As every March 9th, today in the United States is National Meatball Day: in Italy, we don’t have this holiday, perhaps because here every day could be National Meatball Day! There’s no perfect recipe for meatballs: the most common ingredients include ground meat, egg, parmigiano reggiano cheese, milk, parsley, bread, and salt, but in the countless...

From Isabella Rossellini to Léa Seydoux, from Alfonso Cuaron to Olivier Assayas, a long list of renowned directors and actors have signed an appeal launched by Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jane Campion, Wes Anderson and Ari Aster urging President Sergio Mattarella and Premier Giorgia Meloni to prevent movie theatres that have been shut do...

In 1989, The Walt Disney Company produced an anthology film that banded together two of the most celebrated filmmakers in history. New York Stories, featuring two shorts by Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, is meant as a love letter to the Big Apple, but in reality, it's more or less an experiment to allow these master filmmakers to team up...

In 1868, horse-drawn carriages delivered the ten-thousand-odd components of a giant pipe organ from the factory of Henry Erben, near Manhattan’s Five Points neighborhood, to St. Patrick’s Basilica, on Mott and Prince. The parish, then largely Irish, was still grieving the loss of so many young men from the Fighting 69th at Bull Run and Antietam. Mo...

In what may be his final chapter, the legendary film-maker – who has drawn so often on his Catholic upbringing – turns his attention to the saints. Lucy Lethbridge sees his new series, and hears why he’s made it Martin Scorsese, now 81, was brought up in a poor area of Little Italy in New York. All the film director’s grandparents were Sicilian, an...

In 2001, My Voyage to Italy, a 1999 documentary directed by Martin Scorsese about Italian cinema, was presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival. The documentary, which lasts over four hours, features Scorsese’s deep and thoughtful critique alongside carefully selected clips from 24 of Italy’s greatest filmmakers. These include iconic...

Renowned Italian-American filmmaker Martin Scorsese was presented with a special gift during his recent visit to Polizzi Generosa, Sicily. Nunzia Imburgia, president of the Sellaro Committee of Polizzi Generosa, donated a copy of Carmelo Cutuli's biography of Dr. Vincenzo Sellaro, the founder of the Sons of Italy in America. The book, which is also...

Now an honorary citizen of Polizzi Generosa, already an Italian citizen since 2018, Martin Scorsese in the town of his Sicilian ancestors, looking out from the enchanting belvedere of the Holy Trinity, wonders what must have prompted the 19-year-old Francesco Paolo Scozzese (surname mispronounced in the U.S. as Scorsese), who would become his grand...

Martin Scorsese is set to be honored with a life achievement award by Italy’s National Cinema Museum in the northern city of Turin. The director will receive the museum’s Stella della Mole Award on October 7 in a gala ceremony in the 85-meter-high atrium of its home, the Mole Antonelliana, which was originally conceived as a synagogue. The followin...

Big Apple celebrities Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and Patti Smith have joined in the fight to save the decades-old Elizabeth Street Garden from being torn down to make way for affordable senior housing. The three cultural icons penned letters this summer imploring Mayor Eric Adams to have a change of heart and maintain the leafy green haven and...