Uncategorized
How Mussolini’s Jewish lover changed Fascist art and design
Not even 70 years after Italy unified, Benito Mussolini’s staged march on Rome so unnerved the government that King Victor Emmanuel III named him prime minister, opening the door to Fascist rule. “And so then began the task of selling Italy: at home, abroad, and as an idea in itself,” according to “The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy.”
Now on view at Manhattan’s Poster House, the exhibition examines the intersection of propaganda and art in Mussolini’s Italy. Featuring 75 works on loan from the Fondazione Massimo e Sonia Cirulli in Bologna and curated by photographic artist and author B.A. Van Sise, the show explores how the regime used bold design, vivid color and modernist imagery to shape the nation’s self-image and fuel the Futurist movement.
But beyond the bombast, the sleek typefaces and arresting compositions lies a deeper, more complicated story. At its heart is Mussolini’s longtime lover and muse, Margherita Sarfatti, a Venetian Jew whose aesthetic sensibilities helped define the visual language of Italian Fascism.
“It’s not a Jewish show, though a person could argue it has a huge Jewish element since everything goes back to Margherita Sarfatti, who’s as Jewish as they come,” Van Sise said. “Fundamentally, Sarfatti’s the core of the show. The entire Italian art establishment changes gears because Mussolini’s girlfriend likes Futurism.”
Born in 1880 into a wealthy Jewish family, Sarfatti became a journalist, art critic and socialite who served as Mussolini’s adviser, biographer and cultural strategist. She funded Il Popolo d’Italia and was, as the exhibition text notes, “the uncrowned queen of Italy.”
“Think Gertrude Stein with better couture,” Van Sise said. “Every single thing in this show exists because of her — the Duce’s girlfriend adored Futurist art, and her taste dictated the direction of Italy’s visual culture. Artists and movements jumped ship to follow her lead, obeying in advance.”
Her influence is evident in pieces such as Marcello Dudovich’s 1936 poster “Esposizione Rhodia Albene alla Rinascente,” which depicts two elegantly dressed women striding in lockstep, evoking Sarfatti’s emphasis on fashion, modernity and movement.
The exhibit unfolds in three sections — “Italy as an Idea,” “Italy at Home,” and “Italy in the World” — each highlighting how Italian identity was constructed through imagery that linked domestic life, political messaging, and global ambition.
“Cioccolato Ali d’Italia,” a poster from 1931, depicts a sleek silver aircraft soaring across the page. Created to commemorate Minister of Aviation Italo Balbo’s transatlantic flights to South America, the image showcases Italy’s growing aviation prowess. A small rendering of Columbus’ ship tucked in the corner underscores the regime’s imperial aspirations.
The 1933 “Ardita Fiat” poster highlights the introduction of the Fiat Ardita, a streamlined, torpedo-shaped car whose name, which means “the daring one,” embodied Fascist vigor. In it a woman sits behind the wheel, her white gloves and black fez hat mirroring those worn by the Arditi, Italy’s elite assault troops.
Van Sise said it was essential to acknowledge the significant, though often overlooked, role Italian Jews played in Fascism’s early years. Among them were Gino Arias, an economist who addressed the National Fascist Party shortly before it seized power in 1922; Elisa Majer Rizzoli, who led the party’s women’s wing; and Guido Jung, an Orthodox Jew who served as finance minister.
“It was really important to include the Jewish history of the Italian Fascist period because it’s partly my own,” Van Sise said. “My family were Tunisian and Libyan Jews who came to Italy, and some branches were old-line Italian families — there for centuries, if not a millennium.”
Eventually Jews were targeted in Italy. By 1938 Mussolini had enacted racial laws, forcing thousands of Jews, including Sarfatti and Van Sise’s grandfather, to flee. Sarfatti spent her exile in Switzerland, Argentina, and Uruguay before returning after the war, only to learn her sister was among the more than seven thousand Italian Jews murdered in the Holocaust.
Van Sise’s grandfather also returned, before the war’s end, and joined the partisans.
He provides the exhibition’s stark coda: a small black-and-white photograph showing the corpses of Mussolini and others hanging by their heels in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto. The photographer was Van Sise’s grandfather.
“It’s a brutal image,” Van Sise said. “But it brings the story full circle — art, politics and identity collapsing into history itself.”
“The Future Was Then: The Changing Face of Fascist Italy” runs through Feb. 22 at the Poster House.
The post How Mussolini’s Jewish lover changed Fascist art and design appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
How the Israeli police’s first trans volunteer fought bigotry on the force
From the beginning of the biographical documentary The First Lady, Efrat Tilma makes it clear she has mixed feelings about the film, which details how she became the first trans woman to volunteer in Israel’s police department. When asked why she wanted to make the movie, she tells one of the directors, “I didn’t want to. You asked me.” This prickly demeanor persists throughout the film, although she later acknowledges that she wants “to show people that a trans woman is just like any other woman, like any other person.”
Tilma starts her story in 1964, the year she first tried living as a woman. Using archival footage, animation, and present-day interviews, directors Udi Nir and Sagi Bornstein present a moving portrait of Tilma’s life, unveiling how the burdens of her past have followed her into the present.
When Tilma was 14, she often wandered the streets of Tel Aviv to escape her abusive father. There she met another trans woman, Gila Goldstein, who introduced her to a whole network of trans women who taught Tilma about hormones and gender reassignment surgery. That same year, a man held her hostage in his apartment for a day and a half and sexually assaulted her. Not long afterwards, she says, an Israeli police officer threatened to kill her for dressing as a woman.
These experiences made her determined to carve her own path in spite of obstacles or the opinions of others, including the film directors. In one scene, as the team records her coming out of her apartment building, she strikes several poses.
“Natural, Efrat. We said natural!” a director reminds her.
“Kiss my ass!” Tilma responds, before strutting away.
But behind all the bravado is a vulnerable human being, who spends her first moment in the film nervously rehearsing the speech she is going to give at a 2023 Pride celebration in Israel. Tilma acknowledges that she’s not sure she’s been able to process her trauma and still carries it with her.
After leaving Israel in 1967, Tilma spent nearly four decades living in Europe, where she created a new life for herself as a woman. She performed in nightclubs, worked as an airline stewardess, got sex reassignment surgery in Morocco, married a man, and, nearly two decades later, divorced him. In 2005, she finally moved back to Israel and, on a whim, began volunteering with the Israel Police.
She wasn’t open about her gender identity at first, given the negative way she saw her colleagues treat trans women on the street. But when the police captain eventually discovered she was trans, the result ended up being positive: She began leading workshops on approaching the trans community with empathy and respect.
The film jumps between Tilma’s past and the present, as she reacts to Netanyahu’s 2022 re-election and the creation of a far-right coalition in Israel. Convinced that the world is reverting to the hateful days of her youth, Tilma leaves the police force and plans how she’ll kill herself if the government attempts to round up trans people. As protests start to sweep the country, however, she decides to channel her fear into activism. Shots of her among the protesters are mixed with recollections of her 1971 sex reassignment surgery and abuse she faced from a doctor in 1973.
Respecting Tilma’s boundaries while encouraging her to share her life story, the filmmakers capture both Tilma’s toughness and sensitivity, giving the film the honesty and heart that make The First Lady feel so intimate. They get Tilma to open doors into her life — literally.
Several times, the directors try to convince Tilma to bring the film crew into her apartment, where she says that no one else has been for a decade. When she finally lets them inside, they encounter piles of clothing, discarded plastic bottles, and other hoarded objects. The filmmakers tell her that the film crew will help her reorganize the apartment bit by bit, in much the same way they piece together her story: bit by bit.
Even if she approaches the whole process with a bit of attitude, Tilma remains determined to never give up fighting for a better life — or a better apartment.
The First Lady will screen at the New York Jewish Film Festival on Jan. 20.
The post How the Israeli police’s first trans volunteer fought bigotry on the force appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Exclusive: Israeli Officials Harshly Critical of Steve Witkoff’s Influence on US Policy on Gaza, Iran, i24NEWS Told
US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Washington, DC, Jan. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Barria
i24 News – Amid growing disagreements with the Trump administration over the composition of the Board of Peace for Gaza and the question of a strike on Iran, officials in Israel point to a key figure behind decisions seen as running counter to Israeli interests: Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
The officials mention sustained dissatisfaction with Witkoff. Sources close to the PM Netanyahu told i24NEWS on Saturday evening: “For several months now, the feeling has been that envoy Steve Witkoff has strong ties, for his own reasons, across the Middle East, and that at times the Israeli interest does not truly prevail in his decision-making.”
This criticism relates both to the proposed inclusion of Turkey and Qatar in Gaza’s governing bodies and to the Iranian threat. A senior Israeli official put it bluntly: “If it turns out that he is among those blocking a strike on Iran, that is far more than a coincidence.”
Uncategorized
EU Warns of Downward Spiral After Trump Threatens Tariffs Over Greenland
European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on June 17, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Yves Herman
European Union leaders on Saturday warned of a “dangerous downward spiral” over US President Donald Trump‘s vow to implement increasing tariffs on European allies until the US is allowed to buy Greenland.
“Tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. Europe will remain united, coordinated, and committed to upholding its sovereignty,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Antonio Costa said in posts on X.
The bloc’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said tariffs would hurt prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic, while distracting the EU from its “core task” of ending Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“China and Russia must be having a field day. They are the ones who benefit from divisions among allies,” Kallas said on X.
“Tariffs risk making Europe and the United States poorer and undermine our shared prosperity. If Greenland’s security is at risk, we can address this inside NATO.”
Ambassadors from the European Union’s 27 countries will convene on Sunday for an emergency meeting to discuss their response to the tariff threat.