Anonimo Veneziano

Since I will be in Venice soon, to visit friends, to enjoy its timeless beauty and also to check the "Biennale", I feel I should share this with you!

"Anonimo Veneziano" an award winning drama is one of my favorite movies and I could watch it many times over. It was filmed in 1970 by Enrico Maria Salerno (a very famous Italian theater actor at the time) in his debut as a director in a magnificent Venice without tourists as a background (and should I say foreground too).

Listen to the music... and enjoy some images of the city.

Salerno's script, co-written with Giuseppe Berto, features Tony Musante and Florinda Bolkan as an estranged couple reunited for a day. They wander around Venice reminiscing about the ups and downs of their marriage, wondering what drove them apart. Extraordinary photography of the best Venice has to offer, some scenes were also filmed at the centuries old Bevilacqua Textiles factory, where Bolkan was surrounded by the most luxurious damasks and silks in an explosion of colors.
The most fascinating music "Adagio from Oboe concert" by Alessandro Marcello (1669-1747 and brother of Benedetto) makes some scenes even more romantic.

A real Venice, a hymn to desperate love, a man dying in a dying city...a movie, at least for me,

 impossible to forget.

From the movie script:
"Do you really fear the past?"
"No, it is not the past...it is that I can't tolerate anymore the smell of this city. She is dying, she is going back to mud...but it is just this that makes her beautiful: she is dying".
The same year (1970) we had "Love story" movie (another impossible, desperate love) which I saw once and never felt like I have to see again...it must be my fascination with Venice or the intensity of this particular movie or perhaps just the memory of who I was at the time!!!

On a more prosaic note:

When in Venice I always go once to "Locanda Montin" Dorsoduro 1147 where a famous scene of the movie was taken. A good restaurant with local specialties and a charming atmosphere, especially if in season you can sit in the courtyard under the canopy of greenery.

Very romantic indeed... and the distance between tables allows intimate conversation...

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Venice Biennale

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A-Efendy Movies, Restaurants, Tent London Interiors, Travel, Venice

At Home

I like to introduce you to this Home.

I am sure you'll appreciate the somber elegance created with the choice of wallpaper, the selection of materials and furniture.

An example of the informal but at the same time refined atmosphere of this Home

Note how they introduced and played colours only with few objects displayed around and mostly with the interesting hot pink sculpture by Benedetta Mori Ubaldini

Imagine yourself relaxing outside immersed in the green space while seating on Emu chairs

A visit to the bathroom by Agape

The atmosphere of this Home is intimate and relaxing

to make everyone in fact feel at Home...

even when they are at a...Restaurant.

"Home" is the very appropriate name of one of the latest and most exclusive Restaurant in Milan.

Project by Architects Luca Rossire and Riccardo Salvi who among other things also designed the sconces and the green sofa.

Technorati Tags: Interior Design,Architecture,Furniture

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A-Efendy Interior design, Lifestyle, Milan, Restaurants, Tent London Interiors

Restaurant in Milan

And today on with the "New"

A famous chef and restaurant owner in Milan, Gualtiero Marchesi, who reinvented cuisine in the 70's and who was the first Italian chef to receive three Michelin stars, has now reinvented the way of setting a table, even possibly changing our way of eating (properly?).

He is designing new cutlery and knives in particular.
Meat set: "Forks have only two prongs to avoid making too many holes in the meat and the knife is very sharp and has an unserrated edge to avoid tearing the fibres".
Spaghetti fork has four very long prongs (not like the Scandinavian three pronged ones, quite short, which are very fashionable but useless for pasta dishes).
Fish knife will not be a knife anymore, but an elongated spoon, because Gualtiero says you don't cut fish, you break the flesh by pressing with the blade and the curved edge will enable you to spoon up the sauce that fish usually comes with.

Process of nutrition and the world of design now go hand in hand.

Marchesi latest creation is the restaurant "Il Marchesino" near La Scala Opera house in Milan and the chairs are upholstered in "rosso Scala" the same red hue of La Scala interior decor.

Slow Food movement was created in Italy and the concept of "calmness" and "serenity" is a very Italian idea since the Rinascimento (Renaissance) perhaps never followed much in the Italian political arena.
But it is true that even centuries later Italians still like to sit at the table, enjoy conversation, savour the food and as Italians do all the time, while eating they talk... about food.

So we eat pasta while describing a risotto, we have fish and we talk about the eggplants we had for lunch yesterday, if we have zucchine (please note the proper spelling) we talk about fish!.

So... old or new? Tradition re-invented maybe.

Modern Classic

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A-Efendy Food, Lifestyle, Restaurants, Tent London Interiors