Timothy Reckart is an animator and filmmaker, now in cinemas with his first feature film The Star. His short film Head Over Heels (2012), was developed as graduation work at London National Film and Television School: screened at Cannes Film Festival, it won over thirty international awards and was nominated as Best Animated Short at the 2013 Academy Awards.
At first glance, this stop-motion short film seems to follow a well-known pattern: it takes off from a surreal premise, then proceeds to explore all of its possible implications. But there’s more.
What really makes for an engaging experience is its stunning character development, which cleverly avoids the traps of mainstream romanticism. The elderly couple depicted in the movie is facing a daily routine made of mutual intolerance and little, rude acts of spite, at a time when any affection seems to be lost; with striking sensitivity, Reckart weaves a small parable on the glaciations every love story may inevitably go through.
Yet every crisis has two faces, being both destructive and fertile, and it can turn out to be a chance to start over.
In the director’s own words,
when two people are in love, it’s not this perfect machinery that you see in a Hollywood film, the moments don’t fall into place, you continuously have to make an effort and adjust […]. They’re different people and they constantly have to renew the effort to stay together. And actually it’s the differences and the difficulties that provide them opportunities to show love for each other.
If you read Bizzarro Bazar, you might know that I have long been following with admiration the work of Ayzad, who is an expert in alternative sexualities.
A great deal of intelligence, and a perfect lucidity are essential in order to tackle such sensible topics with a reliable yet light approach.
It’s not by chance that Ayzad’s website has been recently nominated by Kinkly fourth-best sex blog written by a male worldwide, and in the 27th overall position (among approximately 500 candidates).
His books and his blog are not just a treasure trove of scrupulous information, which is bound to surprise even those who fancy being experts in BDSM or extreme eros: Ayzad also willingly pursues a taste for the weird, in a constant balance between the fascination for our sexuality’s strangest incarnations, and a liberating laugh — because love among the Homo sapiens, let’s admit it, can sometimes be frankly comical.
Therefore, when he asked me if I would answer some questions for his website, I did not hesitate. What came out of it is not an interview, on the account of the intelligence I mentioned before, but rather an exchange of experiences between two seekers of oddities: one of the best discussions I had recently, where, perfectly at ease with each other, we even delved into some quite personal details (and avoided a quarrel, albeit a friendly one, by a narrow margin).
Article by guestbloggers Alessia Cagnotto and Martina Huni
It is a fine October day, the sky is clear and the sun warms us as if we were still at the beginning of September. We are in Moncalieri, in front of a building that seems to have been meticulously saved from the ravagings of time. The facade is uniformly illuminated; the decors and windows cast very soft shadows, and the Irish-green signs stand out against the salmon pink brick walls, as do the white letters reading “Ristorante La Grotta Gino“.
The entrance shows nothing strange, but we do not let ourselves be deceived by this normality: we know what awaits us inside is far from ordinary.
Upon entering the small bar, we are greeted by a smiling girl who shows us the way to the fairy-tale restaurant.
On our left we see a few set tables, surrounded by ancient pots and pans hanging from the walls, old tools and photographs: our gaze follows these objects unto the opening of the lair that will take us inside another world.
Here we see standing two dark red caryatids, guarding the entrance of the path, and beyond them, the reassuring plaster gives way to a dark grey stone vault, as our eyes wander inside the tunnel lit only by a few spotlights stuck to the ceiling.
Once past the caryatids of the Real World, in order to proceed inside the cave — as in all good adventures — we see a moored boat awaiting to set sail; we soon find ourselves floating on a path of uncertain waters, aboard our personal ferry. Feeling at ease in Jim Hawkins‘ shoes, we decide to enjoy the trip and focus on the statues lined up on both sides of the canal.
Behind a slight bend along the way (more or less 50 meters on a stream of spring water), we meet the first group of stone characters, among which is standing the builder of the cave himself, Mr. Lorenzo Gino, together with the Gentleman King and a chubby cupid holding an inscription dedicated to King Victor Emmanuel.
The story of the Grotta is incredible: over a span of thirty years, from 1855 to 1885, Lorenzo Gino excavated this place all by himself, on the pretext of expanding his carpenter shop. The construction works encountered many difficulties, as he proceeded without following any blueprint or architectural plan, but were nonetheless completed with this amazing result.
In 1902 his son Giovanni dedicated a bust, the one we just passed by, to his father and his efforts; many journalists attended the inauguration of this statue, and a couple of books were published to advertise the astounding Grotta Gino.
Back in the days, the public already looked with wonder at these improvised tunnels where Gino placed depictions of real characters, well-known at the time.
The light coming from above further sculpts the lineaments of the statues, making their eyes look deeper, and from those shady orbits these personified stones fiercely return our curious gaze.
Proceeding along the miniature canal, we eventually dock at a small circular widening. A bit sorry that the ride is already over, we get off the boat and take a look inside the dark niche opening before us: two mustached men emerge from darkness, accompanied by a loyal hunting dog holding a hare in her mouth.
We realize with amazement that we’ve just begun a new adventurous path; we climb a few steps and stumble upon another group of statues standing in circle: they happily dance under a skylight drilled in the vaulted ceiling, which lets some natural sunlight enter this dark space. These rays are so unexpected they seem almost magical.
New burrows branch off from here. On our right there’s a straight tunnel, where calm waters run, reflecting wine bottles and strange little petrified creatures nestled in the walls. The half-busts, some gentlemen as high as their top hats, and an elegant melancholic dame all lean out over the stream, where a bratty little kid is playfully splashing around.
We smile perhaps, feeling in the belly of a whale. Our estrangement is intensified by the eerie lighting: very colorful neons turn the stone red, blue, purple, so we observe the surroundings like a child watches the world through a colored candy paper. The only thing that could bring us back to the reality of the 21st Century would be the sound coming from the radio, but its discrete volume is not enough to break the spell, to shake the feeling that those creatures are looking at us, amused by our astonishment.
We make our way through the tunnels as if searching for a magic treasure chest, hypnotized by the smallest detail; everywhere wine bottles lie covered in dust, while human figures carved in stone seem to point us towards the right way. We enter a semi-circular lair, filled with a number of bottles; we observe them, label after label, as they tower over us arranged on several levels: the bottles decorate a series of recesses inhabited by little, bizarre smiling creatures leaning over towards us. In the middle of this sort of miniature porch, stands a young man of white stone, even more joyful than his roommates, forever bound to celebrate the wine around him.
We keep moving in order to reach a new group of statues: this time there are more characters, once again arranged in a circle — gentlemen sporting a big moustache and high top hats stand beside a playful young fellow and a well-dressed lady with her bulky outfit; the shadows of the fabric match the mistress’ hairstyle. In the dim light, these statues suggest a slight melancholy: we can recognize mankind’s everlasting attempt to sculpt Time itself, to carve in stone a particular instant, a vision that we wouldn’t want to be lost and consumed; a mission that is unfortunately bound to fail because, as the saying goes, “the memory of happiness is not happiness”.
Four a couple of minutes, though, we actually manage to join this Feast of Stone, we walk around the partygoers, following the whirl suggested by their frozen movements.
We eventually leave, in silence, like unwanted guests, without having understood the reason for this celebration.
The burrows take us towards a slight rise, the moist path turns into a stairway. We climb the stairs, accustomed by now to the impressive half-busts keeping us company through the last part of our adventure.
A narrow wrought-iron spiral staircase, green as the signs we met on the outside, leads us back to our current era. Its very presence contrasts with one last, small statue hanging on the opposite wall: a white, fleshy but run-down cupid remains motionless under a little window, sunlight brushing against him. From his niche, he is destined to imagine the world without ever knowing it.
Our trip eventually reaches its end as we enter a big circular dining room, under a high dome. This is the place where receptions and events are usually held.
The way back, which we reluctantly follow, gifts us with one last magical sight before getting our feet back on the ground: seen from our boat, the light coming from outisde, past the red caryatids, appears excessively bright and reverberates on the water creating a weird, oblong reflection, reminding us of depictions in ancient books of legends and fables.
Upon exiting this enchanted lair, and coming back to the Real World, we find the October day still tastes like the beginning of Spetember.
With a smile we silently thank Mr. Lorenzo Gino for digging his little fairy tale inside reality, and for giving substance, by means of stone, to a desire we all harbor: the chance of playing and dreaming again, for a while, just like when we were kids.
When we could turn the world into something magic, by looking at it through a sticky and colorful candy paper.
“La Grotta Gino” is in Piazza Amedeo Ferdinando 2, Moncalieri (TO). Here is itsofficial website and FB page. On the blog of the speleological association Egeria Centro Ricerche Sotterranee there is an article (in Italian) mentioning the mystery of a second Grotta Gino near Milan. Take a look at the beautiful photographs taken by the authors of this post: Alessia Cagnotto and Martina Huni.
Next year this beautiful lady, Katherine Johnson, will turn one hundred. When she was a little girl, her father Joshua used to repeat to her: “You are as good as anybody in this town, but you’re no better”.
It was hard to believe you were as good as anybody else for a coloured little girl who had grown up in White Sulphur Springs, where education ended compulsorily with the eighth grade for anybody who was not white.
Katherine’s father, Joshua, worked as a farmer and handyman for the Greenbrier Hotel, the thermal resort where the wealthiest squires of all Virginia used to spend their holidays; it was perhaps for this reason that he wanted his daughter to follow her own path without hesitation, in spite of the segregationist barriers. If she wasn’t allowed to study in the small town where they lived, he was going to bring her to Institute, 130 miles further west.
Katherine, for her part, sped up the process: at the age of 14 she had already finished high school, at the age of 18 she earned a degree with honours in mathematics. In 1938 the Supreme Court established that “white-only” universities should admit coloured students, therefore in 1939 Katherine became the first African-American woman to attend the graduate school at the West Virginia University in Morgantown.
After completing her studies, however, a career was far from being guaranteed. Katherine wished she could take up research, but once again she had to cope with two disadvantages: she was a woman, and on top of that African-American.
She taught mathematics for more than ten years, waiting for a good chance which eventually presented itself in 1952. NASA (called NACA at the time) had started to employ both white and African-American mathematics, and offered her a job. Therefore in 1953 Katherine Johnson joined the very first team of the space agency.
She started working in the “computer in skirts” section, a pool of women whose job was to read the data from the black boxes of planes and carry out other mathematical tasks. One day Katherine was assigned to an all-male flight research team; she was supposed to work with them for a limited time, but Katherine’s knowledge of analytic geometry made her bosses “forget” to return her to her old position.
But she couldn’t escape segregation. Katherine was required to work, eat, and use restrooms in areas separated from those of her white peers. Regardless of whoever had carried out the work, reports were signed only by the men of the pool.
But Katherine had kept in mind her father’s words, and her strategy was to ignore what she was expected to do. She used to participate in the all-male engineering meetings, she signed reports in place of her male superiors, and in spite of any objection. Because she had never thought she was inferior – nor superior – to anybody.
That was a pioneering era and participating in the first Space Task Force in history meant venturing in completely new operations and facing unknown issues. With her competence and talent for geometry, Katherine was one of the most brilliant “human computers”. She calculated the trajectory of the first American space flight, the one of Alan Shepard in 1961.
Then at some point NASA decided to move on to electronic computers, dismantling the team of “human calculators”; the first flight programmed using the machines was that of John Glenn, who orbited around the Earth. But the astronaut himself refused to leave unless Katherine manually verified all the calculations made by the computers. She was the only one he trusted.
Later Katherine helped to calculate the trajectory of Apollo 11, launched in 1969. Seeing Neil Armstrong taking the first step on the Moon moved her, but only to a certain point: for somebody who had been working on that mission for years, this certainly came as no surprise.
For a long time, little was known about the work carried out by Katherine (and her colleagues): overlooked for decades by a society that was always reluctant to acknowledge her real value, today her name is studied at school and her story has been recently narrated by the film Hidden figures (2016, directed by Theodore Melfi). The contribution offered by Katherine to the space race is now regarded as essential – although the ones who became heroes were those astronauts who could have never left the Earth soil without her precise calculations.
Smiling, about to turn one hundred, Katherine Johnson continues to repeat: “I’m as good as anybody, but no better”.
