Cabiria is a 1914 Italian silent epic historical film directed by Giovanni Pastrone and starring Lidia Quaranta, Umberto Mozzato, and Bartolomeo Pagano.

available on YouTube In a beautifully restored version with English Captions as well as a score
 

Cabiria is a 1914 Italian silent epic historical film directed by Giovanni Pastrone and starring Lidia Quaranta, Umberto Mozzato, and Bartolomeo Pagano. It is considered one of the most important films of the silent era and is still widely admired today for its innovative special effects, lavish sets, and epic storytelling.

The film tells the story of a young girl named Cabiria, who is kidnapped and sold into slavery. She endures many hardships, including being nearly sacrificed in a temple, but she is eventually rescued by a Roman soldier. The film follows Cabiria's adventures as she travels across Italy and North Africa, witnessing some of the most famous events of the Second Punic War.

Cabiria was a huge commercial success, and it helped to establish Italy as a major force in the film industry. It was also critically acclaimed, and it won numerous awards, including the first Grand Prize at the Milan International Exposition.

The film is still considered to be a masterpiece of silent cinema, and it is included in the Vatican Film Library's list of the 45 most important films in history.

Here are some of the things that make Cabiria such an important film:

• It was one of the first films to use special effects on a large scale. The film's most famous special effect is the eruption of Mount Etna, which was created using a combination of models, pyrotechnics, and rear projection.

• The film was shot on location in Italy and Tunisia, which gave it a sense of realism that was unprecedented at the time.

• The film features some of the most impressive sets ever built for a silent film. The sets were so large and detailed that they could be mistaken for real locations.

• The film's story is epic and moving, and it features some of the most memorable characters in silent cinema.

Here are some of the awards that Cabiria won:

• Grand Prize at the Milan International Exposition (1914)

• Golden Medal at the San Francisco International Exposition (1915)

• Best Foreign Film at the National Board of Review Awards (1916)

Contempt (French: Le Mépris) is a 1963 French New Wave drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based - starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, and Giorgia Moll.

 Contempt (French: Le Mépris) is a 1963 French New Wave drama film written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard, based - starring Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang, and Giorgia Moll.

Available on YouTube with Spanish and English Captions

The film stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance, Giorgia Moll, and Fritz Lang as himself. It tells the story of the disintegrating marriage of a screenwriter, Paul Javal (Piccoli), and his wife, Camille (Bardot), as they work on a film adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. The film's title refers to the contempt that Paul feels for himself, for his wife, and for the film industry.

Le Mépris was a critical and commercial success, and is considered one of Godard's greatest films. It has been praised for its lush cinematography, its complex characters, and its exploration of the themes of love, marriage, and art.

Here are some of the reasons why Le Mépris is considered a classic film:

• It is a visually stunning film. Godard's use of color, light, and shadow is masterful, and the film is full of memorable images.

• It is a complex and thought-provoking film. The film explores a variety of themes, including love, marriage, art, and the nature of reality.

• It is a well-acted film. The performances of Bardot, Piccoli, and Palance are all excellent.

• It is a historically important film. Le Mépris is one of the most important films of the French New Wave movement.

Little Red Bird - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb- Included in In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb Translated and edited by Goldie Morgentaler

Little Red Bird - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb- Included in In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb Translated and edited by Goldie Morgentaler - 2023

Originally publidhed - “Royt feigele” (“Little Red Bird”). In Yiddish. Di goldene keyt 139 (1994)

I greatly admire Chava Rosenfarb both as a writer and as a person. She is among the eight authors included in the header picture for my blog.

"Little Red Bird" focuses on a woman whose husband and four year old daughter were murdered in a German concentration camp.  Her daughter was thrown into the crematorium while still living.  She meets a man, while living in a post World War Two displaced persons camp.

"Manya and Feivel met after the war in the displaced-persons camp of Feldafing in Bavaria. Both had been members of the Bundist youth organization in Poland; he in Kracow, she in Lodz. They had discovered each other during those confusing post-liberation days of hope and despair. Neither of them had any surviving family, so their need for closeness and intimacy with another human being was great."

Manya is frustrated because she is not able to get pregnant.

"They are both upset about the direction the postwar world has taken, about the fact that the sacrifice of millions has been in vain. But in Manya’s case, there lingers beneath the surface of her general sorrow over the fate of the world an additional, more intimate pain, which translates into a longing to have another child. "

Manya does something deeply immoral.  I really hope others will have the opportunity to read this profound story so I will say no more.

I do feel obligated to share a bit more of the powerful unflincing prose of this story.

"Manya is standing by the window, peering out at the snow. A little girl is playing in the street among the mounds of snow. The child is about five years old. She wears a red coat and a red hat, just like Little Red Ridinghood, the child the wolf tried to devour in the story by the Brothers Grimm. Manya’s child was in fact devoured by the wolf—a wolf who was, in a sense, a grandchild of the wolf in the Grimm brothers’ story. Manya’s child had been destroyed by the Germans when she was five years old. Her name had been Faygele, Little Bird. She too had had a red coat. When she wore the red coat her parents called her roit faygele, little red bird. Her parents delighted in the sight of Faygele wearing her red coat. The color suited her. It harmonized with the dark brown hair her mother would roll in tissue paper to form curls. The curls peeked out charmingly from underneath Faygele’s red hat. It did not occur to Faygele’s parents to associate the color red with the color of blood— Faygele’s blood."

CHAVA ROSENFARB (1923 - 2011)Prize-winning writer of fiction, poetry and drama, Chava Rosenfarb was born February 9, 1923 in Lodz, the industrial centre of Poland before the Second World War. She completed Jewish secular school and gymnasium in this community where several hundred thousand Jews lived —nearly half the population of the area. The Holocaust put an end to one of the richest centres of Judaism in all of Europe. Like many Jews of the city, Rosenfarb was incarcerated in the infamous Lodz ghetto. She survived there from 1940 to 1944, when she and her sister Henia became inmates of the concentration camps of Auschwitz, then Sasel and Bergen-Belsen. Even in the ghetto Rosenfarb wrote, and she hasn’t stopped since. Her first collection of ghetto poems, Di balade fun nekhtikn vald [The Ballad of Yesterday’s Forest] was published in London in 1947. After the liberation Rosenfarb moved to Belgium. She remained in Belgium until 1950, when she immigrated immigrated to Montreal. In Montreal, Rosenfarb obtained a diploma at the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in 1954. Rosenfarb has produced a prolific body of writing, all of which speaks from her experience during the Holocaust. Her work has been translated into both Hebrew and English. Rosenfarb has been widely anthologized and has had her work appear in journals in Israel, England, the United States, Canada and Australia in Yiddish and in English and Hebrew translation. Among the many prizes awarded her work, she has received the I.J. Segal Prize (Montreal, 1993), the Sholom Aleichem Prize (Tel-Aviv, 1990) and the Niger Prize (Buenos Aires, 1972). She has travelled extensively, lecturing on Yiddish literature in Australia, Europe and South America as well as in Israel and the United States.

Mel Ulm 

The Other Side of the Wall - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi - Translated by Sholeh Wolpé 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

The Other Side of the Wall - A Short Story by Goli Taraghi 25 Pages- Translated by Sholeh Wolpé 2019 - included in Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan  

"A city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. No single depiction would suffice; and yet, over-simplified accounts of Tehran abound in Western media: from click-bait clichés about veiled women to images of a youth in revolt, from the colourful elegance of Tehran’s emerging fashion scene to the belligerent rhetoric of international tensions. Tehran’s political representation on the global stage has been marred by the post-war-on-terror misfortune of depicting everything in black or white. There are, however, many stories in between these simplifications, where ordinary life takes place across a multitude of fragmentary scenes and in the messy grey area that anthropologists call lived life." From the introduction 
 

A link to four short Stories by Goli Taraghi on Words without Borders

https://wordswithoutborders.org/contributors/view/goli-taraghi/

I was delighted to discover there is a short story by Goli Taraghi in The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories. I have been reading her work for years.  In today's story, " The Other Side of the Wall", a generous 25 pages, a 15 year old girl living with her parents in a big apartment complex in the market area of Tehran, gives us a cinematic picture of her growth into adulthood.

The women in the complex all hate one particular woman.  In the mean time the girl's parents force her to take piano lessons, which she hates.

Everything comes to a wild conclusion on the day of her piano rehearsal.

Born in Tehran in 1931, Goli Taraghi is the daughter of a Member of Parliament, publisher and journalist. She began her writing career with a collection of short stories entitled I Too Am Che Guevar (1969). Her works include the novel, Winter Sleep, and the short story collections, Scattered Memories, Another Place, The Second Chance, and An Occurrence. Her short story ‘The Great Lady of My Soul’ (1982) was translated into French in 1985, and won the Contre-Ciel Short Story Prize. She was the recipient of the 2009 Bita Prize for Literature and Freedom, and has been honoured as a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Her work has been widely translated and anthologised. 

Mel Ulm 

Intolerance- A 1916 Silent Film Directed by D.W. Griffith- 2 hours 56 minutes

 

Available on YouTube 

""He achieved what no other known man has achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man." James Agee on D, W. Griffith 

Intolerance, a silent film released in 1916, is a complex and controversial work by D.W. Griffith, one of the most influential figures in early American cinema. It tells the story of intolerance through four separate narratives spanning different time periods and locations:

• The Fall of Babylon: Prince Belshazzar, a pacifist, is overthrown by warring religious factions.

• The Passion of Christ: The film depicts the last days of Jesus Christ in the style of a Passion play.

• The St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre: The film portrays the brutal massacre of Huguenots in France by Catholics.

• Modern America: A woman fights to save her husband from execution for a murder he did not commit.

Griffith's purpose:

• Confronting criticism: The film was partly a response to the controversy surrounding his earlier film The Birth of a Nation (1915), which was widely criticized for its racist portrayal of African Americans and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan.

• Exploring a universal theme: Griffith aimed to show the universality of intolerance and its destructive consequences throughout history.

Technical innovations:

• Cross-cutting: Griffith pioneered the use of parallel editing, interweaving the four stories to create a powerful and emotional impact.

• Massive sets and costumes: The film features elaborate sets and costumes, particularly for the Babylonian sequence, which was inspired by Italian historical epics.

• Use of allegory: The film uses several allegorical elements, such as the recurring image of a woman rocking a cradle, to symbolize the birth of hope and the possibility of overcoming intolerance.

Critical reception:

• Initial failure: Despite its innovative techniques, Intolerance was a commercial failure upon its release. Critics were divided, some praising its ambition and technical achievements, while others found it confusing and preachy.

• Legacy: Over time, the film's reputation has grown. It is now considered a landmark in film history, praised for its groundbreaking editing techniques and its powerful message of tolerance

• Technical influence: The film's innovative editing techniques have had a profound influence on subsequent generations of filmmakers.

Wake It Up - A Short Story by Payam Nasser - Translated by Sara Khalili 2019- included in The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan

Wake It Up - A Short Story by Payam Nasser - Translated by Sara Khalili 2019- included in The Book of Tehran: A City in Short Stories introduced by Orkideh Behrouzan  

"A city of stories – short, fragmented, amorphous, and at times contradictory – Tehran is an impossible tale to tell. No single depiction would suffice; and yet, over-simplified accounts of Tehran abound in Western media: from click-bait clichés about veiled women to images of a youth in revolt, from the colourful elegance of Tehran’s emerging fashion scene to the belligerent rhetoric of international tensions. Tehran’s political representation on the global stage has been marred by the post-war-on-terror misfortune of depicting everything in black or white. There are, however, many stories in between these simplifications, where ordinary life takes place across a multitude of fragmentary scenes and in the messy grey area that anthropologists call lived life." From the introduction 

Today's story, "Wake It Up" by Payam Nasser, is narrated by a professional writer whose long time girl friend has just left to move to America forever. He has long thought a writer requires tragic life events to achieve depth in his work.   All he feels however is a desire to sleep 14 hours a day. Then he decides it might motivate him out of his lethargic state to move.  This sets in motion an encounter with a young boy that will give him a depth of concern for others and ability to see into possible futures he never had before.

The more I read on in "Wake It Up", the more I was captivated by the strange boy.

Born in 1969, Payam Nasser is an author and screenplay writer. His debut collection of short stories, Consternation (2012), was a finalist for the Golshiri prize, as well as the Haft-Eghlim Literary Award for the best short story collection of the year. It also featured the story, ‘Wake it Up’, which received the 2014 Houshang Golshiri Literary Award. He is author of one novel, The Trifles Thief, as well as numerous screenplays, including the film One Long Day, which was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the International Orthodox Film Festival in Russia in 2015.

Mel Ulm 

Broken Blossoms- A 1919 Silent Film Directed by D. W. Griffith-1 Hour 34 minutes- Starring Lillian Gish

available on YouTube 
 

"He achieved what no other known man has achieved. To watch his work is like being witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man." James Agee on D, W. Griffith 

"Griffith in 1919 was the unchallenged king of serious American movies (only C.B. DeMille rivaled him in fame), and "Broken Blossoms" was seen as brave and controversial. What remains today is the artistry of the production, the ethereal quality of Lillian Gish, the broad appeal of the melodrama, and the atmosphere of the elaborate sets (the film's budget was actually larger than that of "Birth of a Nation").

And its social impact. Films like this, naive as they seem today, helped nudge a xenophobic nation toward racial tolerance.

There is all of that, and then there is Lillian Gish's face. Was she the greatest actress of silent films? Perhaps; her face is the first I think of among the silent actresses, just as Chaplin and Keaton stand side by side among the men" From Roger Ebert's review 

Broken Blossoms, also known as The Yellow Man and the Girl, is a 1919 American silent drama film directed by D.W. Griffith and starring Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess. Considered one of Griffith's most important works, the film tells the story of a young Chinese immigrant, Cheng Huan (Barthelmess), who falls in love with a mistreated young woman, Lucy Burrows (Gish). The film explores themes of racism, abuse, and compassion.

Cheng Huan, a gentle and idealistic Chinese man, immigrates to London with dreams of spreading the teachings of Buddhism. However, he soon becomes disillusioned by the harsh realities of life in the city's slums. He turns to opium for solace and loses his faith. One night, he finds Lucy Burrows, a young woman who is being abused by her father, a violent boxer. Cheng takes Lucy in and cares for her, and the two form a deep bond.

Lucy finds comfort and protection in Cheng's presence, and they fall in love. However, their interracial relationship is met with prejudice and hostility from Lucy's father and the surrounding community. The film culminates in tragedy, as Lucy is ultimately killed by her father in a fit of rage.

Cultural Impact:

Broken Blossoms was a critical and commercial success, and it is considered one of the most important films of the silent era. The film's innovative use of close-ups, iris shots, and other cinematic techniques helped to establish Griffith as a master of the medium.