Hey buddies,
Welcome back!
This week, reason and justice had a few small wins on their side. Brett Hankison, who shot and killed Breonna Taylor, has been fired (although he has yet to be stripped of his pension). The Supreme Court ruled that employees cannot be fired based on their gender identity. And Trump’s Tulsa rally was a total flop.
Good news is good news but there is still much work to be done always.
6/23 FUND RACIAL JUSTICE/ACTION ITEM:
This week, consider donating to For the Gworls’ Medical Fund. This fund directly supports Trans peoples’ transportation to and from medical appointments.
For the Gworls also has a Rent/Gender Affirming Surgery Fund which helps reduce the very high rates of homelessness in the Black Trans community as well as funds safe gender-affirmation surgery.
6/23 MOVIE BY A BLACK FILMMAKER REC:
Daughters of the Dust, which tells the story of three generations of Gullah women in the early 20th century leaving the South for the North, is the first theatrically-released film by a Black woman in the U.S. It is also SO GORGEOUS and I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of it until now! Highly recommend.
Director: Julie Dash
Also! A woman in my town, Charde Armstrong, has started a GoFundMe to support her dream of opening a soul food truck with vegan and vegetarian options! As far as I know, there’s nothing like it in the Pittsburgh area. Please click here if you would like to support!
#4: Amarcord
Director: Federico Fellini
Country: Italy
Year: 1973
Run time: 123 minutes
Language: Italian
**As always, this post contains spoilers**
“A woman with huge boobs and a parade for Mussolini.”
That is what Josh said when I asked him what he remembered about this movie. As it turns out, that is what I will remember most about this movie, too, because it is completely absurd. Let’s get into it.
It is Spring in a provincial town in Italy! We know this because the “puffballs” are out and three different characters, directly to the camera, tell us about them (one of whom is an American Movie Uncle Bill-type). When a film breaks the fourth wall like this, I immediately think oh thank GOD we are all on the same page! It is so relaxing to know a movie knows I’m watching it, ya know?
The whole town is pumped for spring and they’re going to show it by gathering and burning an effigy of an old witch on top of an enormous pile of sticks. Like, more sticks than you have ever seen. Almost every movie has at least one production element that stresses me out to think about logistically and in Amarcord, it is this pile of sticks.
During this gathering, we meet what will turn out to be my three favorite characters:
Gradisca, resident hottie who is always in a beret and INCREDIBLE trumpet skirts.
Volpina, the horniest woman I’ve ever seen in a movie and in real life. So horny that she actually looks possessed and as she’s grinding her teeth and rubbing all over a wall, another townsperson yells at her, “I bet you even dip a cock in your morning coffee!” I am here for this #sexpositive compliment!!
Cool guy on a motorcycle. He is never named and doesn’t do anything else except haul ass all over town while people clap at him.
Here, we meet the film’s narrator who keeps getting interrupted by a bunch of farting off camera, which I laughed at a lottttt because I’m truly alive.
Next, we are in an incredibly bizarre school where the teachers all look like drunk Guess Who characters and all of the students look to be in their early 30s. At one point, the students conspire to create a super long tube out of paper. One boy (man) sitting in the back pees into it as it empties at the feet of another boy standing with his teacher at the front of class. When they pull the tube away, the teacher thinks this poor kid (adult) has peed his pants.
You cannot tell me this isn’t the cast of Amarcord.
Titta, the teen main character, goes home for dinner where he lives with a bunch of family members, including his dad who is SO mad at him for pissing off a balcony and on to some guy’s hat. (Does every teen boy go through a piss fetish phase? What is this?) Also, I love his dad, who has very strong “Fuck it, we’ll do it live” energy.
Titta goes to confession and his confession is: I am horny. The next scene is he and three of his friends sitting in a parked car in a garage jerking off together yelling out things that make them horny.
This is when I accepted that this film is not going to have a real narrative arc and is instead a collage of scenes of what I imagine characters are doing before the camera starts rolling. I won’t say that I gave up, but I started to sort of….drift….away….I DID NOT SLEEP…but I sort of….let the movie take me away….
There is an embarrassing fascist parade in town honoring the arrival of the federale, which is just a high-ranking soldier. This parade includes a visually striking Mussolini made out of flowers.
That night, the fascists hear a “song of the subversive” playing in the town square and they discover it is coming from a phonograph in a bell tower. Because fascists have a pathetic and cowardly commitment to power (which Fellini expertly mocks throughout the movie), they shoot at and destroy the phonograph playing the song. SO cool and strong of them.
Cut to Gradisca, the sexy one, preparing to sleep with the fascist leader in exchange for something important (???) for the town. We get to see this gorgeous woman, alone, awkwardly posing and trying on sexiness in a slip and a beret for a few minutes prior to her meeting. This is important filmmaking: to show the quiet vulnerability that many a woman experiences, no matter her perceived confidence. To show this woman, coveted by every person in the town, preparing to experience the male gaze (and more) was a bit of humorous truth that I adored.
There’s a whole hotel sequence of an “emir and his 30 concubines” and it’s a racist mess if you ask me.
Next, Titta and his family pick up his uncle Teo who has been in a mental institution. He pees himself and crawls up a tree and yells, constantly, “I WANT A WOMAN.” Eventually he gets taken back to the asylum. This is also a mess.
Then the whole town goes out on their tiny boats to watch the passage of the oceanliner SS Rex. They wave and wave and wave and there isn’t another soul waving back. And then all their boats get capsized. Hey, we’ve all been there.
Titta’s grandpa gets lost and wanders around in the fog and says, “I don’t’ seem to be anywhere,” which sums up this entire movie, IMO.
Titta and his friends have moved from jerking off together in a car to dancing together outside a church. The character development brings a tear to my eye.
And then we meet the woman with “huge boobs.” Titta meets this older woman in her shop, where she asks him to physically lift her off the ground. He does this several times in a dizzying, surreal display of strength. She then takes out her boobs for him to suck and he tries and gets freaked out and smothered and leaves. Too much of a good thing, my dude?!
It’s the first snow which is also met with a peacock appearing in the town square, to which the townspeople just say, “holy shit.” Hmmm…YEAH.
Titta’s mom gets sick and dies which is pretty sad.
That’s the end. That’s all of it. The movie was exactly as fragmented and dream-like as it seems here and although I laughed out loud a few times, not much of it stuck with me. I mean, my favorite parts were horny girl and motorcycle dude which makes all the sense IN the world because my favorite movie is Grease 2.
Next up is The 400 Blows which is apparently French New Wave which doesn’t mean anything to me except it is responsible for my dream haircut.
XOXO,
Steph