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Frank Capra is often acknowledged as one of the greatest directors who ever lived. Not just that, but he helped building the film industry as we know it.   At one point he served as President of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, as head of the Directors Guild of America, and he was strongly involved with the Screenwriters Gui...

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As we already did with music, radio, religion, cinema, sport, literature, theater, consumerism and cuisine, today we analyze the relationship between Italy and the United States from the point of view of another fundamental paradigm for the last century: television.   We do this with a young Italian talent, Luca Martera: scholar, writer, director...

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Italian American Cinema: From Capra to the Coppolas, an original, documentary exhibit by the Museo Italo Americano, written by Joseph McBride, will be on exhibit at the Museo from September 18, 2015 through March 6, 2016. The American cinema, from its inception, has played a major role in shaping our perceptions of our country and ourselves, a...

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One of seven children, Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897, in Bisacquino, Sicily. Later in 1903, his family left for America aboard the ship Germania, arriving in New York on May 23rd. There, the family boarded a train for the trip to California, where Frank's older brother Benjamin was living.   On their journey, they subsisted on bread a...

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Italian Americans have had an indelible impact on the fabric of American culture which manifests itself in diverse ways, both encompassing veritable attributes of the culture and also promulgating enduring stereotypes. Today, let's take a look at the Italian American influence on American film and some great opportunities you have to understand thi...

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Everyone knows that the first regional group among the Italian community in the US is the one from Sicily. The period of mass emigration, the one starting in 1880 and ending more or less in the early 20's of the XXth century, didn't see at the beginning Sicily as the main region of departure. Some Sicilians had previously gone to New Orleans (at th...

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Knowing the existence of a few books about the literary production of the Italians in America - from 1776 to World War II - written by a Neapolitan professor named Francesco Durante, we asked him to be interviewed, not knowing that thanks to him we would discover a world. An exceptional world, information very interesting and known by only a few, w...

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Francesco Rosario Capra was born in Bisacquino, Sicily, on May 18, 1897. When he was five, his family made the 13-day trip to New York. Even though he was just a child, Frank remembered seeing "a statue of a great lady, taller than a church steeple, holding a torch above the land we were about to enter" (McBride). The Capra family eventually settle...

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by Serena Perfetto   A unique documentary exhibition, "Italian American Cinema: From Capra to the Coppolas", is currently on display at the Museo Italo-Americano, until March 6, 2016. The exhibition is surely an opportunity to better understand the contributions made by Italian-Americans to the national cinema and culture. Film scholar Josep...

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