On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
“We cannot accept slaves into our ranks,” Texeira insisted. Since the beginning of the war enslaved Afro-Brazilians had run from Brazil as it was a slaveocracy, hoping to fight for Rio Grande del Sol and then to join the new republic and create a home that disavowed slavery. Though rebelling against Brazil, many Rio Grandean leaders still believed in the sanctity of private property and so neither condoned recruiting runaways nor cared to arm or train Afro-Brazilians.
While D. W. Griffith is the most famous early Civil War filmmaker, Thomas Ince’s films cemented the Plantation Myth. Unlike Griffith, Ince had his family roots in New England, though he fell under the pro-southern spell early in his filmmaking career.
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“Do you knit as you sleep, as well?” Giuseppe teased, due to her swift progress. Anita knitted as she alternated between walking and riding horseback. For herself she had fashioned a red wool cape over a white peasant blouse that billowed around her neck. As she finished the last stitch on the poncho she had designed for him, she handed it proudly to Giuseppe. He draped it over his head and across his shoulders. The varying colors of the stripes across the chest gave the piece a distinguished look that made Anita smile.
Between 1908 and 1910 filmmakers released seventy Civil War films, and another hundred by 1916. The earliest films were pro-Union, or at least featured a Union victory, but in 1909 southern theater owners began to complain about Northern bias. Filmmakers saw a market for pro-southern movies.
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Giuseppe approached the first local he found, who happened to be Henrique sweeping the stoop outside the door of his shop. Thrilled to meet one of the victorious rebels, Henrique invited Giuseppe to his home for coffee. There, as if in a dream, he found the woman he had seen on the hillside, preparing the afternoon coffee.
Henrique saw Giuseppe’s shocked face and politely introduced them, “Senor Garibaldi this is my cook, Aninha.” Neither spoke, not even the banal niceties one expects when strangers are introduced, because neither Giuseppe or Aninha felt like strangers to the other in that moment.
On the hillside, the same loneliness had filled Aninha Ribeiro da Silva for most of her young life. She had ridden to the bluff that morning in order to see for herself the ships of this glorious rebel navy, come to create a new nation. Freedom fascinated her.
In keeping with the binary nature of ideologies, the honorable Southern generals stand in contrast to venal, uncouth Northerners. The Lost Cause insists upon the illegitimacy of Abraham Lincoln’s election and his personal villainy as a backwoods barbarian, miscegenationist and all-purpose bad dude.
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It’s always nice to read a positive review of a newly published book so when the Kirkus Review of my new book on the life of Giuseppe Garibaldi said it was “A wonderfully researched and dramatically gripping work of historical fiction” I smiled.
Research IS my middle name these days and ‘gripping’ is what’s needed for the pace when one is documenting such an epic life so that it doesn’t feel like it is just meandering from battle to battle with no story growth.
The book gave me the chance to finally delve deeply into Garibaldi and Anita’s lives and come to a deeper understanding of the revolution that united Italy. — Rosanne
“A novelistic biography of the 19th-century Italian general who devoted his life to the unification of Italy.
Giuseppe Garibaldi was raised in Nice, an Italian territory in Piedmont held by the French. His mother nevertheless insisted, against convention, that he learn to read Italian and to zealously assert his independence. After an aborted attempt to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a sailor, Garibaldi joined the Young Italy movement under the direction of Giuseppe Mazzini and agitated for Italian independence. As a result, he was sentenced to death and was forced to flee to South America, an exile that lasted more than a decade.
While in Brazil, he discovered thousands of misplaced Italians, and he recruited them to participate in the Ragamuffin War to establish a republican experience that prepared him for the wars of independence in Italy later. Also, he fought in the Uruguayan civil war before finally returning to Italy intoxicated by the dream of Italian independence and unification—a devotion stirringly portrayed by Welch.
He formed a group of volunteers, called the Hunters of the Alps, to fight in the Second Italian War for Independence and later participated in the Expedition of the Thousand in Sicily, successfully establishing Victor Emmanuel II as king.
Welch’sresearch is impeccably rigorous. She captures the minute details of Garibaldi’s life, the machinations of military strategy of the period, and the atmosphere of both 19th-century Italy and South America. One could quibble that the accumulating, granular detail finally becomes daunting to digest. However, her prose is reliably lucid and sometimes achieves genuine poignancy, particularly in the representation of Garibaldi’s indefatigable fervor: “Italy will not truly exist as a nation until her flag, symbolizing the unity and freedom of the former Roman Empire, flies from the Capitol in Rome.
”A wonderfully researched and dramatically gripping work of historical fiction.” – Kirkus Reviews
Giuseppe agreed and rose to leave, but the prisoner had one more thing to say. “While I admire your love for country do not let it blind you to the need for other forms of love in this short life we lead. To be a soldier is honorable. To be a husband, to be a father, that is to be human. The land will not remember you, the ones you love will.”
While any past event is vulnerable to the mythmaking of film, the Civil War might be the most contested event in American History. No national historical moment has been more written about (except perhaps World War II), argued over and romanticized than the so-called Irrepressible Conflict.
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