I think I'd like to move to Salemi

A Korean immigrant's vast film collection, an Italian town, quirky people in charge. This article could have been the plot for a new Giuseppe Tornatore film, with a touch of "Be Kind Rewind" thrown in. But this is non-fiction, and some of the most fascinating I've come across this week.

A Korean immigrant in New York, Yongman Kim, started a video rental business in 1987, and over the years, he amassed some 55,000 films. But online DVD rentals meant that this amazing video store had to close, and Mr. Kim decided to release his entire collection to any person or institution if they agreed to these terms: keep it intact, keep it up to date, and make it accessible to members of his video shop and others.

No offer satisfied Mr. Kim until a town in Sicily, Salemi, stepped up.

And this is why I'd like to live in Salemi -

Last year, in a bizarre political manoeuvre, the ancient Sicilian town of Salemi had voted a dandyish art critic called Vittorio Sgarbi as its new mayor.

It was clear from the start that Mr Sgarbi would not be a conventional mayor, and he proved it by offering houses in the ancient but depressed town, heavily damaged by an earthquake in 1968, for sale at €1 each to owners who agreed to restore them. He also appointed a raft of unlikely people to municipal jobs: a Sicilian prince as head of town planning, an avant-garde Roman artist as "councillor for nothing", and his close friend, Oliviero Toscani, as councillor for creativity.

...

Last November, from his new "department for creativity", he launched a similar initiative, selecting 20 young artists from the island to join him in the town, providing them with food and lodging and little else and encouraging them to set their imaginations free. "We chose them for their talent and capacity," he said yesterday.

"It's an arts workshop. So far they've produced a manifesto on violence against women, projected a festival on human rights, designed a project on obesity, another on differentiated rubbish collection, another on illiteracy, a daily programme on the news for a TV music channel. We're working on a four-page newspaper which will be offered as an insert to national papers; maybe The Independent would be interested?"

And the video collection? One of Mr Toscani's many plans include the "Never-ending festival," a 24-hour projection of several films simultaneously. The festival would last 11 years.

There's something very irresistible about living in a town led by a mayor with wild - infectiously wild - ideas. And that the town happens to be in Italy...well, it couldn't have worked out better.

Visit To The Cinema, by Ennio Morricone (from Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso")
Gelsomina, by Nino Rota (from Fellini's "La Strada", performed by Quadro Nuevo)

Posted by Monoceros at February 16, 2009 5:28 PM