#no dogs or italians allowed

[gael-garcia]

TOP FIRST-TIME WATCHES OF 2024 tagged by @hayaomiyazaki thank you<3

Rules: Post 9 of your favorite films you saw for the first time this year that are not new (2023/2024) but are new to you, and tag 9 others to do the same.

I broke the rules I'm sorry this is 12

That Day, On the Beach (1983 🇹🇼), dir. Edward Yang Barber's Tales (2013 🇵🇭), dir. Jun Lana Leila and the Wolves (1984 🇱🇧🇵🇸), dir. Heiny Srour Looking for Langston (1989 🇬🇧), dir. Isaac Julien There Is No Evil (2020 🇮🇷), dir. Mohammad Rasoulof They Do Not Exist (1974 🇵🇸), dir. Mustafa Abu Ali Tokyo Godfathers (2003 🇯🇵), dir. Satoshi Kon No Dogs or Italians Allowed (2022), dir. Alain Ughetto Jefferson Circus Songs (1974), dir. Suzan Pitt Winter Kept Us Warm (1965 🇨🇦), dir. David Secter Cleaners (2019 🇵🇭), dir. Glenn Barit The White Meadows (2009 🇮🇷), dir. Mohammad Rasoulof

tagging @igneousbody @ourlittlesister2015 @natalia-lafourcade @nonbinarybriarmoss @lesbiancolumbo @sarazanmai @albertserra @chutiyaaa @illgiveyouahint @isabelleadjani @cooperhoward @muozu @farminglesbian @lady-arryn @moonlight

[gregor-samsung]

Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens [Manodopera] (Alain Ughetto, 2022)

[ourlittlesister2015]

No Dogs or Italians Allowed [Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens] (2022), dir. Alain Ughetto

[whatamigonnawatchtoday]

Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens (No Dogs or Italians Allowed)

2023. Animated Period Drama

By Alain Ughetto

Voices: Ariane Ascaride, Stefano Paganini, Diego Giuliani, Christophe Gatto, Laurent Pasquier, Laura Devoti, Bruno Fontaine, Thierry Buenafuente...

Country: France, Switzerland, Italy

Language: French, Italian

[toon-feasts]

No Dogs or Italians Allowed (2022) dir. Alain Ughetto

[szuffersztar]

No Dogs or Italians Allowed (2022)

[lefilmdujour]

Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens / Alain Ughetto / Italy, France and Switzerland / 2022

[thoughtportal]

No Dogs or Italians Allowed / Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens (2023) - Trailer (English Subs)

Early 20th century, Northern Italy. The Ughetto family, living through difficult times, dreams of a better future abroad. The story tells of Luigi Ughetto crossing the Alps to start a new life in France, thus changing the destiny of his beloved family forever. His grandson travels back in time revisiting their history, in an intimate dialogue with his grandmother Cesira.

[cineclubsala1]

Interdit aux chiens et aux italiens, dir. Alain Ughetto (2022)

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2024:

No Dogs or Italians Allowed (Alain Ughetto), 2022

[moviecinepelis]

[chromatic-lamina]

I watched this on the plane on my travels today. It was heartwarming. Has a lot to say in its own quiet way. Very clever, too.

[gregor-samsung]

Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens [Manodopera] (Alain Ughetto, 2022)

[ourlittlesister2015]

No Dogs or Italians Allowed [Interdit aux chiens et aux Italiens] (2022), dir. Alain Ughetto

[bisquid]

Wait wait you can't just drop that off and not elaborate. What do you mean is there a mafia presence in Wales?? Please spill, what things did you notice??

Okay so bearing in mind that I have ADHD and Chronic Terrible Observational Skills:

I am in Cardiff

For a concert I am attending solo

Doors open at 5

4:15 ish I go 'hmm I should eat something'

Cardiff is - unsurprisingly, being tiny and yet home to FOUR concert venues - Very Busy

Find McDonald's

McDonald's is very full. I recall my last concert related McDick's experience, and promptly bounce

Directly across the street

Is an Italian restaurant

It looks closed but fuckit maybe I can beg for like. Bread or some shit

Go over

Am immediately pounced upon by the hitherto unnoticed chain-smoking woman hanging out by the door mostly hidden by a potted ficus(?)

"I was wondering if you were open and if-" "yes yes we are open what would you like?" (strongish Italian accent)

Inside restaurant is Deserted

Explain that I'm sort of in a rush, am assured it's fine

Order chicken milanese which is generally a pasta dish with a breaded chicken component

Am led to seat nearish the front and promptly provided with a pint of coke in a glass tankard

Am then provided with a front row seat to an absolutely incomprehensible series of people entering and exiting (and in one case walking directly into) the door to what I can only presume is the kitchen

Starting with the guy who had been sitting at a table chain-smoking over a pile of papers

I counted at least three people exiting at least twice without actually entering in between

Am finally brought food

It is a breaded, butterflied chicken breast approximately the size of my face and a small pile of pasta approximately the size of my fist

It is all delicious

Chain-smoking papers man reappears, now wearing a chef's apron labcoat thing

Go up to pay, chain-smoking ficus lady is now having a very loud argument in a language I did not recognise but was not Italian Welsh English French russian Gaelic or Spanish

She sees me, says, and I quote 'ah little girl lost, one moment' and promptly hangs up

I am 27 and only nominally female

I am not remotely lost

She charges me for the pint of coke but not the food

I try to point out that she hasn't charged me for the food

'do you want to pay for the food?'

'.... Not if I don't have to?'

'good'

I leave. The door is now full of half a dozen very tall very Italian men and one absolutely adorable cocker spaniel

I ask if I can pet the dog (I have my priorities straight okay)

I am allowed to pet the dog. The dog and I are now best friends

The dog lead holder asks me in extremely accented but impeccably correct English if I had enjoyed the food

'yeah it was great!'

Everyone laughs a bit

I smile and pet the dog and realise I'm now late for the concert and hurry off

I see a post on Tumblr about mob fronts and several connections are made in my brain all at once

[not-terezi-pyrope]

I think that living in a culture where we expect almost all narratives to exist primarily in a textual form has left us woefully complacent to the intangibility of oral stories, where they still exist.

For instance, when I was a small child, my grandmother would during her visits regale me with episodic installments following fictional characters that, as far as I can tell, were entirely of her own spontaneous devising. The two of these I can remember most clearly are "The Forgettis" and "Rebel and Jim".

The Forgettis was a comedy following the misadventures of an absurdly over-extended family of Italian nationals, The Forgettis, who were cursed with a sort of hereditary amnesia that would cause them to periodically forget all prior context of their lives and invent new ones. After all several dozen of them visited the UK on holiday, they promptly forgot that they were on holiday at all, and settled into an abandoned petrol station on "Gasworks Lane" after their tourist coach stopped there to refuel and they never got back on.

The patriarch of the family, Giuseppe Forgetti, was often at the center of things, but most episodes would involve several family members getting lost and subsequently adapting to fulfill some bizarre new occupation based on whatever they found in their surroundings. A particularly memorable episode involved most of the family leaving the Gasworks, only to return and find it had overgrown into an indoor jungle, and the sole remaining member of the family had adapted into a sort of safari hunter persona, managing the population of unlikely exotic animals that had taken up residence.

Rebel and Jim was a fantasy crime procedural about police constable "Jim" and his talking dog, "Rebel", who would make use of a number of supernatural items and allies to catch ne'er-do-wells. Their signature tool was their flying cloak - a cloak that allowed Jim to fly when worn, so long as Rebel sat on top of his head to also be under the cloak. They were also friends with the "Rock Monster", a sort of granite earth elemental who lived underground, but who was frequently confused with the identically named "Rock Monster", who as best as I remember was a sort of "rock and roll elemental".

These stories were pretty formative to my childhood, looking back, but the sad things is that the above recollections - the most I can recall concretely after thinking for ten minutes or so - are likely all that is recoverable of what I know were some pretty sprawling sagas with many episodic story arcs. I can no longer ask my grandmother, as she passed away from dementia two years ago. I can barely remember any details of Rebel and Jim at all, and I'm fairly sure there were other stories I can't even remember the names of. What I have written above may be the only record of them that will survive into posterity, which seems so sad for something that had a pretty big impact on me and are some of my fondest memories of my grandmother from my childhood.

The really frustrating thing is that I am sure that at one point she made attempts to write parts of these stories down - I remember seeing word documents! - but I have no idea where those would have survived, if at all. As far as I know we don't have any of her old computer hardware from what would have been 15-20 years ago. And that's still so recent! Imagine the equivalent when a story has been lost for several decades or centuries, no matter how impactful in its time.

So much so easily lost. When oral storytelling was the only storytelling form, people knew what was up and would make efforts to memorize and preserve stories. But instead if something isn't written down it so often just slips away.