Learn more about the American Revolution through the eyes of an important, Italian Immigrant, Filippo Mazzei. Read his story today!
“In Pisa Filippo entertained several Polish visitors as they came through, including General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who was not only a hero in the recent events in Poland, but of the American Revolution as well. The two had met over dinner at Monticello in 1776, when Kosciuszko had come to offer his military talents to the revolutionaries, read the Declaration of Independence and desired to meet and congratulate the man who had written it.”
I’m not often a joiner but when I saw the Los Angeles Times had started a book club I checked out their first book choice and it was one I intended to read anyway – so I joined.
The book is Susan Orlean’s “The Library Book” which is a micro history using the 1986 library fire at the Central Library downtown as the starting off point for a wonderful walk through the creation of a Central Library, the hiring (and firing – and tumult caused by such firing) of the various head librarians who have been in charge, and an interesting look at the architecture involved in both the original building and the addition added post the fire. It was such a fun read I swallowed it over a few days after downloading it from the very library it discussed (because all the hard copies were already being borrowed).
Without reading this I wouldn’t have learned that the Atlanta library remained segregated until 1959. Or that in the days when silence was important in libraries, head librarians summoned members of the staff to her desk (and she was often a she in those early days as being a librarian was an acceptable job for a woman) with one of those metal clickers they use to train dogs – each librarian had a morse-code like collection of clicks they would hear to tell them to come talk to their boss. Or that in 1981 investigators found a woman selling used books out of her room at the Beverly Hills Hotel that she had taken from the LA Public Library — and she was making over $40,000 a year on that enterprise. Who would even think up an idea like that? Better yet, some studios would send assistants to the library to steal books needed for research so they wouldn’t have to bother remembering to renew them over the course of making the movie.
I could go on. Suffice it to say that if you LOVE books and LOVE or LOVED libraries at any time in your life, this is a fabulously interesting book to peruse this summer.
Her conclusion? It is necessary to collect these books because “it declares that all these stories matter, and so does every effort to create something that connects us to one another, and to our past and to what is still to come.”
†
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Alice Guy-Blaché (July 1, 1873 – March 24, 1968) was a pioneer filmmaker, active from the late 19th century, and one of the first to make a narrative fiction film.[2] From 1896 to 1906 she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. [3] She experimented with Gaumont’s Chronophone sound syncing system, color tinting, interracial casting, and special effects. She was a founder and artistic director of the Solax Studios in Flushing, New York, in 1908. In 1912 Solax invested $100,000 for a new studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the center of American filmmaking prior to the establishment of Hollywood. That same year she made the film A Fool and his Money, with a cast comprised only African-American actors. The film is now at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute.[4] — Wikipedia
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Next, I don’t know most important , I don’t how I ordered these except they came to this order but Callie Khouri — anyone that can name the movie that she’s famous for? (Audience: Thelma & Louise) Thelma & Louise! Thank you. Thank Goodness. Thelma & Louise! An amazing film, right, that is still being talked about and debated in women’s studies, in Cinema Studies. Do we like the ending Don’t we like the ending? Is it how it could have ended? I think that’s pretty brilliant. Susannah Grant is probably not a name you recognize off the top of your head but you’ve seen these movies. Erin Brockovich is a huge film, right? Charlette’s Web – she has a lot of early kids work which is adorable. And Pocahontas, which is a very very famous Disney film so Suzanne has been one of our newer people and then as you recognized, Diablo Cody, right? Diablo Cody showed up doing Juno and then she did the United States of Tara with Spielberg on television. She’s moving and grooving through town so we’ll see what her next project is but she won an Oscar for Juno. That was her first outing as a screenwriter.
Dr. Rosanne Welch discusses the women in her new book “When Women Wrote Hollywood” which covers female screenwriters from the Silents through the early 1940s when women wrote over 50% of films and Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter (male or female) and the first to win 2 Oscars. Yet, she fails to appear in film history books, which continue to regurgitate the myth that male directors did it all – even though it’s been proven that the only profitable movies Cecil B. de Mille ever directed were all written by Jeannie Macpherson film ever won for Best Picture was written by Robert E. Sherwood (who people have heard of, mostly due to his connection to Dorothy Parker) and Joan Harrison.
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
Sixty-three of the movies that Alice Guy Blaché made while working for Gaumont are collected on the DVD Gaumont Treasures. Disk 1 is dedicated entirely to Blaché. While just a drop in the bucket of the work she did when she was there, it is a fascinating exploration of how quickly her work and voice grew.
The Nature and Genius of Alice Guy Blaché by Khanisha Foster
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out! † Available from the LA Public Library
This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne
Transcript:
(Audience Question) I’m really curious of how she felt then if she had a miscarriage at the time and she read books. Welch: That’s a fascinating point of view. Sadly or not sadly– interestingly — rich women did engage in the art of reading. So it’s interesting how we like to tell poor women how to behave. Rich women can do whatever they please right? So he’s acceptable in her world because you were supposed to read things and be a good reader so you could teach your children — your sons — to be good leaders in the world. So it was acceptable — that’s an excellent question though that’s like whoa. That’s a critical thinking kind of question going on right there because you’re right and but they felt that it was not proper to put out the novel with her name on it. So they didn’t right? In 1818, it doesn’t say Mary Shelley’s just here’s a book. Read it if you want to. Whatever. You can’t even tell from the cover — you’re right — what it’s about right?
* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs ** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
I was pleased to be asked to attend the first Italian Stories Day hosted by the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers and the Istituto Luce Cinecittà and Italian Audiovisual Producers Association at Mr. C in Beverly Hills. The three groups share the mission of helping more Italian authors see their work produced for the international film and television markets.
I had the pleasure of hearing about new books that we Americans will be able to read once their English translations are complete (within the next year) from authors like Tiziana Triana, author of Luna Nera – Le Città Perdute (Vol I) (Black Moon – The Lost Cities, Vol 1) which deals with witch hunters of 17th century Italy and how that affected women who yearned to gather knowledge; Stefania Auci, a Sicilian teacher and author of the historical novel Florence, published in 2015 by Baldini e Castoldi; and Edoardo Albinati, author of La Scuola Cattolica (The Catholic School).
I also had the chance to reconnect with Leonilde Callocchia, the Attaché at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura who hosted our Mentoris Book Launch last year, and a few producers I was able to invite to come to our Stephens College MFA workshops this August while we all munched on some marvelous brunch.
Check out the new book trailer for the Mentoris series of novels on lives of influential Italian and Italian Americans that Douglas and I produced for the publisher. I wrote (and recorded) the narration and Douglas did all the production and editing. On the main page the trailer appears below the fold, as it were — MentrorisProject.org.
All the Mentoris authors are proud of the work we’re doing in telling the stories of the men and women who mentored western civilization. From Cicero to Mancini (with my books on Filippo Mazzei and Giuseppe Garibaldi somewhere in the midst!). If you need a good summer read, here’s a set of books to pick from – they come in paperback or ebook form. It would be deeply appreciated if you bought a book – and shared the trailer on your socials!
My Second-year MFA candidate Randi Barros and I spent the morning on set at the Manhattan Beach Studios watching a filmed table read of Barros’ script “Springtime in September.” A winner of this year’s ‘She Called Action’ 35 Pilot Table Read Contest, the script concerns a suddenly single mother dealing with dating in the new era.
This “She Called Action” event was created by Cheryl Rodes of the women-owned production company Rodes Unpaved, dedicated to putting women as the heroes of the story.
Learn more about the American Revolution through the eyes of an important, Italian Immigrant, Filippo Mazzei. Read his story today!
“Filippo said sadly, “I have seen many Assemblies, but none so lax as this one in France.”
Madame Lavoisier, spoke in their defense. “Dear Mr. Mazzei, you are doubtless referring to some other Assembly than the one on which my husband sits.”
She was not to be taken lightly. But as a woman she was not a member of the Assembly and so had her information second hand, through her husband and his particular bias.”
![09 Important Women Screenwriters Today from “When Women Wrote Hollywood” with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (58 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/csuf-rmw-w3h-09.jpeg)
![06 A Nameless Author from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (52 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/scifi-rmw-cpp-06.jpeg)
