Giovanni da Verrazzano. Navigator and gentleman
Screening
A docu-film by Luigi Giovanni Cappellini, President of Fondazione Giovanni da Verrazzano
Presented in collaboration with: Italy OnScreen Today New York Film & TV Series Fest
On the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the voyage of
Giovanni da Verrazzano,
the first European to arrive in what is now New York Bay, on 17 April 1524
With
Fabio Finotti, IIC NY Director
Luigi Giovanni Cappellini,
Fondazione Giovanni da Verrazzano
Anthony Tamburri, Dean Calandra Institute, CUNY
Joseph Sciame, IHCC NY President/Chair
Loredana Commonara, Italy OnScreen Today Director
Can one discover the bay where one of the world’s most important metropolises would be set, or explore the coast that will give rise to the first world power, and be completely forgotten? Can one befriend the King of France, becoming his trusted man, and be mistaken for a common assassin? Can one write one of the most elegant travel accounts and end up relegated to the role of “never having existed”?
Yes, one can. It happened to one of the most intelligent navigators in history: Giovanni da Verrazzano. A man of the land, with earthy origins – from the Chianti region and Florence – who preferred the sea to the mainland, and who, after a premature, brutal, and unpredictable death, was forgotten along with his exploits.
Until, incredibly, the document that everyone had been searching for surfaces, but only after carefully avoiding the one place where it could be found.
Explorer, humanist, man of science and action: the name of Giovanni da Verrazzano is primarily associated with the voyage in 1524 that took him, as the first Westerner, into New York Bay and along the eastern coasts of what is now the United States of America.
Marco Hagge’s research for the Giovanni da Verrazzano Foundation, titled “Giovanni da Verrazzano: Navigator and Gentleman”, meticulously reconstructs the historical context of Florence during the transition from the 15th to the 16th century – a scientific and cultural crossroads for all of Europe, and thus also an essential point of reference for the great voyages of the time.
Marco Hagge leads the study of the navigator beyond its foggy veil, returning the figure of an explorer who was decidedly unconventional: more interested in discovering the world and the cultures he encountered than in accumulating riches. His story is marked by a humanistic spirit that, paradoxically, would betray him when, in his final mission, he was slaughtered in the Caribbean by a tribe of natives, under the eyes of his trusted cartographer brother, Gerolamo.
The result is a compelling portrait of a courageous traveler who was also an educated man, skilled politician, brilliant entrepreneur, and refined storyteller, fully integrated into a well-established network of international relations: not only a geographer and navigator but above all the quintessential expression of the explorer figure – humanist and, indeed, gentleman.
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Italy OnScreen Today – New York Film & Tv Series Fest was born in 2016 to promote the best of Italian contemporary cinema and audiovisual in New York. Produced by the Artistic Soul Association, founded and directed by Loredana Commonara.
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