For three days, from September 29 to October 1, Tunis will host the second edition of “Matabbia”, an event devoted to Sicilians between the two banks of the Mediterranean.
The second edition of the cultural event “Matabbia” will take place from September 29 to October 1 in Tunis, with the participation of several Sicilians from Tunisia and Tunisians from Sicily. The first edition of this meeting took place last August in Marsala, in Sicily with the participation of many filmmakers and writers.
This second edition will take place over three days with a program that will be developed on three complementary axes and will include intellectual meetings, exhibitions and shows. Visits to the scene of Sicilian memory in Tunis, are also registered on the program.
The first part of “Matabbia” will be interested in the press through the evocation of the newspaper “Simpaticuni”, a literary and humorous gazette published from 1911 to 1933. An exhibition will also make it possible to discover this newspaper published more than a century ago. The architecture of the Italians in Tunisia and the painting of Sylvain Monteleone will be the other two axes of “Matabbia” 2023 and will also be the subject of exhibitions.
The mornings of the three days from September 29 to October 1 will be devoted to meetings and debates when a visits program will allow you to discover several aspects of the Sicilian presence in Tunis. Finally, a round table moderate by Alfonso Campisi, will take place and will allow you to meet the eyes of Sicilians born in Tunisia and Tunisians. A musical evening and a theater show will complete the program.
The second edition of “Matabbia” promises to be promising and should confirm the success of the previous demonstration which had taken place in Marsala in August 2022.
It was on the initiative of Banca Marsalese della Memoria (BMDM) and the Chair of Sicilian Studies of the University of Manouba that the city of Marsala had welcomed from August 19 to 21, 2022, an important meeting devoted to the living heritage of Sicilians in Tunisia.
Nicely entitled “Matabbia”, this meeting refers to a Tunisian dialect term spent in the talk of the Sicilians of Tunisia with a slight alteration. This expression indeed refers to our “madhabiya” and has the same meaning to “want or desire something”.
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