Time.news – “I always write, I keep myself alive like this”. Jokes but not so much Lia Levi, 90 years old brought with the energy of a girl, talking with the Time.news about her copious literary production, to which now ‘For an extra cinema ticket’ just landed in the bookstore for Salani and two other new novels ‘A Girl and Enough’ and ‘Irina from Beyond the Border’ (working title) coming respectively on January 27, Memorial Day and in February, respectively for HarperCollins and Il Battello a Steam.
The first sequel to ‘A Girl and Enough’, the debut autobiographical novel of ’94 in which the literary custodian of Jewish memory recounted the existential shock she suffered in her childhood, when the racial laws of ’38 fell upon the Jews, the another story that tells the war and its repercussions on children, seen through the story of a girl who takes refuge in Italy, where her grandmother works as a caregiver, to save herself from the conflict that is tearing her country apart. But for which she will feel such a longing to lead her to flee.
Instead, there is talk of the post-war economic crisis, of the desire to restart but above all of passions and friendship in ‘For an extra cinema ticket’, the novel just released for Salani. A children’s book built with the usual magical touch of the writer, winner of the Young Witch in 2018 which, not surprisingly, says Levi “in my production dedicated to children is what my circle of friends liked the most”.
Because the story of those four post-war poor boys who let themselves be guided by friendship to continue to hope and by cinema to learn to dream again has several similarities with our contemporary lives animated by the desire to get out of the perfect storm of the Covid mix- economic war-crisis, but struggling with the high cost of living and with the upcoming energy rationing plans. “I wrote it in full pandemic, when the cinemas were closed – explains Levi – I wanted to give the idea that there was a light at the end of the tunnel…”.
The story is set in Rome, a city wounded by the Second World War but full of hope and energy. Twelve-year-old Federico has to look after his wild little brother while his mother seamstress works outside the home, waiting for the return of her husband, a prisoner of war. Life is not easy but the two children begin to color it with dreams when they discover how to enter the cinema without paying the ticket. There, in the dark, sunk into the red armchairs, they let themselves be transported from time to time on wonderful adventures.
But soon they realize that they are not the only illegal immigrants in the room, also two other boys, Antonio and Malva, who mysteriously never leaves the room (it will be discovered that the girl is Jewish, her parents were deported by the Nazis, and not to end up in an institution sleeping in the basement of the cinema) do not miss a single film. The four will eventually join forces, becoming a team of free-spirited cinephiles who, after the screening, discuss animatedly about the films, and the happy ending will be ensured by meeting a special spectator, a director.
In his pages full of optimism as always, Levi, the literary custodian of Jewish memory, reflects on the atrocities of war, on the strength of friendship as the hope of peace, but also on the power of cinema, with echoes of ‘Nuovo cinema Paradiso’, the film cult of Tornatore.
His novel comes out to coincide with the Venice Film Festival and at the height of the crisis that is killing cinemas: “It is very sad that so many cinemas are disappearing, sharing the emotions that movies give us is fundamental, like the big screen, for kids to see a fantasy in the room with friends is very different from home TV”, he analyzes the writer, however, reserving some criticism of contemporary Italian production: “You see so many nice films, but few are those that really leave you something”.
Her film of life, the one that most “struck her emotionally”, she says is ‘Rome open city’, the cult of Rossellini: “I was a teenager when I saw him for the first time and I thought that what had happened it could have become a novel for me ”. Several years later to get her niece to watch that movie, she jokingly recalls, “I had to pay for it, she refused because it was black and white.” That recalcitrant boy is called Simone Calderoni, he has now become a twenty-year-old enthusiast and student of cinema and has collaborated on the book, as the first page states. “It was he who gave me the idea to focus on cinema, even the title belongs to him”.