New murals are arriving at Borgo San Giuliano, entrusted to the figurative art of Agim Sulaj, a well-known painter of Albanian origin who has settled in Rimini for over thirty years.
The de Borg Society continues the tradition of murals at the Borgo, with three new subjects: the homage to the film THE STREET with the return to the village of Zampanò (via Padella), the homage to THE VITELLONI with the famous scene “workers?” (via Trai) and finally from AMARCORD the beautiful choral scene of lunch at Titta’s house (via Pozzetto).
The first mural dedicated to Zampanò will be inaugurated Friday 3 May 2024 at 5.30pmin the context of Film Festival THE SEVENTH ART scheduled at Rimini from 2 to 5 May, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the release of the film LA STRADA at the cinema.
The author of the murals is Agim Sulaj, cartoonist, illustrator and painter, born in Vlora (Albania) in 1960, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Tirana. He had been collaborating since 1985 with the political-satirical magazine Hosteni where he discovered the world of humor and satire, which would become one of his favorite artistic fields. Since 1993, he has lived and worked in Rimini where he moved with his family. He obtained Italian citizenship in 2000. Winner of several satire awards, including the first Una Vignetta Prize for Europe in 2012. He exhibits his works in various galleries, including the one in Lugano and the Alpha Gallery from London. His paintings are in the permanent collections of several museums in Europe and the USA.
Author’s Notes:
«It was summer, in the middle of August, I was thirteen years old, in Albania.
“This film is not for you!”, my father said, chasing me away from the living room where we had the television and closing the door. But I, in the dim light of the corridor, bent down, glued my eye to the lock of that closed door. The television was right in front of her: from Vlora you could only get the first channel of the Italian RAI, which was also strictly forbidden by the regime of the time. And so it was that Federico Fellini’s Amarcord entered my life. I only saw the images, the music came muffled and so did the words, which I still wouldn’t have been able to understand anyway, but I was struck by them.
Those simple, human, genuine and sincere stories: the family, the grandfather, the relatives, the friends, the small community, the ancient village by the sea told in all seasons, the summer heat in the middle of the countryside, the announcement of spring with the wind that makes the “little hands” swirl, the autumn that brings the first melancholy, the amazement and joy of the falling snow: those stories were identical to mine.
I could never have imagined that, among so many cities, when I grew up I would go and live in Rimini, Fellini’s city, the “village” of his Amarcord. And by residing in Rimini, and becoming an Italian citizen, Amarcord has accompanied my entire life, because it also tells my “amarcord”, the indelible memory of the Vlora of my childhood and my very early youth, a city like Rimini, nestled on the soft banks and sweetest of a luminous sea. Which is the same sea for both of us, that Adriatic that unites, brings me together and makes me happy, because it seems to me that I have never left home my.” Agim Sulaj
