All roads lead to Rome

Often life choices are spurred by a film you watched or a book you read. This week, the noted artist and director of the Italian Embassy Cultural Centre is busy giving shape to a film festival where Delhiiites can watch “Satyajit and Sica in a single time frame to find out how they speak to the world today.” Italy is the country in focus at the sixth edition of the Habitat International Film Festival, where apart from a bouquet of contemporary films and a homage to Italian star Marcello Mastroianni in his centenary year, 22 classics restored at Bologna, the centre of global film restoration work, will be screened. Alongside, Anastasio is preparing the ground for an unprecedented exhibition of master Italian painter Caravaggio’s iconic work, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, at the Centre and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in April. “Initially, a tool to present the gospel to those who can’t read the text, during the Renaissance period, the visual artist freed himself to interpret the divinity.” Deliberating on the dramatic flourish of light and shadows in Caravaggio’s work, Anastasio says the way he realistically uses light gives the body a sensorial dimension that was not there previously. I hope to see Chola bronzes displayed next to masterpieces in bronze from the Renaissance period in Florence.” The Centre, along with Kiran Nadar Museum, is also toying with the idea of creating “a jugalbandi of Indian and Italian art”, with works of 20th-century Indian painters from Baroda and Santiniketan schools of art displayed alongside Caravaggio’s iconic piece.