Steven McCurdy

A Year in Italy

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.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 9:55 pm and is filed under A Year in Italy, Inside Notes and tagged with A Year in Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.