Loyola University Chicago

The John Felice Rome Center Hosts Screening of Award Winning Documentary

“Sacco and Vanzetti,” produced by Peter Miller, screened for the first time in Rome

 ROME, August 20, 2009 – On Tuesday, September 29, 2009, from 6:30 – 9:30 pm the John Felice Rome Center will host "Sacco and Vanzetti Vivono: Their cultural legacy in film, music and history." Free and open to the public, the event will examine the Sacco and Vanzetti case with an eye to both the past and the present, because the issues the story raises continue to resonate in so much of what is going on around us today.

The centerpiece of the evening will be first Rome screening of Peter Miller’s award-winning documentary “Sacco and Vanzetti” (screened in English with Italian sub-titles). The event will also include the presentation of a recent short music video by rapper Kento (Francesco Carlo) on the topic, and a musical performance by the Italian Old-time Trio who will perform pieces from the era on traditional instruments. After the screenings and performance, there will be a panel dissussion that will include Peter Miller, Kento, Fabio Refrigeri, director of the trio, and Flaminio DiBiagi, noted film scholar.

Peter Miller’s documentary, “Sacco and Vanzetti,” brings to life the story of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian immigrant anarchists who were accused of a murder in 1920, and executed in Boston in 1927 after a notoriously prejudiced trial.  The ordeal of Sacco and Vanzetti came to symbolize the bigotry and intolerance directed at immigrants and dissenters in America. Millions of people in the United States, Italy and around the world protested on their behalf.  Eighty years later, their story continues to have great resonance, as civil liberties and the rights of immigrants continue to be under attack in the United States as well as in Italy.

Italian rapper Kento, inspired by the Sacco and Vanzetti story, focuses on the different ways they confronted their shared destiny:

• You can choose to refuse utterly that which you cannot confront …
• Or you can choose to fight to the end….
• To the judges who will condemn you in any case, you can offer vehement argument.
• Or simply silence. You can be like Nicola Sacco or like Bartolomeo  Vanzetti.
• You can be aware that, in various moments of your life, you have been one of them, and that deep in your being, both are living.

The event will be held at the Loyola University Chicago John Felice Rome Center located at Via Massimi 114 A in the Balduina neighborhood of Rome (see www.luc.edu/romecenter/ for directions). For more information, please visit for more www.luc.edu/jfrc. To schedule interviews with participants, please call Anne Wingenter at +39 333 760 8404 or e-mail Anne at awingen@luc.edu.

About The John Felice Rome Center

The second largest study abroad program in Italy, the John Felice Rome Center offers an American undergraduate college experience in the heart of Western Europe. Students choose from more than 40 academic courses each semester and live together to form a tight-knit community in one of Europe's largest and most captivating capital cities with considerable cultural and religious importance for more than 2,000 years. The Rome Center, an actual campus and academic center of Loyola University Chicago, is fully accredited and credits earned are easily transferable to other American universities. Visit our Web site at LUC.edu/romecenter for more information.

About Loyola University Chicago
Committed to preparing people to lead extraordinary lives, Loyola University Chicago was founded in 1870 and is the nation's largest Jesuit, Catholic university. Loyola has a total enrollment of more than 15,600 students, which includes more than 10,000 undergraduates hailing from all 50 states and 82 foreign countries. The University has four campuses: three in the greater Chicago area and one in Rome, Italy. Loyola also serves as the U.S. host university to the Beijing Center for Chinese Studies in Beijing, China. Loyola's ten schools and colleges include arts and sciences, business administration, communication, education, graduate studies, law, medicine, nursing, continuing and professional studies, and social work. Loyola offers 71 undergraduate majors, 71 undergraduate minors, 85 master's degrees, and 31 doctoral degrees. Recognizing Loyola's excellence in education, U.S.News & World Report has ranked Loyola consistently among the "top national universities," and named the University a "best value" in its 2009 rankings. For more information, please visit LUC.edu.