In 2000, Elisabetta Sgarbi inaugurated La Milanesiana, of which she is the Artistic Director since 10 years.
It is a literary, music and film festival whose plan took shape almost accidentally in 1999, and at the same time as a necessary development of a working approach based on the encounter and mixture of different forms of artistic expression, with no exceptions of genres and origins, both geographic and cultural.

Inspired by a quotation from the medieval philosopher Bernardo di Chartres ("We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants") gives expression to stage performances of any kind, wavering from literature to music, theatre and cinema. (from this eclecticism, the ideal subtitle from every pArt comes).
Sponsored first by the Province of Milan, and then also by the Province of Milan and the region of Lombardy, initially the festival took place in the ancient court of Palazzo Isimbardi, and then in the magnificent décor of the Dal Verme Theatre.
During the first edition (26th of June - 10th of July, 2000), many world-famous authors were present: Hanif Kureishi, Amin Maalouf, Michel Houellebecq, the Israeli film-director Amos Gitai and, among the Italians, Franco Battiato, Manlio Sgalambro, Paolo Poli, Antonio Rezza and, in the conclusive evening, Carmelo Bene, the so-called "poet of music" by Maestro Riccardo Muti. The second edition of La Milanesiana took place between the 25th of June and the 18th July, with the collaboration of enrico ghezzi for the movie section and Carlo Prosperi as editorial assistant. The third edition started on June 24 until July 15. The fourth edition of la Milanesiana 2003 took place between June 23 and July 13, 2004, while the fifth edition between June 21 and July 12, 2004; the sixth edition between June 24 and July 7.The seventh edition of La Milanesiana between July 7 and 21, 2006; the eighth edition between June 24 and July 10, 2007. The ninth edition took place between June 2007 and July 11, 2008. The tenth edition will take place between June 22 and July 7, 2009. Since the very start in 2000, La Milanesiana has been attended by 18 Nobel Prize winners, and also gradually moved into other venues to host a large audience (more than 400000 people over the years).



Betty Wrong produced all movies by Elisabetta Sgarbi.

In 2008, Betty Wrong produced My Transiberian Railway.
This 45-minutes film, produced by Betty Wrong and Sant Jordi Asociados Agencia Literaria S.L., depicts the trip made by a master of the contemporary literature, Paulo Coelho, on the legendary train connecting Moscow to Vladivostok: The Trans-Siberian Railway.
Passing by exotic landscapes full of charm and history, Coelho goes along a new route, twenty years after the pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostela, dedicating it to the great Russian writer Aleksandr Solzenicyn, author of "Archipelago Gulag", who, back from the American exile, arrived just in Vladivostok.
The Trans-Siberian Railway: 9289 kilometres one must experience in the depths of his heart, amongst historical fascinations and symbols and atmospheres evoked by an East still largely mysterious and not-said.
During his trip, Coelho meets his new readers, plunges himself into the infinite landscape of a land that seems to have non boundaries at all, and that just for this reason encourages the meditation, the withdrawal in oneself. The Russian people he bumps into, offer him their smile of strong souls, that don't yield to the rigours and to the sufferance of the social regimes. A fisherman tell him that "if he wants to understand his mother, he must go back into her womb, like a pearl in the oyster."
The aim of his trip is that of regaining the powerful image of a more true reality, ridden from ideological layers, and that of "going back into himself", thus managing, after several years of spiritual quest, "to watch the world with baby's eyes, without naivety yet with his innocence."
The film flows like precious water, Coelho's English language merges with the local dialects, and the fragments of the "Alchemist" and the "Manual of the Warrior of the Light" suddenly appears in order to remind us that this trip is part of a ten-year creative process.
Paulo Coelho is the most renowned writer in the world: published in over 160 countries and translated into 56 languages, he sold more than 95 millions of copies, of which 5 millions only in Italy.
More details
Dvd cover
A review by La Repubblica (italian language)


She collaborated to the releasing of the Castadiva's first CD Dalla parte di schwa.

Betty Wrong has also produced a Netsystem.com project that, thanks to the strong encouragement of Federica Olivares, has given Elisabetta Sgarbi the possibility of launching, on Videoportal.com, the program Tutto Truccato (It's all made up), where she explores different artistic fields, wavering from literature to cinema, from music to performing arts.

Endless Night, in collaboration with Istituto Luce

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