Film takes a new perspective on Italy's Umbria Jazz Festival
What happens when Italian cuisine and wine are paired with global African music and served in a Medieval piazza in central Italy populated by local people, tourists and migrants from the Global South? This is the question that UC Davis Professor of Music Pierpaolo Polzonetti and Alberto Guerri of Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (National Film School) in Rome, Italy, set out to answer in their documentary, Umbria Jazz Feast.
There will be a free screening of the film on Wednesday, May 6 at 6:30 p.m. in 1002 Cruess Hall at UC Davis.
Umbria Jazz Feast, which had its American premiere in February, is a research project that investigates multi-sensorial intersections during the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy. It presents a new look at this festival by addressing the question: how is jazz perceived as part of a new global identity intersecting with local and global cuisine, art and culture?
Polzonetti specializes in music and food, opera, 18th century instrumental music, jazz and Cuban popular music. He is the author of Feasting and Fasting in Opera: From Renaissance Banquets to the Callas Diet (University of Chicago Press, 2021), the first book-length study to explore rituals of eating and drinking and gastronomic symbols in opera.
Umbria Jazz Feast was made possible by the generous support of the Eivind G. Lange (‘77) and Mary G. Puma Engagement and Research in Italy Fund through a Seed Grant for International Activities from Global Affairs at UC Davis with additional support from the College of Letters and Science and the Department of Music.
The screening is presented by Polzonetti and the Department of French and Italian and co-sponsored by Global Affairs, the Davis Humanities Institute and the Departments of Music and Cinema and Digital Media.
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