On the occasion of the centenary of the Festa di San Gennaro, Paul Borghese is filming The Streets of Little Italy: 100 Years of San Gennaro, a documentary produced by Ciao USA. Borghese, actor and director also appeared in the series The Sopranos, explained that the film will start from the festival of Mulberry Street, but will have as broader argument Italian immigration to New York.
“We will tell how the Italians settled in Little Italy and as a neighborhood party, organized by the Italians for the Italians, has become what is today considered the largest and best known Italian festival in the world”, said Borghese. In 1926 San Gennaro lasted only one day and was above all a religious celebration of the Neapolitan community. A century later he occupied the streets of the neighborhood for eleven days and recalls visitors from New York and abroad.
The documentary will be narrated by the actor Armand Assante, friend and long-time collaborator of Borghese. The production also includes interviews with various protagonists of the Italian-American community, including Martin Scorsese, Steve Schirripa and Tony Danza. The goal, the director explained, is to show Little Italy from a different perspective than that, very common, of the district destined to disappear.
“We often talk about a Little Italy that shrinks. I don’t think he’s shrinking. I think he’s going through a transition.”.
The Italian population of the neighborhood has actually declined since the 1950s, while Chinatown has expanded and many residents have moved to other neighborhoods or suburbs. In the same period, however, the Feast of San Gennaro followed the opposite path, becoming bigger and better known.
The one described by Borghese is therefore a transformation especially of the identity of the neighborhood. Little Italy is no longer the compact Italian community of 1926, but continues to function as a place of memory and Italian culture. The documentary will try to tell this passage: as a religious festival brought by Neapolitan immigrants survived the community that had created it, becoming one of the most recognizable Italian symbols in New York.
L’articolo Paul Borghese tells the hundred years of San Gennaro in a documentary proviene da IlNewyorkese.
