The Sicilian Girl; Director Marco Amenta, Altiplano; Writers / Directors BROSENS & WOODWORTH,

And Virgin Women

We haven’t traveled far from the ideology of the virginal woman with a fiery spirit who turns the world around to meet the moral imperative as she sees it. Although the setting of each film is radically different, the similarities are striking: societal evils are the villain; combatted by our hero, the young woman of marital age with love strong in her heart, thwarted on the precipice of marital fulfillment. With all their bottled up sexual energy demanding an outlet, these women come to the screen with a force that is compelling in its strength and intriguing in its source: the woman who has since time immemorial been prayed to, as she sits on high in our minds, our hearts; she is our fantasy companion, our helper, our conscience.

She is the Virgin Mother, The spiritual Mother of us all.

It helps to have had a juvenile acquaintance with this fantasy figure, that seemingly requisite brainwashing with all the appeal of glitter and funny looking men dressed in long skirted garments or masks to accent the separation of the real from the super-normal experience informed by our senses. But even with all of that religiosity put to the side, one can not help but be sympathetic to the cause these women champion. The Sicilian Girl goes after the Italian Mafia. In Altiplano, the evils of mercury exposure from drilling in Peru that destroys the indiginous population is the villain. In both films the women speak for the masses against the forces of evil and in both films the women give their lives and become Joan of Arc, the Virginal figure who promises hope in a hopeless world of needless, senseless destruction.

Both films are beautifully photographed, which is a delight. The music in Altiplano is breathtaking, thrilling, sending goosebumps up and down my spine; the plot was very confusing (even the short film synopsis is difficult to follow) but after a while it didn’t matter that there was little to hang on to. There was a dignity, an emotional force that informed on the sorrowful loss of times forever gone and painfully mourned.

Does this mean that like the suicide bombers, the terrorists of today, we should think of giving our lives for a cause we truly embrace?
I hope not. Youth is too precious to be wasted on the decadence and cruel immorality of elders.

THE SICILIAN GIRL Opens Wed, August 4 at Film Forum

ALTIPLANO Opens August 20 at Village East in N.Y.C.

Prospect Park Geese elimination: saga explored

As I sat on the lawn looking out over the all too quiet water amid all
too few people by the Prospect Park lake, I remembered a time not so
many years ago when there were plenty of Geese, although I didn't know
they were Geese, and plenty of children throwing bread into the water.

And there were boats, with turning blades in the water, cleaning up
the lake, it was said, of green algae.

I remember that scene. It played out over and over maybe for a year
and then I started to see the Geese coming out of the water to graze.
Graze on the grass (there were no algae anymore) until the grass was
gone and brown dirt took its place with nothing to impede its erosion
into the lake.

And then the tragic day when the solution to the Geese and their
"destructive" eating needs and ways came to the fore and the people
learned that the Geese were gone, exterminated which, given our not so
distant knowledge of peoples exterminated with the same gas, the same
lack of individuality respected, well................
this does not
make for good public relations and with the Audubon Society not
stepping up to the plate to say, "no, don't do it,"
well....................

It is all very ugly. Dare I say stupid; lacking in foresight?

Yes.

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