St. Nicholas Authentic Italian Festival

Producer: Leonard Guercio

An annual October religious and cultural event in this South Philadelphia Catholic parish, the St. Nicholas Authentic Italian Festival is a community celebration of many of their members’ Italian cultural heritage and traditions. The documentary is a brief study of the festival and also a general investigation into questions of ethnic authenticity and identity. Many of the festival celebrants are third, fourth and fifth generation Italian-Americans, having long lost contact with Italian culture and their living relatives in the land of their ancestors. Does the festival pander to a nostalgia for the past, a longing for the traditions of deceased relatives, or does it provide a tenuous connection to a way of life rapidly disappearing in the melting pot environment that is America today?

Leonard Guercio currently manages the Motion Picture Lab in Temple’s School of Communications & Theater where he has taught as an adjunct film professor. Len is also a contributing writer for Student Filmmakers magazine, a national periodical that tracks the ongoing changes in the world of film and high definition video. His short fiction film, Tiramisu, opened the 2007 Pesaro International Film Festival in the Marche region of Italy. Along with the films of John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, and Nancy Savoca, Tiramisu was selected as part of an international retrospective of New Italian-American cinema. Len is also producing a music CD showcasing Billy Ruth, a local song stylist in the popular tradition of Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole; and a documentary on Eddie Lang, the father of Modern Jazz Guitar