By https://cineuropa.org/film/428180/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72927126
I have just watched Lord of the Ants (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv6v-zIngl8), a film about the horrific treatment of the Italian writer Aldo Braibanti and his young lover Ettore Tagliaferri in Italy in the 1960s. Braibanti was jailed for 'mental manipulation' (plagio, a crime which has now been abolished in Italy). According to the film, this action was instigated by the mother and brother (whose motivation seems mainly to be jealousy) of his lover Ettore, who is subjected to a hideous 'cure', consisting mainly of ECT (Electro Convulsive Therapy) which psychiatrists at the time seemed to use for 'conditions' they didn't understand. This destroys the life of the young man. Braibanti's prison sentence is reduced to two years because of the herosim he showed as a partisan during World War II. The film is unsentimental but very realistic. Underlying it, however, is the passion of the great director, Gianni Amelio, who came out late in life as gay in 2014. Other superb films of his include Colpire al Cuore e Ladro dei Bambini.
it seems to me that this film would be ideal viewing for the Focolare Movement - and it's President Margaret Karram and Co-president Father Jesus Moran - which has recently expressed a change in heart from its previous cruel and savage homophobia (or has it?: difficult to say). The current leaders of Focolare will find the film very informative becasue the Focolare Movement - including its foundress, Chiara Lubich* - was very much part of the evil culture represented in the film. For them, this film is not simply research or background information. It is part of their history. They participated in this culture of hatred - and very actively. I know because I experienced it personally: when I came out to them at the age of 18, they tried to impose on me conversion therapy, an arranged marriage (carried out via the leaders of the movement) and chemical castration.
In Lord of the Ants, the sincerity and innocence of Ettore's testimony in court during which, ravaged by his 'cure', which clearly hasn't succeed, he publicly affirms his love for the accused - shot in an astonishing single close-up of newcomer Leonardo Maltese as Ettore. This alone is a heart-breaking condemnation of the cruelty of those who supported such methods - such as the Focolare Movement, and certainly many others in the Catholic Church. A close friend of mine, a full time member of Focolare was subjected to a so-called 'sleep cure' of his homosexualityat Loppiano: forced to sleep virtually continually for months by taking sleeping pills day and night. Of course it didn't work - it just made his suffering even worse. Partly becuase I had witnessed this, I left the Focolare Movement before they could wreak upon me the horrors they had threatened - conversion therapy etc. Incredibly, rather than becoming more enlightened with the passage of time, Focolare's methods of dealing with homosexual members, got much worse in the 90s and even after the year 2,000. Conversion therapy, and extremely harsh treatment of LGBTQ people is a crime against humanity (see: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/crimes-against-humanity.shtml Part1g). Excuses such as 'we didn't realise' or 'everyone thought the same thing at that time' cannot be used to justify such actions. The Nazis could equally have said, 'but everyone was anti-semitic at that time'.
Watching this film is a meditation for the focolarini, not of what other people did, but what they did. Chiara Lubich herself detested homosexuality so much that she told the young man who underwent the sleep cure mentioned above that she would prefer him to be knocked down by a truck than ever commit a homosexual act. How can people who preach love indulge in such terrible hatred and cruelty? Public repentance as a movement is the only satisfying response. We do not wish to hear any revised preaching or coverups, which many 'new movements' seem to be frantically indluging in at present. And it appears to me that the new Focolare branch known as 'No-one is Alone' (https://www.focolare.org/en/2022/11/15/italiano-nessuno-solo/ - interestingly not avaialable in English on the Focolare official website. Wonder why?) is a cover-up for past horrors as shown in Lord of the Ants. How is it possible that an organisation which was encouraging and practising conversion therapy, a crime against humanity, until very recently now claims it is 'accompanying' LGBT people and their parents, according to the Focolare website ('come assicurare un percorso di accompagnamento, per approfondire e vivere il carisma dell’unità ' - 'to ensure a process of accompaniment to deepen and live the charism of unity'). You would need to be suffering from Stockholm syndrome to fall for that.
*It is paradoxical that people who simply will not shut up about desiring to be true Christians, saints even, will happily watch a murder mystery or a war film (Chiara Lubich was a big fan of the Margaret Rutherford films of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple - not as violent as today's films, but still packed with murders) but would find a film about love between two people of the same sex disgusting.
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