Stonebreakers: Documentary Screening and Q&A with Valerio Ciriaci and Isaak J. Liptzin (Nov. 30, 2023)

Valerio Ciriaci is an Italian documentary filmmaker living in the United States. Born in Rome, Valerio graduated from “La Sapienza” university in 2011 with a degree in Communication and a thesis on Jean Rouch’s ethno-fiction. That same year, he moved to New York City to attend the documentary program at New York Film Academy. In 2012, he co-founded the production company Awen Films, with which he has directed independent documentaries, editorial videos, and other non-fiction projects.

Isaak J. Liptzin was born in San Francisco and grew up in Italy until graduating high school, when he moved to New York to attend photography classes at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Interested from a young age in visual journalism, his work has touched on topics in breaking news, history, education and the environment. As a photographer, he has worked with WNYC Radio, Centro Primo Levi, Peace Child India, and Transition Magazine. As a producer, he covered the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns for Italian national broadcaster Rai and worked for Endeavor Content on the Netflix Originals series First Team: Juventus. With Awen Films, which he co-founded in 2012, Isaak has worked extensively as producer and cinematographer on commissioned projects and collaborated closely with director Valerio Ciriaci on independent documentary features including If Only I Were That Warrior, Mister Wonderland, and Stonebreakers. 

Teresa Fiore is Professor of Italian (World Language and Cultures Dept.) and the Inserra Endowed Chair in Italian and Italian American Studies at Montclair State University. The recipient of several fellowships (De Bosis, Rockefeller and Fulbright), she has been Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard University, Yale, NYU and Rutgers University. She is the author of the award-winning book Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy’s Transnational Migrations and Colonial Legacies (Fordham University Press, 2017, and Mondadori/Le Monnier, 2021 in Italian); the editor of a journal issue on John Fante (Quaderni del ‘900), and the co-editor of the section “Italy and the Euro-Mediterranean ‘Migrant Crisis’” (Journal of Modern Italian Studies ). Her numerous articles on migration to/from Italy and (post-)colonialism linked to 20th- and 21st-century Italian literature, theater, music and cinema have appeared in Italian, English, and Spanish both in journals and edited collections.