Conceived and directed by Elisabetta Sgarbi, The Milanesiana is the largest traveling festival that promotes dialogue between the arts, an international festival that weaves relationships between literature, music, cinema, science, art, philosophy, theater, law, economics and sport. From 4 June it is back with its 23rd edition dedicated to the theme Omissions, in 20 different cities with over 60 meetings and events, welcoming more than 150 Italian and international guests. The logo of the festival is the Rose painted by Franco Battiato, which since the first edition has been the symbol of La Milanesiana and has also been reworked this year by Franco Achilli.
Today Friday 17 June, at 9 pm, at the Anteo Palazzo del Cinema, Abel Ferrara will be a guest of the Milanesiana, conceived and directed by Elisabetta Sgarbi, where he will read the text anticipated here during a tribute evening in his honor. On this occasion, the American director will receive the Omaggio al Maestro / La Milanesiana Award and will be in dialogue with Pedro Armocida and Giulio Sangiorgio. Cinematic prologue with the short Molly Bloom (2016, 20 ‘) by Chiara Caselli and poetic prologue by Gabriele Tinti. The screening of the film closes the evening The Addiction (1995, 82 ′).
From a dictionary, the word omission is the failure to perform an action for which there is a moral obligation, such as leading a spiritual life, a life of service and compassion, as opposed to the search for self-realization. And it is destruction, when I think of Ukraine and the bombs detonated on buildings filled with women and children at the hands of a soulless strategist pursuing a new personal order, and I think of all the Russians I met in my life from Brighton Beach to Brooklyn to St. Petersburg, up to Moscow, and I don’t think I’ve ever had any problems with any of them, if not rarely; in most cases, I have known people who shared the same desire to lead a humble and kind life with their families.
So why was I brought up during the Cold War to see these people as mortal enemies, why do we find ourselves in a real war today, why is the world on the verge of a nuclear holocaust again?
I think back to something Pasolini said towards the end of his life, when he wondered why his boys insisted so much on smoking hashish all day; why those young men in their prime so desperately wanted to be altered. Pasolini concluded that they had no spirituality and that it was that lack that led them to that state.
Although Russia has strayed far from Marx’s teachings that religion is the opium of the people, these teachings persist and undoubtedly still live in the minds of those who govern in China.
But life devoid of a concept of spirituality is closer to the metaphorical opiate addiction that physically leads to the grave, and a life of despair and despair, constantly undermined by the feeling of existential threat, is the opposite of perceiving the Earth and its billions. of inhabitants as one thing, just like what you are, what we are, sharing the same world.
Our needs are the same: the search for well-being and happiness for us and our loved ones, the confrontation with the difficulties of life and the conditions that this life dictates, with its infinite slings, arrows, catastrophes, but with a spirit of hope and unity.
John Kennedy said: “don’t ask yourself what your country can do for you, ask yourself what you can do for your country”; aside from the nationalistic aspect, he was right, citing his God, Jesus Christ, citing the Buddha. Compassion, service, love are what matters and this is the path to an authentic life. You are not on this Earth to suffer, states one of the fundamental Buddhist teachings and, if you are suffering, then it means that you are looking at life in an illusory way.
Wisdom and experience break this illusion. The wisdom that left us the last World War, fought not so long ago, partly in the same places as the current one, with the deaths of 75 million people or perhaps more, which ended with the nuclear bombing of two cities inhabited by men unarmed, women and children? What was the omission of thought that led us to relive all this? Where is the wisdom that comes from awareness of this experience and which results in peace and understanding?
I meet many people, I have a lucky life, I see many places and, in 70 years of experience, I have only met a handful of people who desire a world like the one we live in today.
Abel Ferrara
New York City
June 9, 2022
Translation by Silvia Iannacone
(Institute of Advanced Studies SSML Carlo Bo)