Archives » Friday, February 15, 2008
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Christopher Dickey
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Feb 15, 2008 11:29 PM
By Jacopo Barigazzi
"Near where I live in Bergamo, Northern Italy, there's a soccer field," says the video artist Bruno Bozzetto. "In order not to walk for 40 meters to the parking spaces, soccer players leave their cars right in front of the field, where there is no parking. They are going there to work out, but they can't walk 40 meters? That's Italy."
Bozzetto himself is a symbol of Italian creativity. Born in 1938, his name is well known in Europe, especially in France and Germany, for a string of animated cartoons. One of the most famous, "Allegro, non troppo" (from the musical notation meaning, literally, "lively, but not too much") is a feature in which famous classical pieces by Debussy, Ravel and Vivaldi inspire a collection of stories with penetrating social themes.
Bozzetto made the savage but affectionate little Web video "Europe and Italy" in 1998 after he got to know Flash technology while working on an advertising campaign. "I made it just for fun," he says, but countless people around the world have viewed it in the decade since. If he were to do it again he says he would change very little. He would add the scene at the soccer pitch and he would cut the segment where Italians don't respect the "No Smoking" sign. "For some weird reason Italy has been the most serious country in applying the European ban on smoking in public spaces such as coffee bars and restaurants," says Bozzetto. "In Spain and Belgium they still smoke."
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