She later settled in Indonesia and began her studies of Balinese culture with particular emphasis on myth and the oral tradition. She became especially intrigued by the traditional court of justice in the ancient royal capital of Bali. Its ceiling paintings narrate a sacred epic hauntingly similar to Dante’s Divine Comedy. The quest gave birth to her first book, The Epic of Life: A Balinese Journey of the Soul (Van der Mark Editions, NY), a classic on Balinese culture.
Various writing assignments for the Hong-Kong based Asia Magazine enabled her to travel throughout the Indonesian Archipelago, South East Asia, Japan and across the Soviet Union on the last steam engine of the Trans-Siberian railway.
She returned to New York to pursue her degree in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. During this time, she obtained a grant from the Margaret Mead Institute of Intercultural Studies for a project entitled The Prince and the Pauper: Two Balinese Portraits.
Her focus then turned to the life of her American great-grandmother, Cora Slocomb, who shocked New York’s Gilded Age by launching the first nation-wide campaign against the death penalty in 1895 to save a young Italian immigrant from execution–the first woman sentenced to the electric chair. Her research gave birth to The Trials of Maria Barbella (Vintage, NY, 1996).
After she obtained the International Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance in Geneva, she served in the UN Mission to East Timor as an electoral officer during the referendum for independence in 1999. Later, she collaborated with the Burma Project (Open Society Foundations) on a special mission to Myanmar.
In film, Idanna produced the Italian segment of the TV series Amazing Games (ABC/Kane Productions) for which she received the Ultimo Novecento award from the City of Pisa. She also co-produced Leonardo’s Legacy, a Discovery Channel special. She then produced and directed Eugenia of Patagonia, a documentary-feature on the pioneering life in Chile of her maternal aunt who served for thirty years as mayor of a vast municipality at the end of world, battling for the people and the environment
Her following work, Brazza in Congo: A Life and Legacy (Umbrage Editions, NY) is an illustrated biography of another ancestor, the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, after whom the capital of the Republic of Congo, Brazzaville, is named, and who is still remembered for his pioneering struggle on behalf of the rights of the people. On the same theme, she curated exhibitions at The National Arts Club in New York and La Casa Italiana of NYU.
Idanna conceived and narrated the documentary Black Africa White Marble, which recounts her battle against the ruler of Congo-Brazzaville. It won the Grand Prix at the Festival of Annecy 2012 (France), the Audience Award at the Cambridge Film Festival 2013 (UK), and Best Documentary at the Berlin Independent Film Festival 2014.
She was also responsible for the donation to the National Museum of Cameroon in Yaoundé and permanent installation of a sixty-foot masterpiece of contemporary art by the Poto Poto School of Painting in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. In 2015, she produced The Transformative Power of Art, an exhibition at the United Nations in New York.
With her husband, Terence Ward, she then produced Talk Radio Tehran, a documentary by Mahtab Mansour that follows high-spirited Iranian women as they fulfill their aspirations in spite of the gender-apartheid system that dominates daily life in Teheran.
In a collection of true stories between East and West, The World Odyssey of a Balinese Prince (Tuttle, 2020), she narrates the extraordinary life of a cultural visionary and medical doctor whose daring adventures transcend borders.
The Lady of Sing Sing: an American Countess, an Italian Immigrant, and their Epic Battle for Justice in New York’s Gilded Age (Simon & Schuster, Tiller Press, 2020) is a new expanded edition of her earlier work, The Trials of Maria Barbella.
Idanna serves as an ambassador of Religions for Peace, the world’s largest interfaith organization. She speaks fluent Italian, English and French, and reasonable Bahasa Indonesia. She resides with her husband between Florence and New York.
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