Steven McCurdy

Conversations of Italy

Steven — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 14:22:25 +0000

Welcome to “Conversations of Italy” a working title for this blog and also for the film we are working on about our Italian experiences filming in Italy. It’s Monday afternoon and all the students have finally arrived. We are about to begin a creative four weeks working on a what I like to call a cultural travel, documentary. It can best be explained by understanding the difference between a guide book and a book of travel essays. Like a guide book or travelogues, a cultural travel documentary will show you places to see, but may not tell you how to get there. It may introduce you to cultural experiences, but may not tell you how much it’s going to cost or where you can find the cheapest pizza. It will definitely introduce you to real people and take you deeper into the soul of a place than an ordinary guide book might. And it certainly is not as superficial as most travelogues. Of course a cultural travel documentary might include elements of all of the above it just won’t present them in the way a typical guide book would. Like a book of travel essays it is often, although not always, told as a first person account. Our films are our stories; personal, often emotional, hopefully entertaining accounts of interacting with and experiencing the people, places and cultures of the places we visit. Benvenuti !!!

Steven McCurdy

A Year in Italy

Steven — Sat, 08 May 2010 03:55:10 +0000

It was 1979, when I traveled to Italy for the very first time. I fell in love with the people, the place and the culture. But it wasn’t until 2002, after working for the Italian Television Network, RAI, during the the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, that I determined to travel back and film the Italy I was so fond of. An Italy that is in so many ways disappearing. With the help of friends I set out to film Sardinia. The result was my first cultural travel documentary, “Bringing Home Sardinia.”

In the following years, I produced two more films on Italy, “Postcards in Italy,” and “My Private Italy.” Each film, is a personal journey through the sights and sounds, people and places, and hopefully the enchantment of Italy.

As Thomas Moore has written “Enchantment is both the capacity of the world to charm us and the spell that comes upon us when we open our ourselves to the magic in everyday experiences.” In Italy those experiences are all around.

Now with the release of a “Year In Italy,” for the first time you can get all three films on DVD in one box.

I hope you will enjoy my films,

Buon Divertimento,

Steve

A Year in Italy includes the following films

Bringing Home Sardinia

A Steve McCurdy / Creative Light Film Production

Film Review By Les Kelen
Executive Director, Center For Documentary Arts
Salt Lake City, Utah

Steven McCurdy’s “Bringing Home Sardinia” is a tender hearted look at the people of a small island located just off the coast of Italy. After a brief visit to the island years ago, McCurdy returned in 2002 with the aim of not only filming the physical beauty of this place, but of “bringing home” his experience of the islanders as they described their work, their values, and their hopes for themselves and their people. McCurdy is a talented film maker, and so he succeeds in conveying the island’s visual loveliness. More importantly, though, he is an empathetic and curious individual. Consequently, at the heart of his first feature-length film, there is a series of encounters with Sardinians. These encounters evoke for us the efforts of the islanders to preserve their ancient traditions and to adapt them to contemporary life. Through these conversations, we come to appreciate the efforts of Sardinians to preserve the values and modes expressions that create their unique identity. “Bringing Home Sardinia” brings home then, or brings closer to us, the spirit of an ancient people searching to keep their cultural footing in the twenty-first century.

Postcards From Italy

A Steve McCurdy / Creative Light Film Production

Postcards from Italy is an insiders look at southern Italy. From the Island of Sicily to the mountain top towns of Irsina and Matera. From the Island of Procida to the larger cities of Naples and Rome. Joseph Campbell has written, “one way or another we have to find what fosters our humanity in this contemporary life and dedicate ourselves to that.” In this film you will see how some Italians are trying to do exactly that, from an Art teacherand artist in Palermo to the owner of a doll hospital in Naples, to the Mayor of Irsina and many more, each with a unique story to tell. Postcards from Italy is a fascinating combination of stories and images. It is a collectionof vignettes and travel experiences that will unveil places you may know, introduce you to people you may have met, and document life in Italy in a way you have never before seen. And as importantly, preserve that life on film before it it’s gone. My Private Italy

My Private Italy

A Steve McCurdy / Creative Light Film Production

Filmmaker Steven McCurdy’s newest cultural documentary, “My Private Italy” is a personal journey through the sights and sounds, people and places, and magic of everyday experiences in mostly northern Italy. He meets a mask maker in Venice, attends a wedding in Livorno, stays in the mountain top town of St Luce, participates in the festival of San Cataldo in Supino and meets dozens of people along the way.

His travels take him to Venice, Bassano del Grappa, Varese, Livorno, St Luce, the Cinque Terre, Florence, Supino, Buccino, Vecchio Romagnano al Monte and Rome.

Mr. McCurdy’s adventures are interspersed with old 8mm home movies of Italy from the 1950’s and 60’s that take the viewer back to a bygone Italy. The films message of cultural preservation and the charm and “enchantment of everyday experiences” challenges the viewer to enjoy Italy without trying to change it too much and at the same time to preserve and enjoy their own cultural heritage.

When I First Came to Nishtha

Steven — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:58:57 +0000

A year ago, I remained in India for a week as the students of YMAD returned home. Originally my intentions were to stay and film stock footage of India, but as I struggled with our work and our efforts to make a difference in Chamba, I began to sense for the first time, that although we called the children of Chamba , “the poorest of the poor,” that perhaps that was not the reality.

I asked Rakesh and he said, in his usual way, “oh no Steve, these are not the poorest of the poor.”

It was at that moment I began to want to see those whom he said truly were and to see an organization who was making a difference working with them.

Rakesh told me of a place near Calcutta and an organization called Nishtha. After spending a few days in Varanasi, I traveled to the jungle villages of West Bengal. From my first moments in Nishtha, I understood that there was something special. Something about both the people and the place and I immediately fell in love with the young girl who showed me around, [Mimi] and her Aunt [Mina] who soon was calling me brother.

Almost immediately they began asking if YMAD could please bring over students.

During my first meeting I explained why I had come and that although I had been here in India with a group called YMAD that I could not promise them anything in the name of that organization. I explained that I was here because I had heard of their work and because I was interested in seeing what they were doing.

As I traveled to each village and met the women and children I uncharacteristically asked if I couldn’t stand and say a few words to the assembled group and for the first in my life the words which so often seem to fail me when I speak publicly seemed to flow from my mouth. When I left each meeting the emotions of what took place overwhelmed me.

The trips to the villages culminated with the meeting of the grannies. I struggled to hear their stories, stories of pain and sorrow and heartbreak. I told them about my wife and four daughters and about my grandmothers who I loved very much. And then I told them that if they didn’t have a family that loved them, that I could be their american grandson, and that they could be my Indian grandmothers.

I then told them how americans often give hugs to those they love and that I would love to give each of them a hug. The response was both heartbreaking and unforgettable, for I saw in them a group of people who had seen too little of love, too little of kindness. As I have often quoted Paul McCartney, they have seen, “too much rain.”

In the following months, I spoke little about my trip as it seemed I could never find the words or the opportunity to completely explain what had taken place and in my heart, I doubted YMAD would ever take students to Nishtha. They were invested in Chamba and the North. Then suddenly, almost miraculously things began to change, first Robert decided to travel to West Bengal and then he invited Mimi and Manami to Salt Lake and then almost over night YMAD was on it’s way to Nishtha.

In some ways it seems as if God has stepped in and destined it all to happen and this from a guy who has so often doubted even the very existence of God. As Paul Hanks said in the movie Angels and Demons, “if faith is a gift, then it is one God has not yet granted me.” And yet having witnessed what has transpired during the last year, perhaps there is hope.

What I couldn’t say a year ago, was that coming here with a group from YMAD was my dream and now it is dream come true.

Another Grand Adventure

Steven — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:29:43 +0000

It is hard to believe another year has passed since the last “Grand India Adventure.”
So much has changed with YMAD in India and with a new group of youth from Utah that it seems both a long time ago, and then like only yesterday.

In many ways, that trip seems like a dream as trips so often do as the day and months pass. Then in unexpected moments the memories start flooding back just as they do now sitting in the airport in San Francisco.

This is my forth trip to India. For me, each trip to India has been different and this looks to be just as exciting, just as life changing and again different, in it’s own way special way.

A year ago, I traveled on my own to Varanasi and Kolkata, at the time, it was impossible to imagine that YMAD would ever travel to West Bengal or to the jungles of eastern India, a place I fell in love with at first sight. And yet here we are.

As I had traveled through West Bengal a year ago I had so often wished that I could share my experiences with someone and I could have never imagined what the following year would bring. It was five months before Robert, Eden, James and Eli ventured to West Bengal where they too fell in love with the place and meet Mimi and her sister Manami and that they would travel to the US. Now today YMAD is going to experience India, West Bengal, and Nishtha together.

I know that we can make the world just a little better through our efforts and I look forward to the possibilities. I am happy that once again I get to experience India, and Nishtha and share it with someone. I get to experience this next grand adventure with a group of wonderful young people and of course most importantly with my daughter Sara.

The last two years I have traveled to India with YMAD in November and I have been gone on Sara’s birthday. Her birthday is November 14th. I’m hoping that once she experiences India, she’ll forgive me, and that together we’ll enjoy her best birthday ever, in India. I wrote this on the 14th, a day before we celebrated her birthday. Stay Tuned.

StoryCollectors

Steven — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:59:31 +0000

Making the World a Better Place

Steven — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:45:00 +0000

The author David Bornstein has written,

“people who solve problems must somehow first arrive at the belief that they can solve problems. This belief does not emerge suddenly. The capacity to cause change grows in an individual over time as small-scale efforts lead gradually to larger ones. But the process needs a beginning, a story, an example…”

The beginning for me, began in late 2007, when I joined a group of teenagers from Salt Lake City, Utah, on a humanitarian mission to northern India. My trip with the organization, Youth Making a Difference, was an experience that would profoundly change my life. Within a year, I had traveled to India three times. No longer could I look at a twenty dollar bill without thinking that it could build a well for fresh water in the jungle villages of Bengal or provide a stove and coal for almost a month to the cold children of Chamba. I thought seriously for the first time about the plight of 1/3 of the population of India that lives on less than $1 dollar a day.

I thought, “what can I do?”

Then I realized, I was doing something. I became profoundly aware that filmmaking can tell the stories of those changing the world and in the telling, it too, just might make the world a better place. In my film, “No Matter How Dark the Present” I tell the stories of youth making a difference, stories that have brought me here, to the place where I know I am doing something.

My hope and dream is that this effort will gradually grow to include hundreds of films, stories about humanitarian efforts all across the globe…and in the end, possibly move you to do something too.

Best wishes always,

Steve McCurdy