The alternate ending for Italian director Federico Fellini’s “8 1/2,” believed lost for decades has turned up and will be put on exhibit.
Marcello Mastroianni starred in this autobiographical flick, which debuted 40 years ago on Feb. 14, about a harried film director who retreats into his memories to find peace.

The film, as it played in theaters, has the film director character Guido Anselmi deciding to go back to his wife while the characters of his past go by in a ring-around-the-rosy whirl. Considered one of Fellini’s greatest works, the Oscar-winning movie regularly ranks in polls that ask critics and directors to pick the 10 greatest films of all time.

The ending used was actually a shot as a trailer, but Fellini liked it so much he used it instead of the scene he had already shot where the women of Anselmi’s life are seated in the dining car of a train. The discarded footage was lost, but the Cinemarzaro Association found stills after buying the collection of journalist Gideon Bachmann who had followed the shooting of the film.

The association is planning an exhibit of 2,600 photos from the collection, many of which document the rapport between Mastroianni and Fellini, in July 2003 in Pordenone. A documentary about the lost ending is also in the works for the Cannes film festival.

Claudia Cardinale, who played a sort of dreamlike muse in the film, said she doesn’t remember much about the abandoned ending. "The film changed my life forever, Italian cinema was the best the world had," she told newspapers. "I only remember a bit about the train scene, mainly I have a sensation of love and two colors — the blinding white of the costumes and the black-grey of the smoke of the train."

Related resources:
8 1/2
The DVD, includes an interview with Gideon Bachmann…

400 e average yearly cost of Italian checking account
+13% increase in banking fees, from 2001
+15.5% increase in debit/credit card use since introduction of euro
1 Sicilian town boycotting checking accounts

Italian consumers, irate with high banking costs, may just follow the example of one Sicilian town where cash-stuffed mattresses are more popular than ATMs.
A study by consumer group ADUSBEF recently revealed the trap of Italian checking accounts — average fees can rack up to 412 euro per year and since banks tack on hefty closing penalties consumers are reluctant to change banks. With the introduction of the euro, more Italians have relied on paying with debit cards, and in some cases fees for using ATMs has doubled.

Residents of Barrafranca, province of Enna, aren’t having any of it — about half of the town’s 14,000 residents don’t have a checking account. They get by with savings bankbooks for receiving paychecks and pensions and for everything else rely on cash.

"They freeze up if you even mention a checking account," one bank director told newspapers. "They think you’re out to get their money. You can try to explain all the advantages, but they turn a deaf ear." And maybe they’re not wrong…

Related resources:
Hello Italy! The Best Budget Hotels in Italy

42% (circa) think free time is for family
+5% increase in Italians think free time = family
11.3% think they don’t have to account for free time
49.2% sees relatives at least once a week

Time out from work or school still means family time for today’s Italians. Statistics institute Istat recently polled some 20,000 Italian families on how they viewed leisure time and what they did with it, revealing more than a few surprises.

Though an increasing number of Italians consider free moments as dedicated to family and relationships, up nearly 5% from 1995, the percentages vary from generation to generation. For 18-19 year-olds that time is private (53%) and time for fun (42%), while over 40% of adults aged 35-64 mark any leftover moments for family time.

Stereotypes would have Italians masters of la dolce vita and when it comes to leisure time, most seem to believe, in fact, that they have a good balance between work and play. The majority (68.2%) are satisfied with the quality of free time, while 57.7% are content with the quantity of free time — though that figure drops to 38.9% for working women.

Most Italians say they still have remnants of time to relax or do nothing in particular (72.9%); other popular pursuits include photography or making home videos (40.9%), playing cards (46.7%) and dancing (18.2%). While some activities were favored by men (composing music or playing an instrument) or women (going to the hairdresser or keeping a journal), it emerged from the poll that slightly more than 2% of Italian men knit — and were willing to admit it.

Related resources:
Italy Profiled: Essential Facts on Society, Business and Politics
More on today’s Bel Paese

75% Italians would follow a modern manners book
Percentage of Italians judge manners ‘important’ in:
95% cleanliness/grooming
83% dining
90% behavior in public
90% with friends/family in private

Italians, in public or private, still care about cutting a good figure. According to a poll of over 1,000 Italians, there is no escaping the rigors of ‘la bella figura’ at home or in the office.

Italy has a long tradition of fretting over comportment, 67% of Italians are aware of the granddaddy of all good-manner manuals from the 1500s by Giovanni della Casa, il Galateo. Two-thirds would also be interested in a updated “Galateo” (the term is still synonymous with etiquette in modern Italian) and only 37% judge manners as altogether unimportant.

Don’t mistake good manners for stiffness, though, since genteel Italians will often appear fatally casual. It’s just another very Italian concept from 16th- century etiquette guide The Courtier, called ‘sprezzatura’ which can be defined as an assumed air of doing difficult things with an effortless mastery and an air of nonchalance.

Related resources:
www.executiveplanet.com/business-etiquette/Italy.html
If you’re going to Italy for pleasure or work, take a look this straighforward free guide on everyday manners in Italy..And get your wrists on the table where they belong!

Sprezzatura: 50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World

82% Italians prefer crèche over tree
58% because it’s “family tradition”
24% because it “allows more creativity”
18% because kids prefer it

More ammunition in the eternal debate in Italy around the Christmas holidays — what represents the season better: the Nativity scene or the tree?
For the first time in years, this poll of over 700 Italians by a radio station signals the comeback of the manger scene. The religious symbol, which can range from a tiny terra-cotta representation to an elaborate countryside scene taking up the living room, had fallen out of favor in recent years for the secular evergreen, though many homes simply find room for both.

The manger scene, or presepe, is a very old tradition — dating back to Medieval times — and many Italian towns have live representations or exhibits but that doesn’t necessarily make it much of a hit with today’s children, according to the poll. Recent popularity has led some cities to expand live versions of the scene — this year some 250 extras will participate in the living crèche taking place from December 22-24 in Roccavignale, province of Savona in Liguria. ?1999-2009 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingualjournalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire.

The Sicilian town of San Cataldo has a cleanup problem — despite the fact that 27% of the town’s population is unemployed, it seems that none of them want to be garbage collectors.

Mayor Raimondo Torregrossa has been trying to find 13 “ecological operators,” as they’re euphemistically called in Italy, for temporary work. In a town of 24,000, only 30 people applied. After sifting through the applications, only four women were eligible.

"I couldn’t believe it," said Torregrossa. "It really seems that no one wants this job."

Despite an official unemployment rate about three times higher than the Italian national average, San Cataldo isn’t the only town in Sicily to have this particular employment problem. Isnello, a small farming town in the province of Palermo, has searched for two months without any luck for a baker. In Gela, another town with a 25% unemployment rate, a restaurant can’t find two waiters.

The truth behind the situation appears to be slightly different — an army of workers getting paid under the table or with short-term contracts making them officially unemployed.

The mayor readily admits that official data doesn’t tell the whole story. "That 27% is inflated," Torregrossa explained. "When you turn 16 here, you sign up at the employment office to maximize the unemployment time and benefits." The director of the local unemployment office, Salvatore Vancheri, agrees — estimating that if he took off the lists students and government contract workers the true unemployment rate would be 4%.

47.6% Italians consider traffic a problem
41.6% Italians consider parking a problem
39. 9% Italians consider pollution a problem
38.5% Italians consider noise a problem

If it honks, revs or needs to be parked, Italians are irked by it. Asked by national statistics institute ISTAT to name everyday irritants, the top spots were almost all related to cars and traffic in congested cities. Car-related concerns beat out crime and safety of drinking water. Another study showed, however, that Italians are also more likely to rely on public transportation than European counterparts. According to ANFIA data, 10.5% of Italians use busses or the subway, compared to 6.2% in the UK and 4.9% in France, despite the notorious unreliability of these means in the Bel Paese.

Results from the poll also show a strong divide between the industrialized North and Southern Italy — over half of residents in Lombardy considered traffic and pollution the most severe environmental problems while only 19% of those in Basilicata and 18.2% of Calabria residents did. ?1999-2004 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingualjournalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire.