The fifteenth edition of the “A Tutto Volume” literary festival, promoted by the Fondazione degli Archi, opens in Marina di Ragusa, in a spectacular location close to the sea. Alessandro Di Salvo, artistic director of the festival, introduces the evening which celebrates 70 years of television through interviews, anecdotes and films that retrace the history of our country. “We are happy to find ourselves ever more numerous and I thank the institutions and sponsors who in recent years have never failed to support this cultural event which has managed to gather growing public consensus and the attention of publishing houses, authors, scholars and artists of great fame” declares Di Salvo before leaving the floor to the mayor of Ragusa Peppe Cassì who greets the over four hundred people in the audience. “In these fifteen years A Tutto Volume has grown steadily, demonstrating that it has won the challenge of bringing books to the center of attention in a land where people read less than elsewhere. Over 50 guest authors, who underline the importance of the festival.” The evening will be hosted by Paolo Verri, co-director of “A Tutto Volume” together with Antonio Pascale, Massimo Polidoro and Federico Taddia. Verri opens the celebration of seventy years of public television by inviting the Casamia Trio to come on stage and during the evening they will intersperse the guests by playing some historical television jingles in a jazz style. The first guest, connected from Rome, is the journalist and writer Maria Pia Ammirati, who for many years was deputy director of Rai, and who tells the public about the importance of the history of television, its changes and its successes. Following, Pierluigi Sassi, called by the host, tells the audience when television arrived in the homes of Italians, astonished and unprepared. Among the amusing anecdotes, Sassi recounts that often, at the end of the 1950s, the magical appliance was returned to companies because it was broken or damaged by users, who did not understand its use. Other guests of the evening were Antonio Pascale, who explained how a television that today we would define as quality for the content offered, was instead bitterly contested by the intellectual Pier Paolo Pasolini who in the Seventies considered it a violent push towards consumerism.
The historic presenter and music journalist Carlo Massarini is invited to go on stage preceded by the theme song of Mr Fantasy, a beautiful musical program which was the first to introduce the use of digital on television.
The last guest in dialogue with Paolo Verri was the linguist Yasmina Pani who talked about the extraordinary power of satire through Enrico Ghezzi’s programme, “Blob”. During the evening, three intellectuals from Ragusa, passionate readers and lifelong friends of the event which continues this Friday and Saturday in Upper Ragusa and then concludes, were symbolically rewarded with the delivery of the first three numbered celebratory postcards dedicated to the 15 years of the festival. Sunday in Ragusa Ibla. In support of the festival the Municipality of Ragusa, the Sicilian Region, the Ars, the Free Municipal Consortium of Ragusa, the Asp Ragusa, the Center for books and reading, the tourist destination Enjoy Barocco, Alib, the Chamber of Commerce of Sud Est, Banca Agricola Popolare di Ragusa, Timac Agro and other private partners. Info and program on www.atuttovolume.com
