Free Pussy Riot 3

In every country in every town in every village there is a church: Right now I am in Sveta Petka Divcibare Serbia: FREE PUSSY RIOT! Women Join Me

Free Pussy Riot from Jasmina Tesanovic on Vimeo.

Free Pussy Riot Girls 2

I used to say, “This will not be my war anyway” to my daughter, to my young colleagues, and friends feminists or not: to girls.

We fought in the seventies eighties nineties for freedom of choice, for divorce, for contraception, for women’s human rights, against domestic violence, for peace in the world. We fought incessantly, ruthlessly, risking our careers, our private lives, our security and normality. And we accomplished a lot, all over the world; in Italy, in Serbia, in USA, name it.

The second wave of feminism was standing on the shoulders on the suffragettes from the beginning of the 19th century, who often gave their lives for women’s rights. Then I got tired, and not me only. The world took a bad turn, not only in Serbia during the nineties, but everywhere after September 11!

The Globalization of Balkanization put at stake all the conquests of women and not only of women: terrorism, and raging war on terrorism, brought us police right-wing technocrat dystopian states where human rights became just another word for nothing left to lose. I told my young girls then: you must fight it now, this is your world, the one we inadvertedly left you. Learn how much you have inherited from your grandmothers, don’t take it for granted because you are may well lose it, step by step, bit by bit. To the church, to the state, to the financiers.

Private Vices Public Virtues

In English, na srpskom, en francais

boing boing
Ragazze pronte a tutto

Many years ago, I took part in a movie directed by Miclos Jancso, called “Private Vices, Public Virtues.” It was a dissolute story of sex drugs and rock-n-roll, anachronistically set in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

In the film, the rebellious heir to the crown of Franz Joseph gets murdered by his own father, the Emperor, for a criminal public display of orgiastic excesses, which involve the nobles of the court, plus the many less noble participants of the collapsing empire.

I remember vividly when a group of girls arrived from Rome to participate in the film. “Il gruppo Max,” they were called, and they brought their film assignment with them: “pronte a tutto,” ready for anything. Meaning ready to do anything requested by the film production, ready to dance, to sing, to strip, to have sex on camera. Ilona Staller, who later became the famous Italian parliamentarian Cicciolina, was one of that group.