Cinema Italiano - CHE BELLO!

When Margherita Balbo Parrent isn’t working in the engineering department at Pearl Harbor, she’s putting on Cinema Italiano in Hawaii, an Italian film festival that honors the land of her birth. Here, she’s pictured in a Lamborghini wearing $150,000 worth of Damiani diamonds. Once upon a time, there was a Hawaii girl

Wednesday - October 08, 2008
By Alice Keesing
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At this year’s festival with writer-producer Neil Israel

bond.”

With her singular way of doing things, Balbo Parrent got in touch with the San Francisco Istituto Italiano di Cultura to see how she could get films sent to Honolulu. Santa Maradona wasn’t available, but others were, and she and others in the Friends of Italy Society of Hawaii started watching them at the Movie Museum in Kaimuki.

Then someone at the Istituto suggested she organize a formal festival ... and so the search for humor began to grow. Balbo Parrent certainly seems to have found humor in her own life; she has gathered a large repertoire of wildly funny stories about her exploits as she has learned how to organize a film festival. Like the time she got the film to the Doris Duke Theater just hours before the screening (she probably wasn’t laughing at the time). And the lessons she has learned about working with celebrities (“Handlers? What do you mean they need handlers?”). And how she lost her dress before last year’s VIP reception.

Balbo Parrent may laugh at her behind-the-scenes adventures, but Cinema Italiano in Hawaii has gone from strength to strength. For six days in September, Italy comes to Hawaii.

The festival shows the American premieres of some films and has its own jury award for best film. Balbo Parrent even has Italian directors calling her, keen to get their films screened here.

Every year when the festival is over, Balbo Parrent swears that she won’t do it again. But her retinue of helpers continues to grow. Her cast of characters includes people like Lee, co-curator Gina Maria Caruso, Konrad Ng and her “co-conspirator,” Jefferson Finney.

And, of course, this story does have a fairy godmother of sorts. Princess Dialta Alliata di Montereale, who lives in Hawaii, has stepped in over time to work her own brand of magic to smooth the way for the festival.

Things also keep happening that convince Balbo Parrent this is the path she is supposed to be on. Like the first time the Istituto told her it could send a director to Honolulu for the festival - and it turned out to be Marco Ponti. The two have become friends - and he later sent her a DVD of that movie, Santa Maradona, the one that had made her laugh when cancer made the world seem so bleak.

She also keeps going because of the inspiration she sees ignited in the eyes of Hawaii’s students. Every year, the festival awards a scholarship to a future filmmaker at the university film school. And the Italian directors and actors who attend the festival go out into the schools to talk to students.

“When you can be in a Hawaii classroom and a Franco Amurri is there in person talking to you about his personal experiences as an Italian director - that’s priceless,” Lee says. “It opens up the world to the kids in Hawaii.”

Balbo Parrent also keeps going for the art itself and her love of Italian culture. She adores Italian film for its rich storytelling and its glorious tradition of tragic comedy. And she dreams of more, talking longingly of growing the festival into a celebration of all things Italian - film, fashion and design.

And, at a very emotional level, she keeps going because this is her way of giving back for all the help she received when she was ill.

‘I survived because I had a community of people who helped me,” she says.

“I thought I was dying, you know. It’s dramatic. La Traviata? I can do that. But my family, my friends, my co-workers and even strangers, they all reached out to me and kept me going when I didn’t think it was possible.

“So I thought, I can give back to my community this way.”

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