...Philadelphia’s Fabric Row! I really couldn't resist taking a picture of this macabre yet funny window shop.
Since Halloween has Anglo-Saxon origins, I never celebrated it as a young girl in my home country. Actually, Italy only imported vampires, witches and other assorted monsters and the entire Halloween shenanigans in the last few years.
Sadly, they replaced local celebrations for 1st November, that is All Saints’ Day, and 2nd November, a day dedicated to the commemoration of the dead. According to the original traditions, around this time of the year you would also eat special cakes like the “bones of the dead” or marzipan fava beans (this tradition is connected with the classical times when fava beans were used as funeral offers, but also with the fact that the flower of this plant is characterised by black spots in the shape of the "tau" letter from the Greek alphabet - the initial of the word "thanatos", death).
Mesmerised by their pastel colours and taste, I developed a rather serious addiction for the marzipan fava beans of the dead and my mum was obliged to send me the sweets to Glasgow to avoid getting my begging yet annoying phone calls asking for the sweets.
Marzipan fava beans addiction aside, I must say well done to the National Cinema Museum of Turin for organising last night a Halloween party in connection with their exhibition "Diversamente vivi. Zombi, vampiri, mummie, fantasmi" ("Living Differently. Zombies, vampires, mummies, ghosts" - until 9th January 2011) that analyses through masks, gadgets, paintings (think Edvard Munch's "The Vampire") posters and clips our passion for monsters in comics, films, literature and videogames, trying to understand what fascinates us about the living dead.
An entire film retrospective that kicks off tomorrow (1st-2nd November; 9th-11th November) at the museum's art-house filmhouse - the Cinema Massimo - also focuses on rare horror/cult films (John Carpenter, Roger Corman and Lucio Fulci's classics are obviously included) and on movies dedicated to mummies.
Among the latter there is actually one film I would like to see again from a fashion point of view and that's Albert Capellani and Henri Desfontaines' silent film Le Roman de la Momie (1911).
The film was based on Théophile Gautier's novel and inspired by France's passion for early Egyptian archaeological discoveries.
Le Roman de la Momie told the story of Lord Evandale, a young man who discovered a perfectly preserved mummy of a woman and, falling into a reverie, he turned into the poet Poëri in love with the beautiful Tahoser.
Apart from the costumes, it's a very interesting film for the use of the pochoir technique. Employed in fashion by Mariano Fortuny, the pochoir (or stencilling) technique was also applied to some early silent films such as Nino Oxilia's to add emotional force or symbolic meanings to characters and costumes. Definitely worth investigating/rediscovering it then!
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