Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Day 261 – Italian Night

For today’s intention, I participated in Italian Night hosted by our local library. My mom joined me and we walked over to see the showing of a movie called “Golden Door”. They offered drinks, popcorn and brownies which was a nice and unexpected touch. We took our seats and listened to a local woman’s opening remarks about the upcoming movie and upcoming events offered by this Italian American Association. Obviously this event caught my attention because my husband Vinny is 100% Italian and he has told me stories about his grandparents coming from Italy that are so intriguing.

Once the movie begun, Martin Scorsese opened with commentary about what inspired the movie and some of the background. The movie was a reenactment of sorts of a specific family’s journey that started with the difficult decision of going to America- because obviously families of the larger sizes could not take everyone with them. It showed a bit of what it took for them to receive their actual passes to America. Your heart just went out to them when you saw the detailed, arduous journey on the boat, which in this movie they hit a storm and many people died.
Not to mention once they made it to America, without really understanding what was going on – they were put through many medical and educational tests to see if they were “intelligent” enough to be in this society. Also, many of the women were married off in the strangest manner. The man that proposed to the officials for marriage were presented to them in a group setting and the only choice they had was to agree to the marriage or be deported back. These immigrants were actually in quarantine for quite some time, much of which families were kept separated. It just makes you think of this old process in a much different light when you are seeing it on the screen.  It was very educational in fact.  

This movie opened my eyes to quite a few different elements of the immigration process back then. It was quite informative and a very unique movie for sure (but then again anything with Martin Scorsese is going to be though right?!?!?). This was a good intention on a dreary, misty evening. #movienight #HGAL
 

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