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I Want my People to be Remembered
With fellow Hélène Giannecchini (2018-2019)
24.04.2026
Villa Medici presents the film I Want my People to be Remembered by former fellow Hélène Giannecchini (2018-2019). A film that follows photographer Donna Gottschalk and her work to immortalize the forgotten popular queer lives of the 1960s.
The writer will also introduce her book Un désir démesuré d’amitié, on the occasion of its translation into Italian. An intimate and poetic exploration of bonds, gestures of care and queer lives.
I Want my People to be Remembered
Synopsis
When Hélène Giannecchini met photographer Donna Gottschalk in Vermont, she told her that she had spent her life photographing queer people from working-class backgrounds. She showed him portraits and street images taken in the late 1960s, and entrusted him with hundreds of undeveloped negatives. The film takes this act of trust as its starting point, and unfolds the story of these forgotten lives.
Directed by Hélène Giannecchini
France | 26′ | 2025
An inordinate desire for friendship
Part philosophical reflection, part reflection on the importance of friendship, Un désir démesuré d’amitié (France, 2024, éditions Iperborea) is a moving queer family album, made up of the faces and stories of those who have never stopped imagining other ways of living together.
Giannecchini begins her narrative with photographs: those she unearths at Paris flea markets and in archives, of queer couples forced underground, to whom she seeks to give, if not a voice, at least a story. Those of Casa Susanna, a haven of peace in the heart of McCarthyist America, where fathers can cross-dress and pose for the camera. And above all, those of Donna Gottschalk, New York photographer of the poor and marginalized, with whom the author forges a deep bond. A mosaic of stories from the past, alternating with those of the present: the gestures of care, the arguments and the joys of her family and friends. Giannecchini recounts these examples of friendship, drawing on her biography and the archives of the LGBT+ community: a political and creative force forging a new way of being together, the only possible alternative to solitude. In so doing, with a philosophical approach and the polyphony of choral novels, he also, and above all, addresses universal needs: the need for closeness and sharing, to be seen and to be seen, to accept and to share one’s experiences.
The book is presented by the author on the occasion of its publication in Italy.
Hélène Giannecchini
Hélène Giannecchini is a writer and curator specializing in the relationship between text and image. In 2014, she published An image that may be true. Alix Cléo Roubaud published by Seuil, and directed the Alix Cléo Roubaud retrospective at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in the same year. Her next novel, Voir de ses propres yeux, was published in January 2020. Her latest work, Un désir démesuré d’amitié, was published in August 2024. For several years, she has collaborated with contemporary artists and curated several exhibitions.
With a doctorate in literature, she has lectured at the Centre Pompidou, Madrid’s Complutense University, the University of Basel, the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, the Jeu de Paume, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie and New...
Practical information
Friday, April 24 at 6:30 p.m.
Cinema Room Michel Piccoli at Villa Medici
In the presence of director and author Hélène Giannecchini
Screening in English ST English
Reading and discussion in French ST Italian
Free with reservation: tickets
