Rotting Italian Plums of Fremont Street

The Rotting Plums of Fremont Street is a short video essay about Italian plums and Italian heritage by an Italian American (me). The short essay came first, I wrote it in a moment of thinking about how geographically distant I am from my American relatives (who are all still on the East Coast) and how distant I am from my Italian and Irish heritage. Both sets of my grandparents were immigrants, the maternal grandparents were from Ireland and the paternal grandparents were from Italy. Since I moved to the Boise neighborhood of Portland in 2018, I have been drawn to a beautiful old Italian plum tree that drops thousands of plums every year right onto the sidewalk of Fremont Avenue. At some point, I started to harvest the plums in large quantities. And later, for this essay, I began reflecting on the Italian-ness of this particular tree, wondering how this seed made its way from Italy to Portland, Oregon. One day, in just a few hours, I also shot avideo documenting my harvesting process and put it together with the words from the essay.

The Rotting Italian Plums of Fremont Street still

Julie Perini is a filmmaker and artist in Portland, Oregon.