Cuban documentary about Italo Calvino in production

Havana, Oct 2 (Prensa Latina) "Cartas de Calvino" (Calvino's Letters) is the title of the Cuban documentary currently in production about the life of famous Italian writer Italo Calvino (1923-1985), as was informed in this capital by its director, journalist Esther Barroso. The birth in Cuba of Calvino, who would be celebrating 100 years old on October 15, and the experience in Cuba of his parents, scientists Eva Mameli and Mario Calvino, are the main plot of the film, whose shooting phase in Rome ended this Sunday, Barroso told Prensa Latina.

October 2, 2023
10:35

The documentary stars Cuban-Italian singer and composer Monica Marziota, who, as a narrator, follows the Cuban footsteps of the Calvino family in the so-called Eternal City, also in San Remo and, above all, in Havana.

Testimonies by Miguel Barnet, a friend of the Italian author, Professor Mayerín Bello, a specialist in Calvino’s work, and researcher Concepción María Díaz, a scholar of the Cuban life of the Calvino family, were previously filmed in Havana.

Scenes at the former Agricultural Experiment Station in Santiago de las Vegas, now the Alejandro de Humbolt Institute of Fundamental Research in Tropical Agriculture, and other locations related to his Cuban history were also filmed.

Italo Calvino was born in Santiago de las Vegas, on the outskirts of Havana.

Biographical reviews, some publications in books, and Internet consultations refer to this event as an incidental fact in this author’s life and his family.

Such backgrounds led Calvino, already a renowned writer, to return to Havana at the invitation of the Casa de las Americas cultural institution in 1964, making the Cuban capital the scene of important incidents in his life.

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