(Jul. 1st) On the ivory facade of an old Portuguese farmhouse, an Italian flag waves. It faces the sea and boats and fishing nets are close by. The side streets that surround the building are lined with green and gold streamers and on the side is painted Apollo cuddling the nine muses in a wide embrace. We are in Ribeira, a suburb of west Salvador, Bahia, in Brazil. And the building is the ICBIE HQ: Istituto Cultura Brasile Italia Europe. It has been founded eleven years ago by Pietro Gallina, professor of music and theater at Socrate high school in Rome, to give consistency and planning for a future otherwise marked by precariousness. “In May of 2015 we will celebrate our 10th year, even though we are here since 2003 and the first lesson was in 2004.” The idea comes from far away and tells a story of friendship and anger: the friendship between Pietro and Ele D’Artagnan (born Michael Lombardi), Venetian painter and actor, a friend of Federico Fellini and other artists who gravitated to Rome during the years of the Dolce Vita, died alone and forgotten by everyone; the anger of the painter, who in his last will devise to have his paintings not exhibited in Italy. “It took me a year to put together the documents and the works that he left me – says Professor Gallina – then one day I hosted two of my artist friends in Rome, and they saw his paintings. Then, we left for New York with the idea of organizing a solo exhibition about him.” The exhibition was a success and it drew the attention of the New York Times and the New Yorker Magazine, the pictures went sold and Pietro found himself with a nest egg in his hands. “I could have retired in Brazil with my wife Marlene, I had already been to Sao Paulo and the country was on the launch pad. But after all that were not my money and I wondered what D’Artagnan would have wanted to make with it.” The answer came one day when Pietro, passing in Ribeira da Salvador, falls in love with this house. A glance, the desire to burn the bridges behind him and to bet on a different future. “The house was unsafe, not for sale and inhabited by poor families who used to live with rats, cockroaches and termites, but I bought it anyway. It also included a deposit of bottles, a bicycle workshop and a restaurant unlikely, called “Vesuvius”, run by an Italian escaped from the Argentine crisis that in the very beginning helped me early to make contacts. We renovated it in 2003 – remembers Pietro – and so born the ICBIE.” The first classes were Italian, music, computer science and theater. Then it gathered attention in Ribeira and the State of Bahia recognized the ICBIE as a culture hub. “We became friends of the people of Ribeira – concludes the Italian professor – we work for their community, we offer our space for weddings and graduation parties of our former students or friends or even just for families who send their children here to study Italian.”
