta:

a completely trashed, industrialised catastrophe.

She goes on:

Then I started to walk out towards the point. On either side of the track emerged one of the most abundant and glorious gatherings of spring flowers that I’ve ever seen. That’s Sicily for you – an appallingly managed and largely wrecked landscape, sheltering in its nooks and crannies all the riches of Mediterranean flora you might ever dream of. The building boom in the past 20 years – inextricably linked with the ever-present Mafia – has all but ruined the place. But in the leftover spaces one glimpses the naturally rich Arcadia that Sicily once was.

Even if these are harsh words, I beg to differ with our reader. Somehow I can relate more to Mrs. Raven. Coming from nearby Milazzo – an area that can be compared to the one the journalist refers to in the article. I share these same strong feelings. Although I love being there, I also get extremely angry when I see the garbage all around and how the beauty of the area has been severely damaged by the refinery and fossil fuel-fired electric power plant in San Filippo del Mela.

This video by the Qbeta - a Sicilian folk group – is a parody of the area (unfortunately the song is in Italian only).

Here is an approximate translation from Google Translate of the song:

Go … My heart from flower to flower gently and with love for me … Go … that my happiness lives only reality near you … I want to live like this with sunny faces and happy singing blissfully … I want to live and to rejoice the air of the mountain because this spell does not cost anything Ah, ah! Today I ardently love that stream impertinent minstrel of ah, ah! The blossoming of the trees shall feast this heart you know why? I want to live well with sunny faces and happy song I sing to myself. . . . . . . Ah, ah! Today I ardently love that stream impertinent minstrel of love Ah, ah! The blossoming of the trees shall feast this heart you know why? I want to live well with sunny faces and happy singing song for me!

Locals are exasperated by the situation, but they feel powerless. Sicilians have been fighting relentlessly throughout history with little payback. But they should know that nothing is permanent. They should not lose hope and should look at their land as the foreign journalist does in her article discovering flowers and colors that she never saw before with a critical approach.

This seemed to be the signature of Sicily, an occasional paradise in what is being turned into hell. The tide of lava, concrete breeze blocks and plastic polytunnels seems set to continue to swallow it up. For flower lovers, the sooner you visit, the better. 

Sicily is unique and authentic. No matter what, it cannot leave the visitor indifferent. Someday perhaps I will learn how to accept Sicily in its totality.

The IV edition of the Marrazano World Festival in Catania is a biannual event that celebrates this Sicilian musical instrument of the marrazano as a metaphor of the island. The marazzano is an ancient instrument played around the world.

From Wikipedia

This instrument is thought to be one of the oldest musical instruments in the world;a musician apparently playing it can be seen in a Chinese drawing from the 4th century BC. Despite its common English name, and the sometimes used Jew’s trump, it has no particular connection with the Jewish people or Judaism. This instrument is native to Asia and used in all tribes of Turkic peoples in Asia where it is variously referred to as a temir komuz (literally, iron komuz), agiz komuzu (literally, mouth komuz), gubuz or doromb. 

More information at www.marranzanoworldfestival.it

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TribeArt is a free magazine about contemporary art in Sicily and Italy. It started as a website in 1999 and became a magazine in 2003. This publication – also sent to subscribers all over Italy – has established itself as an authoritative voice in the island’s art work. It is a bit like Gallery Guide here in the US. Now it risks closing down.  Advertising from galleries and local patrons was enough to cover the € 2,500 needed to publish each issue, but the current economic crisis has tightened the belt of most businesses.

To avoid this, 100 Sicilian artists have joined forces for the Artists for the Artists for TribeArt exhibition at Palazzo Platamone in Catania (Palazzo della Cultura) from April 14 through May 1. Over 100 artists are present at this event and artworks to benefit TribeArt start from € 300.

For more information, please go to www.tribenet.it

Useful information

Schedule

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The city is situated between two bays, one of Milazzo and the east to the west of Patti, in a strategic place in the north-eastern Sicily. Located 43 km from the provincial capital, is part of the metropolitan area of the Strait of Messina, and is the reference point of an area of over 200,000 inhabitants.

Originally a Greek city, and from 36 BC recognized as a Roman civitas, Milazzo is now a tourist destination and a great starting point for the Aeolian Islands, the Nebrodi Park, Tindari. There are numerous testimonies, the symbols of the ancient history of the city.

Plans are in progress to enter the castle, the fortified town and the ancient village in the sites of UNESCO. The promontory of Capo Milazzo became a marine reserve.

History

Several civilizations settled in Milazzo and left signs of their presence from the Neolithic age. In Homer’sOdyssey Milazzo is the place where Ulysses is shipwrecked and meets Polyphemus. Some people took the towns name as their last name “Milazzo”.

Historically, the town originated as the ancient Mylae, an outpost of Zancle, occupied before 648 BC, perhaps as early as 716 BC. It was taken by the Athenians in 426 BC. The people of Rhegium planted here the exiles from Naxos and Catana in 395 BC as a counterpoise to Dionysius the Elder’s foundation ofTyndaris; but Dionysius soon took it. In the bay Duilius won the first Roman naval victory over theCarthaginians (260 BC).

In 36 BC the naval battle of Mylae was fought offshore. The fleet of Octavian, commanded by Marcus Agrippa, engaged that of Sextus Pompey. While the battle was nearly a draw, Sextus could not replace his losses, and was thus weaker at the following battle of Naulochus (36 BC), where he was utterly defeated.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, under the Byzantines, the town became one of the first episcopal seats of Sicily. In the 7th century Milazzo was conquered by the Arabs, who built here the first nucleus of the castle. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen further fortified the town and created here a personal hunting park. The castle was later mostly rebuilt in the age of Charles V of Spain.

Milazzo was also the seat of a battle in 1718 between Spain and Austria, and of another fought by Giuseppe Garibaldi against the Kingdom of Two Sicilies during his Expedition of the Thousand.

Main Sights

• Castello di Milazzo
• Rock church of St. Anthony of Padua
• Sanctuary of St. Francis of Paola

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Photos by Marco Puglisi

Note: This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from theWikipedia article “Metasyntactic variable” and Creative Commons by Commons Deed. This information was accurate when it was posted, but can change without notice. 

Special attention is directed to small businesses that make up the fabric of the destination. You won’t find these kinds of places in travel literature produced by the usual suspects, we can assure you of that. It doesn’t matter if you are traveling on a shoestring budget hopping freight trains, or on Daddy’s allowance by Lear Jet, this guide illuminates the most interesting nooks and crannies of a new location. If you are traveling to Sicily, don’t find yourself without one.

For Borghezio, it is always Roma ladrona‘s fault even when the ladri is them… It is never the fault of the petty Italian ruling class that has not been capable to put together a country smaller than Texas after 150 years. Listen here for yourself (unfortunately, Italian ONLY).