Schio Film Festival 2026 - Exhibitions & Performances

The second edition of international film festival of Schio - ISFF, was held from 30 July to 2 August 2026. Among the side-events of the festival were three interesting exhibitions and a couple of performances. This post is about them.

These included an incredible performance by the theatre group Teatro 80 (in the image below - click on the pictures for a bigger view)

If you wish, you can also read my article on the ISFF 2026 side-events about "Art and Cinema".

Story-Telling of Leonardo Ottoni Through His Art

Leonardo Ottoni was born with autism and he is an artist. He lives in Castel San Pietro Terme, not far from Bologna. 

His art was first noted by his teachers in the high school, when they saw him doodling on his notebook and felt that he was a very good artist. Thus, they suggested that he should try making art. (In the image on the left, Leo is showing the walk of a mechanical toy)

This happened around ten years ago. Since then he has been experimenting with oil paintings and his first art exhibition was held in 2017. Over the years, his art work has been shown in many art exhibitions and is used on notebooks, diaries and bookmarks, sold through local stores and cooperatives.

The first thing which Leonardo said to me when I tried to interview him was, "Keep your distance, don't come too close to me." He was not very expressive and articulate when I asked him questions about his artistic journey and his father, Emanuele helped him in this. 

However, sometime later, when Leonardo started explaining his artworks to the public, with the support of his mother Katia, he was transformed as a performer - making sounds, moving around, gesturing and dancing, explaining the ideas that inspire his artworks. (The artworks below were inspired by the music of The Blues Brothers, and talking about them Leo sang the words of a song).

 

He mostly draws animals and birds and uses bright colours. The kitchen in their home is his preferred environment for making art. Many of his works are inspired by music, as he sits in the kitchen listening to the music and ideas about the forms he wants to make come to him. In his presentation of his artworks, he often hums that music and start moving around while explaining the feelings and ideas that music had provoked in him.

Another way his inspiration comes is through visits, such as his visit to the Biosfera in Rome, and through stories and books. Katia explained that initially he full the full stories through his art, but more recently, he can even start from the middle or the end of the story, without needing to express it from the beginning to the end.

I loved Leonardo's artworks and my favourite is the one shown below (made after the visit to the Biosfera in Rome), in which the two cats or lions in the bottom-right are supposed to be Robinhood and Marian. (click on the picture for a bigger view)

The Costumes of Stefano Nicolao

Atlier Nicolao of costume designer Stefano Nicolao is based in Venice. It is famous for his costumes, especially for historical films. Maestro Stefano has done costume-design for many famous films including Marco Polo, Pirates of the Caraibi, Elizabeth, Casanova and Farinelli.

Stefano was unable to be there for the inauguration of his exhibition at ISFF and his friend and collaborator, well-known photographer Attilio Bruni was there to present the costumes from some of his films and serials.

While presenting the costumes, Attilio recounted many stories about the challenges a costume designer faces for films. For example, while shooting for the serial Marco Polo in high mountains, they needed furs and when they asked where to get them, they were brought hundreds of live rams and sheep, which had to be butchered to get their fur.

Attilio also said that Stefano is very particular about perfection and realism in his costumes. For example, if the scene has a hundred Buddhist monks, he wants that each of them is dressed authentically, even if some of them will be at the back and not fully visible.

Apart from costumes for films and serials, Atelier Nicolao in Venice can rent costumes, take your picture in a historical costume, organise guided tours or even organise costume-events for you, naturally all for a fee.

Stefano Nicolao is originally from Venice and started his carrier as an actor, but then found that he preferred backstage and especially costumes. His carrier took off after he assisted Enrico Sabbatini for the costumes of the TV serial Marco Polo in 1980, where he designed costumes and sets for the unit shooting in Tibet. In that same year he founded Atelier Nicolao, which is considered as one of the most important global sources for historical costumes. 

The Dresses of Banco Lotto N. 10 - Costumes by Prisoner Women

This exhibition presented the costumes made by the women inmates of Giudecca prison in Venice. Banco Lotto N. 10 is a social cooperative. 

This project was started in 2001 by the Cooperative Il Cerchio to teach an earning skill to the women inmates of the prison, and was funded by European Union and others. That project had concluded with a fashion show by the women prisoners and jail officers.

The success of the initial project, prompted the continuation of this activity in the prison and a boutique was opened in 2003 where people could buy their costumes.

Some famous local dressmakers and weavers of Venice such as Rubelli and Tessitura Bevilacqua collaborate with them to ensure high quality work. They also make the costumes for the famous Fenice theatre of Venice. They also get a space at the art biennale of Venice to showcase their products.

Teatro 80 Presents the Poems of Alda Merini

Alda Merini (1931-2009) was an Italian poet and writer. She is an iconic figure in the Italian literary scene. Among her life's experiences was a bipolar disturbance which led her to a psychiatric hospital for a period and this experience inspired some of her most famous works about madness.

Teatro 80 is a local theatre group in Schio, which was formed in 1980 and continues to be active. For ISFF, persons from Teatro 80, made an open-air theatre and dance performance on the streets in the city centre of Schio, based on some of the poems of Alda Merini.

Dressed in black and having a white muslin cloth as a prop, the actors-dancers created emotionally charged choreographies in the different parts of the city, supported by 3 musicians. On the guitar was my friend Roberto Rizzato. Alda Merini's daughter, Emanuela Carniti was also present during this performance.

It was an absolutely amazing performance, expressing the anguish and strong emotions of the poet. It was even more incredible because it was an afternoon of one of the hottest day of this season in Schio.

Some years ago, I had participated in a workshop on Theatre and Photography organised by Teatro 80. If you wish, you can read that as well. 

In The End

With ISFF - International Scledum Film Festival, Schio has one more important cultural activity in its already rich calendar of events. Considering that it is just a tiny little town, it is absolutely amazing that we can enjoy so many cultural events and a especial joy for me, as I can meet so many interesting persons for my blog.

If I have to choose one favourite side-event of ISFF, it would be the performance by Teatro 80 on the poems of Alda Merini. I liked it also because it was not an aseptic performance. As you can see from the image below, with children running between the performers, it was a performance in which the city was an active participant.

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Read the first part of the article on ISFF 2026

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Schio Film Festival 2026 - Art & Cinema

The second edition of Schio's film festival called ISFF - International Scledum Film Festival 2026 concluded yesterday (2 August). ISFF has a competitive section for the short and experimental films and there is a non-competitive section for other films. All the events of ISFF, including film projections are free and open to public.

In this post I want to touch on some of the side-events of ISFF which looked at the role of art in cinema.

"The Colours Behind the Windows" Art Exhibition

This exhibition was created by students of the Art Institute Arturo Martini of Schio. Inspired by the film "Rear Window" (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock, the students recreated some of this film's scenes in oil paintings and terracotta sculptures.

Some of the scenes were recreated in both, paintings and terracotta sculptures, so it was possible to compare the two and understand how the medium affected the art expression. For example, look at the images below and compare how that same scene is rendered in oil painting and in terracotta. (Click on the images for a bigger view)

 

I felt that the painting was better able to express emotions, and it could be a little abstract, giving the spectator the freedom to give it a meaning. It could also represent the physical reality better, for example, the transparency of the window panes. The terracotta was more defined, more physical and made it easier to identify objects, but IMO it was not able to express the emotions of the film.

However, I also feel that the level of terracotta work by the students was a little gross and perhaps, a better terracotta work, as done by some master artisans, could have been more impactful.

The terracotta sculptures were coordinated by prof. Alice Leoni and the paintings by prof. Francesca dal Santo. The art works were made by the students of different classes of the institute. 

History of Italian Cinema Through Posters of Some Iconic Films

This was an exhibition of posters. I was lucky that the organiser of this exhibition, Elena Tenga, was accompanying me and thus I was able to briefly talk to her.

Elena said that she is a film critic and a film historian. She has been collecting posters of Italian films and in her collection she has posters for the period 1930-1980. Some of the posters, which have handwritten dedications of the actors and directors. For example, one of the posters in the exhibition had a handwritten dedication by well-known Italian actor, Ornella Muti.

About the evolution of the film posters, Elena said that initially these posters were hand-painted and there were some well-known poster making artists such as Anselmo Ballester. Then came the posters using the photographs.

Many film directors took great interest in the design of their films and their posters. Some like Federico Fellini, used to design the full story-board for their films and thus decided the visual look of his films.

Dressing the Film-Characters - A Masterclass by Catherine Buyse

Catherine Buyse is a film costume designer based in Venice. With a Belgian father and an Italian mother, Catherine grew up in Belgium. She studied dress design and initially started in the area of fashion designing.

Her first experiences in film-costume designing were with friends who asked for her help for the costumes of videos and short films. She liked this experience so much, also because it was not related to commercialisation of her costumes and gave greater artistic satisfaction, that she decided to pursue it.

She started as someone in the costume designing team and made her way to costume supervision and then finally to becoming the costume designer. She works with the different films which are shot in Venice.

Over the years, she explained, that the work has changed. In the nineties, when there was no internet, when a team arrived from outside to shoot a film in Venice, they did not know local artisans and shops for buying clothes, stitching and preparing costumes for the local actors involved in the shoots, so she had all the contacts. Today with internet, it is easier to come from outside and shoot.

She presented a few films from her portfolio and showed how designing costumes for different kinds of films is different. For example, for a historical film, for different ages of the characters, for different scenes like bombings or water immersion, can create specific artistic challenges for costume design, which can be very different from those faced in a fantasy film. From issues like continuity to wear and tear of costumes during shootings, she gave different examples from her image-archives.

The image below is from her website showing the historical photographs of women from the second world war period, that she chose to design costumes for the heroine of the Italian TV serial "La Storia". This serial was directed by Francesca Archibugi, based on a book by Elsa Morante. It was based during the second world war. She explained that everything, including the underwear, worn by the actors was based on historical research, using materials from that era.

She also explained how the scenes of the world war in Africa and the soldiers dying of intense cold in Siberia, were all shot in Italy on days when the outside temperatures were hovering around 40 degrees. This also helped to understand how actors may need to wear heavy costumes even when it is hot.

For the uniforms of the different armies, it was important to ensure that there were no mistakes and thus, they had an additional consultant for this. About recreating intense cold during an intensely hot summer, she explained the use of artificial snow, salt and paraffin wax over the lips, clothes and shoes. Persons having gangrenes in their toes and noses were recreated through make-up.   

There were some technical glitches during her presentation, so it was delayed and since I had another engagement, I had to miss part of her presentation, but I had found it very fascinating, even if a bit unstructured. It gave a vivid overview of costume designing as a challenging but fulfilling team-work.

Dive e Motori - Parade of Vintage Cars

The rally of beautifully maintained vintage cars was organised by the Historic Club of Schio. Most of the cars for this show and rally came from Schio and surrounding areas.

The vintage car rally, required the cars to go to the Rossi park in Sant'Orso and come back to Schio. While some of the vintage cars were also put on show in Schio's city centre.

Some of the vintage cars are absolutely wonderful, they make me think of Casablanca and James Bond.

Celebrities in Schio

There are a number of celebrities going around the town because of the festival. I noticed the French actor Mark Grosy along with the directors Camille Tello and Leslie Crocquefere and the intimacy coordinator, Rachel Zekri in an exhibition. They are here for their short film "Tria Fata".

Mark Grosy became better known in Italy recently for his role in the serial Sandokan (2025, a remake of the old serial).

In another exhibition, I saw the young Italian actor Sofia d'Elia and didn't recognise her till I later saw her poster! 

In the End

Over the past few years, I prefer books to films. Thus, when Catherine Buys was talking about the costumes of the serial "La Storia", I liked what she told about it and thought that I will read Elsa Morante's book on which this serial is based. So I am not the best person to talk about film festivals.

However, as you can see from my post, even if I don't watch films, there is so much to talk about the art of film-making.

It also makes me feel proud about our tiny little town in the foothills of Alps, that it is so much culturally alive with so many events which give me opportunities to talk to so many different kinds of persons!

Let me close this post with a beautiful blue vintage car. 

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Read the second part of my post on ISFF focusing on exhibitions and performances

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CBR & New Technologies

I was engaged in Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) programmes from early 1980s till a few years ago. Over that period, I saw CBR change from a health programme to a multi-sectoral approach dealing also with education, occupation and empowerment issues of persons with disabilities.

In this write-up I want to briefly look at the historical evolution of CBR approach, and some of the key persons involved in it - I was fortunate to meet and work with many of them. I will conclude with a brief reflection about the future of CBR and the possible roles of new technologies in it. (You can click on the images below for a bigger view)

The image below has a volunteer from red cross visiting a woman with disability who had received a loan from CBR programme to buy a sewing machine, in Da Nang province, Vietnam (2010) - image by Sunil Deepak. 

Origins of Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR)

Through the Alma Ata conference on primary health care in 1978, Dr Halfdan Mahler, DG of WHO in Geneva promoted the community based approaches including CBR.

In the image below (from right) - Dr Halfdan Mahler, author (Dr Sunil Deepak), with Armando & Hani Serag from PHM, in Geneva, 2007 

While Alma Ata was being planned, Einar Helander was appointed at the rehabilitation department of WHO in Geneva and asked to look at CBR. Over the next few years,  Padmini Mendis (Sri Lanka) Anne Goerdt (USA) joined him. The three of them prepared what came to be known as the WHO's CBR manual, which  came out in 1989.

The basic premise of the WHO CBR manual was that in rural areas and small towns, there were few rehabilitation professionals. Often, only families and communities looked after the children and adults with disabilities. The manual presented simple rehabilitation techniques with illustrations, which could be taught to the families, so that they themselves could promote their greater autonomy and well-being.

However, the question was who would teach the simple information explained in the manual to disabled persons and their families? During 1980s and 90s, two main approaches were developed to answer this question - (1) Existing community workers, especially health workers; (2) Community volunteers, especially persons with disabilities themselves and/or their family members. Those persons were supposed to receive training for 21 days.

Another important CBR manual was developed in 1987 by David Werner, titled Disabled Village Children. However, instead of working in the communities, he proposed setting up of resource centres, where children with disabilities accompanied by a family member came to learn and practice self-care, which they could later continue at home.

From Health focused CBR to Multi-Sectoral CBR

Around 1990-91, Dr Enrico Pupulin took the place of Einar Helander at the Rehabilitation department of WHO. He started consultations with other UN agencies including UNESCO for education, ILO for work & UNICEF for children, for their roles in CBR. As a result of these consultations, The first Joint Position Paper on CBR was drafted in 1994, which was updated in 2004.

The pioneers of CBR - from left - Enrico Pupulin, Einar Helander & Alana Officer, at the CBR congress in Agra, India in 2012 - image by Sunil Deepak  

 

In 2006, Disability & Rehabilitation (DAR) team of WHO under Alana Officer, together with UNESCO, ILO and IDDC, initiated a consultative process for the preparation of CBR Guidelines, under the guidance of Chapal Khasnabis. The CBR Guidelines came out in 2010. These guidelines proposed the CBR Matrix, a visual map to understand different components of CBR and their activities.

The term, Community-Based Inclusive Development (CBID) was proposed as an alternative to CBR to express its multi-sectoral nature.

Some of the Key Persons in CBR

During the 1980s, 1990s and the first decade of 2000, important CBR programmes covering large areas or entire countries or regions were started. Some countries adopted CBR as the national rehabilitation strategy. The image below from 1995, shows some of the key persons known for their work in CBR.  

The image above is from a CBR workshop in Rome, organised by AIFO-Italy in 1995, with some of the key figures who played a big role in developing CBR approach including Brian O' Toole & Geraldine Mason Hall (Guyana), Dr Ferial and Dr Rati (Indonesia), Bob Ransom (ILO), Maya Thomas (India) and Dr Tran Trong Hai (Vietnam) - Image by Sunil Deepak 

CBR & New Technologies in Last 15 years

Over the past decade, the diffusion of internet and smart phones across the world has changed the situation in terms of accessing information. For example, the video-platform YouTube is full of videos made by persons with disabilities of all kinds, by their families and by professionals, from around the world. These videos can be automatically translated and have subtitles in different languages.

Another example of technological change is the role played by social media and apps in connecting people and families and services. 

Another change has been the predominant role of Organisations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) in the countries after the adoption of the International convention CRPD at the UN in 2006. 

Compared to a health worker or a school teacher or a community volunteer, who had to be trained over 2-3 weeks in basic rehabilitation approaches to different kinds of disabilities, today the access to that kind of basic information is even more effective because individuals can connect with other families facing similar challenges.

Some years ago, together with International Disability and Development Consortium (IDDC), there was an effort to create a mobile app to provide the basic rehab information to CBR workers, through an app called RehApp. I tried looking for it on the Google store (in July 2026), found 2 apps of that name - one had been downloaded less than 100 times and the other around 1000 times.       

WHO also has more than 20 self-learning modules on the TAP platform, which can be used for training health workers and others about different disabilities and assistive technology needs.

A Question to the CBR/CBID Programmes

My impression is that due to all these changes over the past decade, the CBR programmes as they existed up to 10-15 years ago, are no longer there. To understand the present situation, I have 3 questions for individuals and organisations that work with persons with disabilities:

(1) Is a CBR programme still useful? For doing what?

(2) Compared to 10-15 years ago, how have CBR related work changed?  

(2) What roles are new technologies (including social media, whatsapp, messenger, youtube, etc.) playing in your work today?

You can answer by leaving a comment below (you can answer in English, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, Bengali or any other language that you prefer). Looking forward to hearing from you!

If you wish, you can also send me an email at sunil.deepak@gmail.com  

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Artworks From Sareo 2026

Sareo street festival is an annual art event in Schio, where local artists present their works in a public exhibition held on Via Pasubio in the city centre. Since, the old name of this street was Via Sareo, so that gives it the name. 

The painting below is a portrait by Moreno Greselin titled "Serenity and Understanding". I like the amused turn of lips and the twinkling eyes of the lady. (Click on the images for a bigger view of the artworks).

Like every year, I want to present the art works that I liked in this years' exhibition - here are the 12 artworks that I liked most this time.

Some Specific Issues with This Years' Exhibition 

This year, in 2026, the event was held on the last weekend of June, but not in the street. Instead it was held in the Shed hall, the old building of Conte Wool Mills, used for cultural events.

It was supposed to be the weekend to celebrate the festival of Schio's patron saint, St. Peters, but all the public celebrations were cancelled because of an accident which claimed the lives of 2 persons from the local Salesian school, a young priest (Don Francesco) and a student (Alberto).

The Sareo 2026 art festival was not cancelled but it remained inside the Shed hall. Since, this weekend was especially hot, with temperatures going up to 36° C, it may not have been easy, any way, to organise it in the open street.

12 Artists & Their Artworks from Sereo 2026 

The artists are not presented in any specific order of importance or quality of their artworks. 

(1) Let me start with a painting by Giuseppe Fochesato. He paints old abandoned rooms and buildings, where you can see the peeling paint, dusty surfaces, a feeling as the time has stopped, and shafts of light illuminating them. In this particular work that I have chosen for this post, I love the shades of purple in the walls, the orange in the old sofa and the blue in the windows. The painting was titled "Blue windows". I also love the feeling of dust and light, the glass left on the table and a sense of frozen time, as if someone went out and never came back.

I met Giuseppe at the exhibition and I am planning to interview him for this blog, after the end of the summer.

(2) The second artwork that I really liked, is by Lanfranco dalle Carbonare. It is titled "From above" and has an abstract look, mainly in blues with a touch of red. It makes me think of a histology slide stained by methylene blue or the colours used for acid-fast bacilli. It is a drone's eye-view of a landscape, a kind of a Google map, which he turns into abstract lines and shades.

(3) The third is a landscape by Mauro Marzari. I had interviewed him sometime ago. I like the way he uses colours, mixing together forms and abstraction. The orange background of this artwork, titled "Landscape", gives an idea of a forest fire and yet the white silhouette of the tree in the foreground gives me a feeling of coolness and mitigates the orange heat.

(4) The Cathedral by Luigia Meneguzzo is simple and evocative, a mixed materials artwork, using the bark of a tree. Probably, I am influenced by the images of the inauguration of the Sagrada Familia church in Barcellona a few days ago, but the bark of the tree used by Luigia with a little colour reminded me of that. I thought that it was clever and effective. All of us have the experience of seeing faces or figures in clouds and in random surfaces. Luigia saw a piece of a bark and saw a cathedral in it.

(5) Antonia Bortoloso makes very femminine and delicate artworks, with pastel colours and diaphanous laces and taffeta skirts. This time she had two artworks in the exhibition and I liked this one, titled Empty Space, more because of the bird sitting on the hand of the woman lost in thoughts in the painting. That bird somehow reminded me of the well-known Indian artist B. Prabha, who often painted women with birds.

(6) The artist Ercole Lino Bettiale had a few artworks in the exhibition, among them a round-shaped fantasy landscape of an old city quarter. However, I liked his "The Chess" (shown below) more because the two figures, the queen and the knight alongside the background of a chess-board, seem to be laughing at a private joke. It has a drunk-happy kind of vibe.

This painting also reminded me somehow of the Netflix series about chess, titled Queen's Gambit.

(7) Luigi Bernardi, originally from Schio and now based in Malo, started his artistic journey in 1977 and makes abstract compositions, using dark and spent colours that seem to merge into each other in a soft background, where you can, if one so wishes, see all kinds of figures and shapes, as in a psychologists' Rorschach test. They reminded me of walls that often come out when you scratch the paints and whitewashes covering them.

(8) Mario de Poli's abstract composition, titled "Light and the Tower" was similar to Luigi Bernardi, but a little more structured, mostly in the shades of green with a touch of orange. In an interview I have read that Luigi Bernardi and Mario de Poli (from Padova) had started their artistic journey together. Perhaps that explains the affinities in their approach to abstract art. However, in his long carrier as an artist, Mario has experimented with different styles.  

(9) Flaviana de Marchi's "Full Stop" with its reds and pinks, made me think of the hot summer afternoons with an angry red sun and someone furiously strumming on an electric guitar to express his anguish. I think that it would the right painting to look at, on a morning when I am feeling sleepy and need to wake up!

(10) The next artwork that I have chosen for my list is of a baby boy, holding a bunch of grapes and his eyes full of tears. It is by Moreno Greselin and was titled, "Boy grapes crying". I like it for the boy's expression and for the colour combination of blue and yellow, which always reminds me of Van Gogh. Moreno is the only one in this post, who has two paintings (the first painting at the top, of the old woman, is also his).

(11) Gian Battista Clementi is known for his landscapes, especially from the Leogra valley. Often, I can recognise the houses and contradas he paints, because they are from Sant'Antonio or Valle del Pasubio, a few kilometres north of Schio. For example, this year, I think that the two paintings he presented were both of the corner houses at the bridge in Gisbenti on Via dell'Acqua, a mountain hiking path that I love. His paintings had two versions of this place, one in the spring and the other with the winter snow. I liked more the one with the snow, which is presented below.

I am hoping to interview Clementi this year.

(12) The last painting that I have selected for this year is a small artwork, a pencil drawing of a young woman with tears in her eyes by Zohra Aljabbari. I am not sure if I have seen any of her works earlier and from her name it seems that she is an immigrant. So I am happy to include a new artist's name in my list. Her work was framed and covered with glass, but fortunately it was in a shadowed area, so I could take a picture of it without too much reflex.

In The End

Some of the artworks in this exhibition were framed and covered with glass, and I am unable to include them in my list. This was because of the strong morning light in the Shed hall, when I visited the exhibition, since it created strong reflections on the glass, so I was unable to look at them properly and to take their pictures. 

Over the last few years, I have been going to different art exhibitions in Schio and writing about them in my blog. This means that I have started recognising their names and recognising their art-styles. The moment I see their art work, I can tell who is the artist. This gives me pleasure.

I have also interviewed some of them and this year, I am planning to interview two of them, Fochesato and Clementi. While some of them have Facebook and Instagram pages, but some of them are almost invisible on internet. They are the ones, I want to interview and present in this blog.

Finally, you can also check my post about Sareo 2025.  

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Safety & Efficacy of Traditional Medicine

Twenty years ago, in 2006, I was involved in the organisation of a regional meeting on traditional medicine in south Asia, which was held in Bangalore in India.

Recently, I have read some discussions about research on the safety and efficacy of traditional medicine. They reminded me of a speech given my friend Dr Bala on this theme in that meeting. Therefore, I have decided to share some extracts from his speech in this post.

Background to the Regional Meeting Held in Bangalore in 2006 

I was asked to organise and coordinate a meeting on traditional medicine practices in South Asia by a group of international NGOs. Similar regional meetings were held in that period in other parts of the worlds. Final reports from those meetings were put together and provided to the department of Traditional Medicine in the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva.

However, my participation in the whole process was limited to the meeting held in India, since I was busy in other research work in that period. My friends from People's Health Movement in India had played a fundamental role in organising that meeting. 

Dr K. Balasubramaniam (1926-2011) from Health Action International Asia-Pacific (HAI-AP) had given the keynote address at that conference. Dr Bala, as everyone called him, had done pioneering work in access to essential medicines and was a key and respected figure in the international People's Health Movement (PHM) in those days. That meeting was also an opportunity to meet some of my old friends including Dr H. Sudershan from Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra, Dr Mira Shiva & Dr Ravi Narayan from PHM-India.

That conference was my first real encounter with traditional medicine. It was also the first time that I had visited an Ayurvedic medical college and understood the kind of training Ayurvedic doctors receive in India.

In this post, I would like to share some extracts of the keynote address of Dr Bala focusing on "Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Traditional Medicine". His keynote was much wider in scope. For example, he devoted a significant part of his speech to the subject of "Preserving and safeguarding biodiversity sustainability and traditional knowledges". 

In the coming days, I want to share some more papers from that conference. If you wish to read more documents from that meeting, I invite you to check the final report of that conference, which can be freely downloaded.

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Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Traditional Medicine 

Dr K Balasubramaniam, Sri Lanka

I believe that this conference will focus on herbal remedies which constitute the therapeutic armamentarium of traditional systems of medicine in the region.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has defined herbal medicines as "Finished labelled medicinal products that contain ingredients from aerial or underground parts of plants parts or other plant material or combination thereof, whether in the crude state or as plant preparations. The same WHO document adds "Medicines containing plant material combined with chemically defined active substances, including chemically defined substances and isolated constituents of plants are not considered to be herbal medicines".

It will therefore, follow that chemically defined isolated constituents of plants used in modern medicine are not herbal medicines, it has been estimated that these medicines derived from plants constitute about 25 percent in modern pharmacopoeia.

The World Health Organization posed a question 2002 whether a herbal medicine can be used clinically if no harm has been found after the use of that herbal medicine for generations and there is no documentation of such an effect. For an answer to the question, reference is made to an earlier WHO document published in 20003 which states "Absence of reported or documented side effect is not an absolute assurance of safety of herbal medicine. However, a full range of toxicology tests may not be necessary. Tests which examine effects that are difficult or even impossible to detect clinically should be encouraged. Suggested tests include immuno-toxicity, geno-toxicity, carcinogenicity and reproductive toxicity", It adds the following caveat, "only when there is no documentations of long historical use of a herbal medicine or when doubts exist about its safety; should additional tests be performed.

A rigid framework that has been prepared for modern synthetic drugs will never be possible for herbal medicines. There has to be some flexibility in toxicological requirements for herbal medicines.

Accordingly, a group of experts met in Chandigarh, India, to develop a suitable framework for carrying out toxicological studies on herbal medicines. The framework developed was broadly accepted by the Indian Council of Medical Research and the WHO. The actual tests to be carried out in the Chandigarh model are given in tables 1 & 2 (click on the tables for a bigger view).

The tests recommended by the WHO are given in Table 3 below (click on the tables for a bigger view).

WHO has called on clinical researchers to conduct clinical evaluation of traditional medicines within the specific framework of rigorous clinical pharmacological principles without ignoring or trampling on the concepts of the traditional systems of medicine.

I wish to take this opportunity to present an alternate view for evaluation of traditional medicine.

Traditional systems of medicine are a summation of several thousands of years of human experience in the selection of plants for preventive and curative healthcare. Practitioners of traditional systems of medicine argue that the efficacy of herbal remedies is due to the synergistic activity among the several ingredients of herbal mixtures. Complex mixtures of plants or herbs form the basis of traditional medicines. The mixtures are usually subject to crushing, heating, boiling, etc. It is possible that this process may change the chemical structure of the active ingredients in the plants.

Clinical pharmacologists and other scientists working on medicinal plants, on the other hand, focus all their attention on isolating and identifying biologically active ingredients in medicinal plants and herbs. When a promising new biologically active chemical ingredient is isolated, it goes through all subsequent investigations identical to those for a new synthetic chemical ingredient.

Traditional healers do not accept that the efficacy is necessarily due to the active ingredients in the plant.

According to the active ingredient approach the modern clinical pharmacologists, take the knowledge from the plant but throws away the wisdom of centuries.

If there is acceptable historical evidence that traditional herbal remedies have been effective in the treatment of certain diseases, but neither their active ingredients nor the mechanisms are known, is it ethically or morally acceptable to not use that treatment? Examples of successful treatment by traditional medicines will be useful to answer these questions,

In the fate 1980s children attending the Dermatology Department, Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street, London showed marked improvements in their eczema symptoms. These improvements were due to oral treatment with aqueous decoctions of a mixture of 10 Chinese medicinal herbs. Clinical experimentation and pharmacological testing revealed that a mixture of the 10 herbs were necessary and that the efficacy could not be attributed to any single active ingredient from any one of the 10 Chinese herbs, A placebo controlled double-blind clinical trial using the 10 Chinese herbs was carried out on 47 selected children with non-exudative eczema. The conclusions of the trial were to validate the standard of current conventional clinical trials utilized in the UK that the traditional Chinese therapy was efficacious.

If these children had to wait till the clinical pharmacologists had screened the 10 Chinese plants for active ingredients and tested them for biological activity, they would never have been given the chance of getting effective treatment with a mixture of 10 Chinese herbs.

Potential cytotoxic drugs are tested for their activity against experimental or human cancer cells. Efficacy depends on the ability to kill specific cancer cell types without affecting normal body cells. Studies on the effects of certain Ayurvedic herbal preparations for possible cytotoxic activity revealed that these herbal preparations did not kill the cancer cells but transformed them into normal healthy cells. These drugs, therefore, have a different mechanism of action, Classical testing methods would have missed this important anti-cancer activity.

I wish to pose a philosophical question. Is medical science one universal and uniquely expressed (western) paradigm – a biomedical paradigm? If it is possible to conceive of alternative methodologies, theories and practices in other domains such as music, logic, linguistics, art and politics, is it not possible to consider possibilities of alternative methodologies in medical science, knowing that doctors practice medicine within a biopsychosocial paradigm?

The guiding principles by which knowledge is built up in the biomedical paradigm are those of the scientific method where hypotheses are clearly stated, then tested and accepted or rejected as truth "until further notice" or "within the stated confidence limits” using only experimental or quasi-experimental designs – a deductive approach to problem solving.

Is it possible for research scientists to examine other methodologies, for example, using experiential methods – an inductive approach, to evaluate traditional herbal remedies?

There is an enormous amount of research on medicinal plants in research institutes in developing countries and the transnational drug industry.

Based on the WHO definition of herbal remedies and the herbal remedies used by practitioners of the traditional system, I wish to pose the following questions:

The Indian Council of Medical Research has taken the plant Pterocarpus marsupium from its use in folklore and Ayurvedic medicine to Phase III clinical evaluation for the treatment of diabetes mellitus using well accepted pharmacological principles. It was handed over to the industry for pharmaceutical development and marketing. This product will be marketed to practitioners of modern medicine. Table 4 (click on the tables for a bigger view) lists examples of modern drugs derived from plants that have been used in the traditional systems of medicine by ancient people around the world.

The question I wish to pose is as follows: "Will this type of research and development to isolate therapeutically active chemical ingredients achieve the objectives of this conference which is to promote the continuous development of traditional medicinal in the region to maximize its contribution in preserving and improving public health."

Let me make it clear that R & D to isolate therapeutically active ingredients from medicinal plants is of critical importance. There is no doubt about it.

But what I wish for you'll to discuss is the need for research to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the herbal remedies used by practitioners of the traditional systems of medicine. For example table 5 gives a 5 list of Ayurvedic remedies for some common ailments (click on the tables for a bigger view).

Is there a need to develop appropriate methods for clinical evaluation of traditional herbal medicines: methods and criteria not to be limited to the methods and concepts of modern biomedical science.

Interestingly much of the scientific literature for traditional medicine uses methodologies comparable to those used to support many modern surgical procedures: individual case reports and patient series with no control or even comparison group.

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For a full version of the keynote address by Dr Bala at the South Asia Regional Conference on Traditional Medicine, held in Bangalore, India in 2006, including the list of references, I invite you to download and read the conference report, that I had prepared. Please write to me at sunil.deepak@gmail.com if you would like any of the presentations made at the meeting.

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A Century of Pasubio War Memorial

The bones-cemetery (Ossario) of the war at the Pasubio mountain near Schio (VI) completes a century this year. Among the different events organised for this anniversary is an exhibition organised at Toaldi-Capra villa in Schio's city centre in June 2026.

The Ossario is about 22 kms from our home and yet it is visible from our terrace, a tiny finger raised up towards the sky at the point where two mountains meet on the horizon. Often, in the morning, when we wake up, we take a look at it to check the day's weather - if it is well visible, or if there is fog denoting humidity or if there are clouds. Thus, it is a kind of personal landmark for us, almost like a family monument.

Let me start this post with a brief background to the battles fought here about a hundred years ago.

First World War in the Pasubio Mountains

Italy joined the first world war in May 1915. Before that, over the past few centuries, this part of Italy known as Alto Vicentino and characterised by Dolomite mountains, had been controlled alternately between the Romans, Vatican (and Austrian-Hungarian empire supporting the Pope) and the Republic of Venice.

When the first world war broke out, the areas north-east to Schio were under Austrian-Hungarian empire, the site where the bones-cemetery was built was also the boundary between Italy and Austria. The Austrian-Hungarian empire lost that war, and the border between Italy and Austria was pushed up to about 175 kms to the north-east.

There were two main sites of battles in this area - Pasubio mountain and the high-plains of Asiago. About a 100,000 soldiers fought at Pasubio and around 10% of them died.

A significant aspect of this war was the building of tunnels inside the mountains, where army officers' offices, ammunition-dumps and hospitals were created. Old mule-tracks were revitalised and new paths were built in the mountains by the soldiers. One famous mountain path, going up along Pasubio had 52 tunnels, all built by soldiers with their own hands and the help of mules.

Construction of the Bones-Cemetery War Memorial

Apart from the war injuries, people also died due to land-slides and extreme cold, especially in winter 1917. Many battles took place in high mountains and narrow mountain passes, difficult to reach. Some bodies were identified and given a burial, but many were not and bodies of the soldiers from the two sides were left in the mountains or buried where ever they were found.

The first idea of creating a war memorial to remember those dead came up in 1917, while the war was going on, when some soldiers asked the bishop of Vicenza for a Madonna statue to be placed inside one of the tunnels. While the Madonna statue was provided, the bishop Ferdinando Rodolfi also started a fund-collection campaign to build a proper monument for the dead. A committee was created for this purpose, at the end of the war, on 3 November 1918.

Architect Ferruccio Chemello, who had designed the civic theatre of Schio was given this responsibility of designing the monument and a hill known as Bella Vista at an altitude of 1265 metres, at the base of Pasubio mountain was chosen for it (the image above shows some of his designs from the exhibition held in Schio in June 2026). The construction started on 1 July 1920 and it was completed around the end of 1925 and the beginning of 1926.

War Memorial and Bones-Cemetery

The memorial has a 35 metres high quadrangular tower in Romana-Bizantine style, with a massive underground basement used as a cemetery for the bones of about five thousand Italian and Austrian soldiers, some of them have names, others are anonymous.

There is chapel at the base, as one enters the tower, with a Madonna statue by sculptor Giuseppe Zanetti. A staircase goes up to four storeys while all around the walls have frescoes and painted glass-windows with a mix of war and religion related images by the artist Tito Chini (images below).

The whole war memorial area is considered as a sacred area and includes a war museum managed by 3 November Foundation near the parking area (image below).

Near-by Places to Visit

A walking road next to the Pasubio War Memorial takes you to a hanging bridge, also known as Tibetan Bridge, which is decorated with Buddhist flags, with beautiful views of the valley below.

Going further along the walking path after the Tibetan bridge one can reach Campo Grosso, known for its spectacular views of the Dolomite mountains.

Walking in the opposite direction towards the Pian delle Fugazze (Fugazze mountain pass) takes you to a popular resting point with the Pasubio bar-restaurant and places like Campo Silvano, Vall'Arsa and Rovereto. I especially love the charming village of Campo Silvano for its spectacular views, an antelope sanctuary and views of a water-reservoir in Vall'Arsa below.

In the End

We try to take all our guests to see the War Memorial because it is a good way to understand local history and for its beautiful views.

One evening at the Pasubio memorial, many years ago, is etched in my memory because of the wonderful colours of the setting sun on the snow-covered mountains with a full moon behind the memorial, as you can see from the image below.

 If this subject interests you, you also might like to read some of my other posts about other war memorials - War Cemeteries of Vicentino; and Remembering Soldiers - War Memorials from Around the World. 

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