The Thief, The Artist, The Boy, and The Chambermaid

La Passione

Carlo Mazzacurati

Well all right, if we are being pedantic its actually the thief, the archivist, the pensioner, the painter-fisherman, the chamber maid and a lad. These are the six characters featured in Mazzacurati’s Sei Venezia-Six Venice (s) or You are Venice, being its double meaning. Mazzacurati is famous for his movies, the most recent being Passione, also shown at the 2010 Venice Film Festival. La Passione sounds an interesting film. The synopsis is: “When you’re over fifty, it becomes increasingly difficult to be an up-and-coming director. Gianni Dubois knows this only too well. He hasn’t made a film for years, and now that he has the chance to direct a young TV star he can’t even think up an idea for a story.

As if this wasn’t enough, a leak in his apartment in Tuscany has ruined the 16th-century fresco in the chapel next door. To avoid being sued and publicly shamed, Gianni must accept the bizarre proposal of the town major to direct the Good Friday celebrations in exchange for immunity.
And so he finds himself spending a week in deepest Tuscany trying to put together a kind of Stations of the Cross, with the apostles, Pontius Pilate, the crucifixion, and a terrible and incredibly vain local actor in the part of Christ.”

But in Sei Venezia Mazzacurati chose to use his talents to portray Venice, sensitively and humorously. The documentary was premiered to critical acclaim at this year’s Venice film festival and goes on release in Italian with English subtitles. It starts off somewhat slowly, or so it seemed, and an attack of post prandial stupor had me nodding off in the heat while the artist-fisherman took centre stage. Thank God my snooze was short for I woke in time for the chambermaid, the thief and the boy, truly the stars of the show (the parts I saw anyway!).

The thief was a mix of pathos and humour, of unfailing positivity in the face of adversity. There are not many clear career paths for ex thieves. Becoming a cook, is often one. No one minds if you filch something from your pots. You are simply tasting, after all. But cooks these days tend to come from Eastern countries, according to our ex con, so that opportunity has largely gone in Venice. Amidst the tales of rooftop chases, after all there are few Garden fences to negotiate in Venice, we hear how the crime scene in Venice changed over the years with drug dealers moving in, and that this new trade was not to the taste of our ex con. By now he has fallen in love and had some children, before tragedy strikes and his bride dies young. But our ex con vows he is determined to continue to go straight, even if he cannot find work.

I am sure the lad will find work easily. Hopefully of the legal variety. Precocious, articulate, intelligent, he gives us the run down of his parent’s restaurant, their lifestyle and relationship. The line of the film surely must be: “ My mum really loves my dad, you can tell by the way she looks at him, but she could do better, she really could….’’

Verdict: a wonderful set of six cameos portraying life in Venice. Catch it if you can and please tell me whether the artist-fisherman was slow paced, or whether it simply coincided with my nap! For more articles on and information about Venice see veniceinfosite.com

Death in Venice: a Tale of Soft Shelled Crabs, a Seasonal Delicacy

Small but wholesome

Soft shelled crabs-known as granseola or moleche-are a seasonal Venetian delicacy. The fact that the crabs, about the diameter of a medium size lemon, are only available in Venice for two short seasons in Autumn and Spring, gives them the cachet of truffle, wild salmon or any other desirable food product you cannot get your hands on. If you want them at other times of year, it means a trip to the eastern seaboard of the USA or the Far East, unless you are fortunate enough to have a local restaurant that flies them in. In Vietnam they prepare soft shell crabs with chilli, a wonderful variant, well worth seeking out in your local Vietnamese restaurant, and available seasonally in some in Kingsland Road, London.The environmentally sounder choice however remains a trip to Venice where you can combine your delectation of soft shelled crab with a cultural feast.

The ‘soft shell’ occurs because the young crustacea have to shed their shells to grow. Males and females moult in Spring, while only males moult in Autumn. There is a 5-6 hour window of opportunity from when the crabs shed their hard shell, before the new, soft shell hardens again with contact with water. Timing therefore is crucial to the whole enterprise.

The moleche fishermen of Venice are known as molecanti, and their skill is to maintain a supply of soft shell crabs by carefully managing the moulting process and sorting the crabs into those ready now and those that need to be held back until later. Crabs that are not going to moult are thrown back, while the others are stored in tanks until ready, before being whisked off alive to the main fish market in Rialto. The moulting season is for a few weeks from late September and early March.

The fish market in Rialto is well worth a visit and you can see the crabs and a wide selection of muscles, clams and other seafood. Virtually every fish restaurant in Venice will feature soft shell crabs on its menu during the season. It’s a tough life being a crab, and not one you would wish for in any future incarnation. Apart from being fished out, thrown in a tank and taken to market, you can guarantee you will end up beng cooked alive. The crabs are either fried as part of fritto misto di pesce or egged and floured. For the latter, they are soaked alive in a bowl of beaten egg yolks which they absorb, then floured and fried, emerging as a deliciuously tasty, crunchy, snack. However cooked, they are eaten whole.

There are currently five farms operating around Venice and some 60-70 tonnes are harvested annually, which represents an important industry. The crabs were under threat in the 80s, but stocks have now recovered and conditions in the lagoon are carefully monitored to preserve this important trade and delicacy. For more articles on Venice see veniceinfosite.com

Great with lemon and salad

The Patron Saint of Lecce, Gay Gallipoli and Therapeutic Dancing

Santa Croce Church

We arrived in Lecce, often described as the Florence of the South, at aperitif time. Very strangely for an Italian town, most of the bars were shut. As we neared the centre of the town, we saw a throng of people packing the narrow medieval streets. A procession starts coming towards us. My first time for many years in Southern Italy it’s very easy to note the different look of the local population compared to the North. Smaller, swarthier. Unfortunately you can publish anything on the Web, and another blog publicises the ludicrous claim that Southern Italians have lower I.Q levels than Northerners…

Many in the procession  appear solemn. We wonder if this is some large civic funeral, or some other occasion for mourning. Maybe the local football team lost the national championships or it’s a late mourning for Italy’s world cup performance. Bringing up the rear, what appears to
be an empty suit of armour is being carried along.

Sant'Oronzo

At last we find an open bar, empty apart from three people one of whom is a nun. She happily tells us about the ceremony, which is all part of the three day Sant’Oronzo festival. The procession is comprised of groups from towns all over the South of Italy. Sant’Oronzo is the patron saint of Lecce and attributed with ridding the town of plague in the 17^th Century.

Oh, and Lecce is beautiful, with stunning baroque architecture, wonderful churches and a cathedral. Unfortunately we have a bad food experience here, proving that it is possible, though very difficult, to eat badly in Italy. Apart from quality the restaurant took 2.5 hours to serve us, by which time our friends’ kids were fast asleep. We can’t pay for their meals now we said, and probably should not have paid for ours, but were so hungry we had eaten ours despite the poor quality. Holidays after all are for lowering blood pressure, food a vital part of them,and bad food already harder to digest than good food.

I had tried and failed, due to leaving the lights on in the car and flattening the battery, to go to a Sagra  in the North of Italy. A bit like asparagus festivals in Germany, these are village or town celebrations that feature wine, pasta, salami, fish or other local produce and normally have some musical accompaniment. In other words eat, drink, and be merry!

We headed off to Cutrofiano by way of an Agriturismo restaurant, eating deliciously, and consuming more than enough calories for a night of dancing. Suddenly I am in Ireland. It’s Christy Moore, Planxty and Moving Hearts too, as the musicians play their fiddles, accordions and Bhodrans!

Tambourine Played Like Bhodran

There’s two types of music being played: Taranta and Pizzica. Some sounds like Irish folk with virtuoso fiddles, accordions and guitars driven along by tambourines played like Bhodrans. The faster rhythm sounds like some hybrid between Zydeco and Cumbia. There’s no thumping bassline, the bass is supplied by the tambourines, played with thumb and fingers as the  bhodran is played. Many in the audience play tambourines in the same way.

Taranta has Greek origins from the second century BC, and more recently has been used in the therapy of patients with certain forms of depression and hysteria. One can imagine the medical researchers with their balanced control groups investigating the curative powers-Yes Boss, we are off to Puglia to attend a few festivals and test out the amazing powers of taranta!  Dance of this nature is a form of hysteria, and guaranteed to lift the spirits.

The Crowd Becoming Hysterical

Most people are dancing and small groups burst into a high speed dance routine that looks like shadow boxing. There’s stalls selling crafts, food and wine, and a cold beer costs a Euro. The festivities continue to 2.30am and frankly there are few finer ways to spend a night, than a hearty and gorgeous meal followed by dancing under the moon.

La Notte della Taranta

One alternative would be to go to Gallipolli and have a late night drink on the seafront. We are talking Gallipoli Italy here not the Turkish version in the Dardenelles. The town is absolutely buzzing in August. La passegiata continues long into the night, and craft shops and souvenir stalls line the medieval streets. Throw in a castle, a cathedral and a high seafront rampart and you have a picturesque seaside town. Less explicable is Gallipoli’s newfound reputation as the cool gay resort to be seen in, but the evidence is there in rash of gay bars. I may have been overly-influenced by Mine Vagante and other sources but I was surprised by the openness of the gay scene among locals and visitors alike. Late one night it was hard to concentrate on our own conversation as a North meets South encounter took place right beside us and the gay scene in North and South Italy was compared and contrasted. But in typical Italian style gay bars neighbour family bars and ice cream parlours and nobody seems in a hurry to go to bed.