Sunday, April 16, 2006

"Nine Good Teeth"- Small Independant Documentary- 104-year-old Italian-American Grandmother

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Grandmothers and Grandfathers are such wonderful creatures.  Nonnas are especially so. Unmatched in any other Heritage.

 

This is a funny, surprising and quite remarkable film about a 104-year-old Italian-American grandmother, whose chronicle started at 96.   

 

'NINE GOOD TEETH'

"Nine Good Teeth" is a documentary that proves that if you look at what might seem an ordinary life, you can find an extraordinary story.

Such is what director Alex Halpern finds in this funny, surprising and quite remarkable film about his 104-year-old Italian-American grandmother, Mary Mirabito Livernese Cavielere, whose history he started chronicling at age 96.

Toss in a bit of Martin Scorsese and John Waters, and you might expect this kind of tale, but it's all true, right down to infidelity, murder, death, love, the mob and beat poet Jack Kerouac.

Cavielere emerges as a fiercely independent, unsentimental woman who survives two marriages, the deaths of her husbands, son and sisters and worse. But she remains clear-eyed enough she can speak sharply about what comes with death and practices lying in state in the gown she's already picked out.

Told in interviews, with archival material and old film, the story travels from the United States to Italy and back again and never loses interest or its sense of humor.

"Nine Good Teeth," 6:15 p.m. Saturday, Salem Cinema, 88 minutes, followed by a Q&A with Halpern.

 

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