Babette's Feast

Another parish movie night next week. The last one involved spirited discussions over whether Mel Gibson intended a US world domination allegory, and how water was a recurring image as a purifying force. I love our parish.

This time: BABETTE'S FEAST. Next Wed 27/8/08 7:30 p.m. same place. Sign up in the church.

Based on a short story by the Dane Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) of Out of Africa fame, whose life is a book in itself. Her father had lived among the Chippewa tribe in 19th century Wisconsin and sired a daughter before returning to Denmark. When Karen was 9, he hanged himself after being diagnosed with syphilis. The tragic irony is Blixen contracted syphilis from her philandering husband, the coffee plantation farmer Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and was to suffer with symptoms all her life, and with anorexia nervosa. After her divorce, her well-documented love affair with The Honourable Denys Finch Hatton, brother of the 14th Earl of Nottingham and Winchelsea, ended abruptly when he died in a plane crash. Blixen returned to Denmark penniless and began writing only at 46, in English. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature and highly respected by Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Arthur Miller and e.e. cummings.

In 1992, Fr. Angelo D'Agostino SJ, MD, founded The Nyumbani Orphanage in the town of Karen, near Nairobi, Kenya - the location made famous by Blixen. The orphanage houses HIV+ children. Many of its volunteers come from Denmark, perhaps Blixen fans following her trail.

[Image: Nordiskfilm]

Next parish film night is here