Antonio Monda

Antonio Monda is an Italian film director, journalist, and professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He is a well-connected figure in and promoter of the arts, particularly film and literature.

Family and early life

Monda, who studied law at the University of Rome La Sapienza, comes from a family of liberal Catholic politicians, and remains a practicing Catholic himself. His father, who died of a heart attack when Monda was 15, was mayor of Cisterna di Latina, a city outside Rome and helped finance films, including some by the Taviani brothers, who employed the young Monda in 1981. Monda's uncle, Riccardo Misasi, then Minister of Education, was investigated for ties to the Mafia in 1993. The charges were dropped before the trial, but this caused the end of his political career. His reputation was restored when an avenue was dedicated to his honor in his hometown. What happened to his uncle, Monda has called "the greatest dolore of my life, after my father’s death". This ultimately made him less fond of the Italian justice system and made it more difficult to pursue a career in Italy.

In 1994, Monda moved to New York City where, in exchange for an apartment on the Upper East Side, he served as a superintendent, and began writing for "La Repubblica" as well as teaching at NYU. Susan Sontag, whom he interviewed, wrote a note to help him gain tenure. From 1999 on, he also worked for various Italian government cultural outlets.

Film

Monda has directed documentaries, commercials, and a feature film, "Dicembre", presented at the Venice Film Festival winner of such prizes as the Carro d'Oro, Premio Cinema Giovane, Icaro d'Oro, and Premio Navicella. He is a film critic for both the "New York Review of Books" and "La Rivista dei Libri" as well as cultural correspondent for "La Repubblica". He has curated shows for the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, Lincoln Center, the American Museum of the Moving Image, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He is the US representative of Italia Cinema. He is on the Advisory Board of the Rome Film Festival. His book on American cinema, "La Magnifica Illusione" ("The Magnificent Illusion") won the Efebo d'Oro as the best film book of 2003.

Interviews

Monda's interviews for "La Repubblica" have gained a status all their own; he is known for asking deeply profound questions in a very direct manner, such as "Comment on Dostoyevsky’s assertion that 'If God doesn’t exist, everything is permitted'." This style caught the attention of director Wes Anderson, who casted Monda as himself in the film "The Life Aquatic" and included a DVD extra called "Mondo Monda" in which Monda asks such questions of Anderson and his associate to befuddled reactions. Monda often manages to use his interview connections for book topics, classroom speaker series, or social gatherings.

His interviews with, among others, Jane Fonda, Spike Lee, Toni Morrison, and Elie Wiesel will appear in the forthcoming book "Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion". [ [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/a-professor-asks-do-you-believe/ A Professor Asks, Do You Believe? - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog ] ]

alons and festivals

Monda is also famous for his writers' and artists' salons in his Upper West Side, Manhattan apartment, where Nathan Englander, Bernardo Bertolucci, Derek Walcott, Paul Auster, Martin Scorsese, Philip Roth, Jonathan Lethem and Arthur Miller have mingled. Even more star-studded is his literary festival Le Conversazioni, held on the island of Capri. A promoter of Italian-American cultural relations, he is a champion of anglophone writers in Italy and, according to the "New York Times", a "one-man Italian cultural institute". The paper also referred to him as "the most well-connected cultural figure you've never heard of". [ [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/books/review/Donadio-t.html Monda's World - New York Times article] ]

He is the co-host, with Mario Sesti, of Viaggio nel Cinema Americano (A Journey into American Cinema) a series of public interviews at the Rome Auditorium with major film personalities such as Tim Burton, Spike Lee, Joel and Ethan Coen, David Lynch, Francis Ford Coppola, Sean Connery and Sydney Pollack. Terrence Malick made his first and only public appearance here in October 2007.

Books

*"La Magnifica Illusione" 2003 (updated and extended in 2007)
*"The Hidden God" (published by MoMA) (2004)
*"Do you Believe? Conversations on God and Religion" (2007)
*"Assoluzione" (published by Mondadori in 2008)

References

External links

* [http://filmtv.tisch.nyu.edu/object/MondaA.html Faculty page at NYU Tisch School of the Arts]
* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0597693/ Antonio Monda @ IMDB]
* [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307280586 Purchase "Do You Believe?"]