Thursday, July 23, 2015

U Juornu Avanti - "The Day Before"

Countless Americans owe the good fortune of their daily lives to a decision someone else made decades ago – but how many can even begin to understand the courage and the anguish involved in taking that step?  Here is a short film that will make it all real for you. 

U Juornu Avanti (“The Day Before”) is a Sicilian language film with English subtitles which dramatizes a single day in the life of one man – the day before he leaves Sicily for America. With the promise of a better life ringing in his ears, Minicu makes tearful good-byes to his two brothers and his mother, who has sold her earrings to buy him clothes.  He vows to send back enough dollars that she can buy as many new ones as she wishes.

He says good-bye to his friends, asking them to watch over his family, and takes leave of his intended with the promise to return.  He gets cautionary advice from those who have already crossed the ocean and from those who simply draw it from their hearts.

Twin visual images – the beauty of the landscape where fog spills through the mountaintops like the rich, complicated, ancient history of Sicily itself and the striking expressions on the faces of its people deepen the experience for the viewer and make it more meaningful.


If you are the son or daughter of immigrants from any part of the world, consider whether any decision of yours has had as much impact on your life as the one made on the day your ancestors stepped onto a boat bound for America.  You owe it to them and yourself to understand as much as possible about their thinking and their emotions.  Un Juornu Avanti is a film that will get you there. 

Get your copy of the film by supporting the efforts of the young filmmakers who have done a miraculous job putting it together.  Visit this page  http://bit.ly/1HUg0XR

Friday, June 19, 2015

Blues by the Beach, Cinemonde #49

The beauty of the young girl – her smile, the freckles beneath her eyes, her French accent.  This is what stays with us.  It’s always impossible to separate the appeal of beauty from its evanescence, but to have it torn away so abruptly, where is the lesson? 


Blues by the Beach is about the loss of innocence.  If innocence is music and dancing and laughter then that is what countless patrons, an eclectic, global crowd, found in a Tel Aviv pub called Mike’s Place until the night was shattered by a terrorist bomb. 
 
Blues by the Beach is an accidental documentary.  Jack Baxter came to Israel from the Bronx intending to do one documentary, got sent in a second direction, and ended up with something completely unexpected and revealing.  He stood before the audience and explained this, leaning on a cane, his constant companion since the blast injured 50 and killed three, including the French waitress with the smile.

This screening was one of Cinemonde’s unique evening productions, #49 to be exact.  It took place in the penthouse of the Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington Avenue.   Glasses of wine and hors d’oeuvres shared by an enthusiastic group of select moviegoers led up to the viewing.  Afterwards, the publisher and the artist of a graphic novel called Mike’s Place that re-tells the story in the movie answered questions for an audience that included the doctor whose quick work saved lives at the scene.

The publisher told us that he had chosen the project because of the three love stories it tells.  The artist told us something about his process that involved 1,000 drawings that took a year to complete and about what kinds of slight changes to a script the graphic novel format occasions.  The owner of the bar towards the end of the film tells us how the bomb shattered more than physical things that could be repaired – that relationships ended.  The publisher reminded us that one of those relationships was still intact, even stronger.  Events have consequences; the filmmaker walks with a cane.

Graham Greene comes to mind, superficially because “The Third Man” is the best example of a novel appearing after the movie.  But more than that, Greene’s central characters always arrive in a foreign place and bear witness.   Jack Baxter even sounds like a name out of a Graham Greene novel.   For me, Blues on the Beach drives home more viscerally than any other film of its type the documentary camera as witness that turns all of us into witnesses.


Cinemonde is the brainchild of Jerry Rudes, a consummate showman with something substantial to show.  It calls itself “a smart, elegant private film series in New York City” to which, after one experience, I can attest.  It is produced by Rudes' company, Mistral Artist Management, aptly named for the strong wind that blows across southern France with positive, lasting effects on the climate of the region.  The next time a Cinemonde invitation pops into your email inbox, consider going.  It’s well worth it.

Monday, May 25, 2015

Taddrarite ("Hidden Women") InScena Italian Play Festival

Was I in the wrong place?  I came to see a play, but all I heard as I approached the darkened
room in this ornate building was crying -- inconsolable sobbing. As I entered the room, one of the crying women looked into my eyes like the closest of friends, increasing my doubt.  And then another pointed me to a row of chairs before a closed wooden coffin with a large cross on its cover.  



We soon learned that the acting had begun with the first tear.  And that there were two audiences for those tears -- us and the invisible, now departed neighbors and relatives at this solemn wake whose parts we had just played without realizing it.  And now, it was our turn to become invisible in this empty room where three sisters dressed in black sat on chairs facing the coffin.

This staging is one more example of the inventiveness of InScena, the annual Italian Play Festival that takes place in the five boroughs of New York City, and of Laura Caparrotti, its founding artistic director.  The play is Taddrarite ("Hidden Women" English title), winner of 2014 Rome Fringe Festival.  InScena has finished its run for this year but will return in 2016.

The tears in this play are real, but they are not for the dead man in the coffin.  Rather, they are for the lives of the three sisters, who have suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their husbands. For the men in their lives they have only sarcasm and scorn, delivered before us with humor and passion.  Together, they pray "the false rosary" to our amusement but we get the serious message.

It's not only that things like what they recount have happened to them, but how the shroud of silence, aided by the women themselves, has all but institution out of the behavior.   But this is their breakout moment.  As one of the sister confides: "Silence is the key that closes every door." But this play speaks loudly.

Written by: Luana Rondinelli

The sisters played with passion and humor by the fiery Claudia Gusmano (who won the best actress in 2014 Rome Fringe Festival), Luana Rondinelli, and Anna Clara Giamponi

Performed in Italian with English supertitles