"The Anti-Mafia Martyr Film: Focus on The Mafia Only Kills in the Summer"

Please join us for a lecture by Millicent Marcus, “The Anti-Mafia Martyr Film:  Focus on The Mafia Only Kills in the Summer” on Monday, April 8 at 5 pm at the Kelley Center presentation room.  Prof.  Marcus, the Sarai Ribicoff Professor of Italian Studies at Yale University, is the author of six books.  Her most recent volume, Italian Film in the Present Tense, won the American Association of Teachers of Italian award for performance and visual culture. The recipient of numerous awards including the Premio Flaiano for After Fellini as well as the Presidential Book Prize from the American Association of Italian Studies for Filmmaking by the Book, Prof. Marcus has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Getty, and the American Council of Learned Scholarship.

In this lecture, Prof. Marcus will consider a film by director Pierfrancesco Diliberto, who goes by the name Pif, about the impact of the Mafia on individuals and society in the south of Italy.  Set in Palermo, and stretching from the 1970s to present, this film tells the story of Arturo Giammaresi, whose childhood coincides with one of the most intense periods of Mafia violence in Italy.  A tale of youthful love and political awakening set against the background of Mafia assassinations, The Mafia Only Kills in the Summer demonstrates the power of political activism as it memorializes the heroes of the struggle against organized crime. 

This lecture, which is sponsored by the Italian Studies program, the department of Modern Languages & Literatures, and the Humanities Institute in the College of Arts & Sciences, is free and open to the public.