Tag Archives: palla 21

The Square around the Ball, in San Francisco, California

Events, ,

A photo exhibition held from Oct 8 to Oct 31, 2008, at the Italian Cultural Institute in San Francisco, California, with a selection of the best photos from the exhibition in Ribolla and of the best photos from the competition (coming from our “Little balls on the hills” project).

I curated the exhibition and managed the whole project.


See the Italian Cultural Institute website for a presentation

Palla 21 at the Art of Play – rationale

Projects,

Motivations – and what happened

(Note: the full Italian text has not yet been translated for this page, but you can look up the Italian version here). See also the two-minute documentary trailer:

The initiative originated when we learned about a call for proposals to submit events for the Art of Play, organised by the City of Chicago.

We decided to submit two different events.

  1. Palla 21
  2. Traditional Italian card games

Why Palla 21 ?

  • the game has a strong “local” character, as it it clearly related to a specific area of Italy, while maintaining relationships with similar games in other parts of Italy and Europe.
  • in addition to being a sport, the game also has a strong social component, as it leads people of different ages to collaborate
  • it has interesting implications in relation to sustainable development: the game has in fact an almost null environmental impact, as it is played in the squares of villages, with no need for additional infrastructure, and since the ball is built with mostly with recycled material.
  • it is a way of establishing and/or consolidating relationships with people and organisations beyond the area of Maremma

Why traditional Italian card games ?

Why not ? …these are nice games!

Palla 21 from Tuscany to Chicago and back / The documentary

People talking, Videos,

52 minutes – edited between the return from Chicago (July 21, 2007) and the dinner at the Palla 21 tournament in Torniella (the second or third Sunday of August 2007), to be screened as a backdrop on that occasion. Watching it some years after, we could cut if by 15 minutes…but, ok…for now no “director’s cut”. We do have a three-minute trailer, however.

If you like rock-blues, you will love the soundtrack, kindly provide by Lubriphonics (unfortunately no longer active in this formation). For more information: info@pibinko.org