De Bellis, Ginevra
Ginevra De Bellis was born in England, she has a degree in psychology from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. In the past years she has collaborated with the professorship of group dynamics as translator and interpreter.
Gil, Gilberto
Gilberto Gil was born in Salvador in 1942, his youth was spent in Ituaçu in the state of Bahia, where his interest began for music and for local bands and for the music that would play on the radio. When he was nine, both Gil and his sister moved to Salvador in order to continue their studies. As a youngster he perfected his studies in music, and at eighteen he starts up his own band “Os Desafinados”.
At university he comes across contemporary erudite music due to a group of Bahian composers, amongst which Walter Smetak and Hans Joachim Koellreuter. In 1962 he records his first single “povo petroliero” and “coça coça lacerdinha”, and he meets Caetano Veloso, Maria Betanha and Gal Costa. He moves to Sao Paolo where during the day he works in a company and during the night he goes to bars and show houses. During this period he meets various important artists and becomes famous. He therefore leaves his job in the company and in 1967 he records his first LP “Lovaçao”. In 1968 he records the LP “Gilberto Gil” starting off the whole music genre Tropicalismo along with Caetano Veloso.
At the end of the sixties he becomes one of the most creative personalities in Brazilian music, always in syntony with any novelties in world music.

Houseman, Michael
Michael Houseman is the director of studies at (EPHE) Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris. He is the director of “Systèmes de pensée en Afrique Noire” and he is member of the committee Journal Africanistes.

Kaës, René
René Kaës specialized in group psychotherapy, starting from the publication of his first book in 1976, L’Appareil psychique groupal. Kaës is professor emeritus at the university Lumiére 2, Doctor Honoris Causa at the University of Brussels and honorary professor at Maimònides University in Buenos Aires.

Lombardozzi, Alfredo
Alfredo Lombardozzi is a trained anthropologist, psychoanalyst member of SPI and a member of The Italian Institute of Group Psychoanalysis (IIPG). He is interested in child group psychoanalysis, and in numerous scientific contributions has worked on studies regarding the relationship between anthropology and individual, and group psychoanalysis. He has taught psychoanalytic anthropology, child group psychology and development psychology at Chieti University and at Aquila University.

Mestre didi
Deoscoredes Maximiliano dos Santos was born in 1917 in Salvador de Bahia, son of Maria Bibiana do Espirito Santo e Arsenio dos Santos. Both artist and writer he was proclaimed Alapini (high priest of the Egungun cult), he is better known as mestre didi Axipa, president of the cultural religious society Ile Axipà.
His father Arsenio Dos Santos moved to Rio de Janeiro during the period of mass emigration on behalf of the Bahians towards the big city. His mother, Maria Bibiana do Espirito Santo, better known as Mae Senhora, was a descendant of the family Asipa that originated from Oyo and Ketu, the important city of the Youruba empire.
Her great, great grandmother, Marcelina da Silva, was one of the founders of the the first Nagò Candomblé houses of Bahia. Mestre didi is considered to be one of the most important writers of Nagò tradition, Mestre didi is a highpriest, an artist who is able to express himself through aesthetic creation expressing a strong intimacy with his existential universe, binding his African vision with that of his experience in Bahia.

Neri, Claudio
Claudio Neri is Full Professor at “La Sapienza”, University of Rome; Visiting Professor at the University “Lumiere Lyon 2”; Training Psychoanalyst at the I.P.A. Editor-in-chief of ‘Funzione Gamma Internet Journal’. Full member of the London Institute of Group-Analysis. His book “Group” J. Kingsley Publishers (1998) has been translated into Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese. He lectures in Australia, France, Germany, Israel, United States and Switzerland.

Rodrigué, Emilio
Emilio Rodrigué is a living legend in the field of psychoanalysis, he was born in Buenos Aires in 1923, he chooses to study medicine and begins his psychoanalytic training in London with Melanine Klein (1948-1952), durino this period he also studies group therapy and social psychiatry.
On returning to Argentina he introduces the theories of Melanine Klein and Wilfred Bion in Latin America. He has been a member of the International Psychoanaltic Association (IPA) and in 1968 Rodrigué was the president of the Argentinian Psychoanalytic Association (APA). In 1972, for ideological motives, together with other colleagues he gives up his position at the International Psychoanalytic Association, creating an opposing group “Plataforma International”.
After the death of Peron in 1974,for political reasons, he emigrates from Argentina first to France and Spain, then upon invitation he moves to Bahia to start a training group for young psychologists. From that moment onwards he decides to stay in Bahia, where he has lived and worked for the past twenty five years.
Amongst his major works we remember: “ A liçao de Ondina, Gigante pela propria natureza”, “El livro de las separaciones” and “El secolo de psicoanalisi”.

Roscilli, Antonella Rita
Antonella Rita Roscilli is a journalist and Brazilianist, she has collaborated with various journals, amongst which ‘Latinoamerica e tutti i Sud del mondo’ directed by Gianni Minà, and with Italian institutions such as ‘la Fondazione Basso and l’ANPI that deals with cultural themes of Latin America (in particular Brazil) and portuguese speaking Africa. She has published various articles in Italian newspapers. Her degree from Rome University ‘La Sapienza’ in Brazilian literature, her thesis was on the writer Zélia Gattai Amado.
She works as a documentarist for RAI Italian television.

Scotto Lavina, Enzo
Expert of the European Economic Community in 1966 in Dahomey, as a social researcher, he has collaborated with the Venice Film Festival being responsable for the work group linked with schools (1974–1977), expert member of the commission of the Venice Film Festival (1979–1982), responsable in the field of television (1983), author of a story on the Venice Film Festival in the thirties, from 1970 he works in RAI television, in which he has held positions of responsability dealing with the planning of programme schedules, and in the direction of cultural television programmes.

Verger, Pierre Fatumbi
Verger's vision of black Brazil was imbued in this way with love and with learning. It was, both in its beginning and its end, a vision of an ideal. For him Salvador was the place where black people had contrived to redeem the history of slavery, wresting dignity and power out of the cruelty and humiliation of the slave trade. A recent Brazilian television documentary about Verger includes an interview (given on what turned out to be the penultimate day of his life) in which he mentions a long-time friend and former protégé of his, the pai-de-santo Balbino Daniel de Paula. He explains that Balbino, although he was an illiterate okra seller in the market in Salvador when they first met, had no sense of social inferiority, "because," Verger tells the interviewer, "he knew he was a son of Xangò".

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