Performing post-migration cinema in Italy: Corazones de Mujer by K. Kosoof

Abstract

Following consideration of the most common representations of migrants in Italian cinema, where they are often portrayed as victimised and minor subjects, this article analyses a film by Davide Sordella and Pablo Benedetti, Corazones de Mujer (2008) as a ‘post-migration alternative’. This film considers a different way of depicting ‘foreigners’, and addresses the complex issues of gender and sexuality as they emerge at the interface between Western and Arab cultures. Within the conceptual framework of Judith Butler's ‘gender performativity’ and Rosi Braidotti's ‘nomadic subject’, this article aims to suggest an alternative way of representing migrants in Italian cinema as agents of social and gender transgressions.

Keywords:

• Italian cinema of migration
• post-migration
• gender performance
• Corazones de Mujer
• nomadic subjects

Notes

Notes

1. Despite its active involvement in the colonial imperial mission (1840–1960), today's Italy is far from being a postcolonial country that has dealt with its past. Italy's colonial memory is still weak and uncompromised. Only recently have historians such as Del Boca, Labanca and others been able to open a debate concerning the involvement of Italy in the colonial adventure, even though the legend of Italian colonialism as less violent, more humane and indulgent than other colonialisms is still alive in the public imagination. The lack of recognition of Italy's own responsibilities during the colonial period and the consequent phase of forgetfulness and oblivion have led to a growing anxiety towards immigrants, who are seen as potential invaders of the Italian country rather than as a regrettable consequence of a violent and long period of exploitations perpetrated by European and Western countries. A significant example of these anxieties in Italy is expressed through a series of legislative measures adopted to tame the immigration phenomenon (e.g. the so-called Bossi Fini Law in 2002). For further analysis of Italian colonialism and its implication on Italy's cultural memory today, see: Andall and Duncan (2005), Del Boca (1992), Labanca (2002) and Triulzi (2005).

2. The same can be said of another foreign filmmaker in Italy, the Turkish Ferzan Özpetek, whose films, according to Grassilli, ‘erase the accent’, and the result is a recognisable Rai Cinema production (Grassilli 2008, 1248). Although Özpetek's interest is not to produce accented films within an interstitial production, it is important to recognise that he has succeeded in initiating the Italian public to issues not frequently treated by Italian film-makers, such as those of homosexuality and queerness, with the precise intent to disrupt more conventional representations. In Özpetek's films displacement is expressed in multiple ways and on different levels. As Derek Duncan observes in his analysis of Özpetek's works, ‘his authorial presence is not metaphorical, but mediated through multiple visual discourses that knit together differences of languages, geography and gender’ (Duncan 2005, 111).