"Texan Italian Innovation," the latest episode of the Texan Italian Stories documentary series, has been released for free on the web through Youtube and Vimeo platforms.

The medium-length 26 minute documentary uses the event of the "IX Conference of Italian Researchers in the World" which happened in Houston, Texas in December, 2013, as the starting point for an in-depth coverage that seeks to understand the reasons why Italian researchers and Innovators are trading their country for the U.S., and more specifically, Texas.

The documentary, hosted by Italian American actress and photographer Romina Olson, presents the stories of more than seven different Italian and Italian American researchers and innovators who are working in the state of Texas. The interviews are conducted across multiple disciplines, from biomedicine to music, featuring diverse important personalities of the Texan Italian community. The episode was crafted over a period of 4 months of production through different cities of Central Texas and Italy. The series is written & directed by ITAL creator Sergio Carvajal-Leoni.

The Texan Italian Stories is a series of 5 different short documentaries that were created as part of the ITAL project, a community media experiment that utilizes modern day storytelling to re-define, strengthen, promote, and preserve the culture and identity of the Italian community of Texas. A coalition of students and scholars from Texas State University in San Marcos, and the University of Texas at Austin have carried out the ITAL project from 2012 to 2014. ITAL and the series are funded through small donations from members of the Texan Italian community.

The Texan Italian Innovation episode, and the Texan Italian Stories series are presented under the auspices of the Consulate of Italy in Houston. The goal of the series is to provide a platform of conversation for topics of high interest for Italians, Italian Americans, and Italophiles. Viewers are encouraged to use different parts of the documentary as they see fit; For example, most ITAL videos are employed in classrooms of Intermediate Italian at the University of Texas at Austin providing current in-depth cultural knowledge to students of Italian.

WHO: ITAL
WHEN: Video launches Monday, May 26
WHERE:
www.vimeo.com/italaustin

www.youtube.com/italaustin

www.italchannel.tv

PRICE: Free.
CONTACT: Romina Olson italaustin@gmail.com