Green Porn in Greenpoint:

An Evening with Isabella Rossellini

Isabella Rossellini is the most beautiful woman on earth. Daughter to iconic film actress Ingrid Bergman and famed director Roberto Rossellini, the multi-talented Isabella Rossellini has graced the cover of Vogue 23 times throughout her modeling career, and starred in such films as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. Though lately Rossellini, once an international sex-symbol, has transformed herself into a sex educator, writer, director and producer of a two-minute film series documenting the mating rituals of 20 different creatures including insects and marine animals, entitled Green Porno. Last Thursday, Greenpoint was lucky enough to host Rossellini for a special screening of her film series at Coco66 Bar on Greenpoint Avenue, thanks to the neighborhood’s favorite bookstore, WORD.

Green Porno, now in its second season, is a series of very short, delightfully eccentric films in which Rossellini dons home-made animal costumes—she dresses as an anchovy, a snail, a shrimp, a whale, a squid, an angler fish, a housefly and a praying mantis, to name a few—and re-enacts the sex, mating and reproductive rituals of each species, while simultaneously narrating each action. Green Porno—which is primarily a web series—was originally created for the Sundance Channel, in collaboration with Robert Redford, as a way to investigate the possibilities of film on the internet, or “the third screen.”

“Sundance, like all the other television, is investigating what to do with the internet, not only in terms of business but also in terms of- this a new canvas—does it offer a new expression?” Rossellini said, as she sat nonchalantly on a couch in the back of Coco66, waiting to take the stage and address the hundreds of fans who had traveled to the northern tip of Brooklyn to see her. “It seems that the internet has already started a tradition of short film format.”

The Green Porno costumes, which are primarily made of paper, cardboard and wire, are truly spectacular, and create an endearingly bizarre aesthetic reminiscent of classic children’s programming, skirting the line between an art film and an educational tool.

According to Rossellini, Green Porno is, through and through, an experiment. Aside from exploring the internet and web-based short film series as a new and exciting medium through which to disseminate art and information, the content and presentation is, too, experimental—the bizarre brainchild of Rossellini herself, who was first inspired by the insects she discovered in her own garden.

“This is the way my brain goes. They just said, this is an experiment, would you like to do it. So it really starts in what is in your mind, and then you throw it out there and see what catches….it’ also the realm of all experimental film,” Rossellini said. “I always liked animals, I always read things about animals. When it was time for me to write a film, I thought: People like sex, more than animals. So if I write about the sex of an animal it will be more appealing. And bugs are great, because no one pays much attention to flies and earthworms. Those are fantastic bugs to with because they’re neglected.”

Apart from the educational aspect, Rossellini’s films are funny—hilarious even—and though each film contains a set of facts, Rossellini emphasized her desire to create art films about the environment that, unlike so many nature documentaries, do not take themselves too seriously. Her goal was to maintain a comical voice, even when addressing such serious issues as over-fishing and by-catch. In her second season, during which she explores the sex lives of marine animals, Rossellini worked closely with a biologist, Claudio Campagne, to create slightly longer episodes dealing with serious social and environmental issues surrounding the exploitation of anchovies and squid, and the problem of by-catch. She uses the kitchen as a vehicle—reenacting the process of preparing a meal containing seafood, and then musing over the origins of her ingredients. These episodes in particular carry a social weight, though throughout her entire series, Rossellini makes a point to keep things as light and entertaining as possible.

“Every time I eat a fish, I generally the next day read in the New York Times that it was the last one that ever existed, and I’ve devoured it and now it’s gone. Or I’m eating salmon because it’s available all the time because of farming, and farming has polluted the entire coast of Chile, and by polluting the coast, it’s also contaminated wild animals—this sense of guilt, this sense of your stomach always closing,” Rossellini said. “So I took the feeling I had of cooking or going to a restaurant and then in my stomach—Oh no! Oh my God!—because I think that is an emotion. It’s different than a documentary.”

“Green Porno is comical, it has never been used much in the environmental message,” she continued. “Why don’t we try that, instead of saying it’s the end of the world you have ten day to throw your car away and walk. I see myself as an entertainer primarily. There are photos of me when I was little, always following cats and dogs. I always had fleabites everywhere. I was born with that love, but certainly, reading certain books or watching certain documentaries…it gives you a love of nature, and it gives you the feeling that we have to protect it. I’m a little bit bored when people tell me what to do.”

The humorous element to Green Porno is certainly pronounced, which makes the series a pleasure to watch over and over again, though the films are more concerned with science than society. That said, according to Rossellini science itself is not an objective, but something that can be reinterpreted differently depending on who is processing the information. Some critics have identified Green Porno as possibly having a feminist edge, seeing as so many episodes are constructed around female sexual dominance and prowess in the natural world.

“I think that one of the latest talks in science is that we attribute, because of the way we regulate society, that the male selects the female, and the female doesn’t do anything and it’s the strongest male that will get her,” Rossellini said. “Instead now, they are looking again at this behavior and they see that females—they have lots of ways to select, it’s not so clear. We made a projection of our society to animals.”

According to Rossellini, she was somewhat surprised by the popularity of the series, and the overwhelmingly positive responses—especially that of her 16-year-old son, who has sent the videos to all of his friends. Though the films are educational, they aren’t necessarily meant for children—but Rossellini believes they could be, depending on the parent, the school and the educational environment.

“I mean, I thought that the bible belt wouldn’t like it, frankly. I thought that I would be trouble with them,” Rossellini said with a chuckle. “But I’ve been in trouble with them since Blue Velvet, so I figured I’m a lost cause.”

The screening, sponsored by WORD, was to celebrate the Harper Studio release of the Green Porno book, which comes with a DVD copy of the film series tucked inside. Rossellini is also in the process of launching another project, somewhat similar to Green Porno, that documents the daily life of animals one finds in an urban setting, to be called Manhattan Beast.