June is Italian Heritage Month, and in Vancouver, that means a magnificent celebration of art, music, cinema, food, and amore, lots of amore. Italian Day on the Drive was hot, delicious, and filled with hundreds of thousands of people, great music (wow, even opera!) and plenty of dancing in the street.
June is the month to celebrate all things Italian. Vancouver sculptor Lorenzo de Francesco’s exhibit The Broken Cross is at Il Museo, and Of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums is at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The Italian Film Festival’s Summer Series at the Rio screened some of Italy’s gorgeous classic cinema. Films like Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris belong on every cinephile’s bucket list.
The Italian Film Festival, which runs in early January, is in its second year. With its year-round programming, it’s a welcome addition to Vancouver — not only for its retrospectives on Italy’s influential avant-garde and post-war neo-realist cinema, but also for the rare chance it offers to catch contemporary Italian films, such as Mine Vaganti, which is screening for free in Beaconsfield Park August 7 as part of Pride Week.
If music’s what you’re after, the Italian Jazz for Barb series runs in conjunction with Vancouver International Jazz Festival. It’s got a tight line up of top-notch Canadian artists, like guitarist Oliver Gannon, saxophonist Eli Bennett, pianist Sharon Minemoto, and the swanky Black Gardenia.
Part of the Italian Film Festival Summer Series, Mine Vaganti (English: Loose Canons) plays at 9 pm August 7 on an outdoor screen at Beaconsfield Park. The Osteria lounge will be open for panini, pizza and beverages. For more information, visit italianculturalcentre.ca.
