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The Rotting Italian Plums of Fremont Street
video // 4 minutes & 55 seconds // 2023The Rotting Italian Plums of Fremont Street is a short video essay about Italian plums and Italian heritage by an Italian American (me). First, I wrote a short essay as a way to think about the geographical distances between me and my American relatives (who all live on the East Coast of the US) and how distant I am from my heritage. Both sets of my grandparents were immigrants, my maternal grandparents were from Ireland and my paternal grandparents were from Italy. Since moving 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 shot a video documenting my harvesting process and edited it together with the words from the essay.