We Will Set You Free: Representations of the ‘Antislavery Argument’ in British and Italian Missionary Films (1925–1939)

ABSTRACT

By comparing two missionary films, the British Livingstone (1925) and the Italian Abuna Messias (1939), this study identifies a striking similarity and some differences between the British and the Italian colonial agendas. These two visual narratives are distant in time and belong to two different imperial histories and imaginations; however, one scene in the earlier British film is reproduced almost identically in the later Italian one. This study argues that the shared content underlines not only the Italian fascist government’s political aim to explain colonialism and warfare with the justification of fighting human trafficking, but also the intent to create an image of anti-slavery struggle on the British model. This work sheds new light on how Abuna Messias furthered the role of the Catholic Church and the missionary agenda in Italian fascist colonialism.

KEYWORDS:

• British colonial history
• Italian colonialism
• missionary cinema
• slavery

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Stephen Bottomore, ‘Early Missionary Filming and the Emergence of the Professional Cameraman’, in Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks, and Publics of Early Cinema, ed. by Marta Braun et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), pp. 19–26.

² M. F. Piredda convincingly discusses the definition of Abuna Messias as a ‘missionary film’ on page 56 of her work, Film and Mission. A Missionary Cinema History. Piredda, Maria F. Film & Mission: Per Una Storia Del Cinema Missionario (Rome: Ente dello spettacolo, 2005).

³ Amalia Ribi Forclaz, Humanitarian Imperialism: The Politics of Anti-Slavery Activism, 1880–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). p. 137

⁴ E. A. Kaplan, Looking for the Other: Feminism, Film, and the Imperial Gaze (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 61.

⁵ Tom Gunning, ‘Before Documentary: Early Nonfiction Films and the “View” Aesthetic’, in Uncharted Territory: Essays on Early Nonfiction Film, ed. by Daann Hertogs and Nico de Klerk (Amsterdam: Nederland Filmmuseum, 1997), p. 18.

⁶ Ian Aitken and Camille Deprez, The Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asia (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017).

⁷ Piredda Maria Francesca, Sguardi sull’altrove: Cinema missionario e antropologia visuale (Bologna: Archetipolibri), p. 279.

⁸ Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books Inc, 1973), p. 13.

⁹ Gian P. Brunetta, Cent’anni di cinema italiano (Roma: Laterza, 2004), p. 229.

¹⁰ Paul Hockings, Principles of Visual Anthropology (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012), p. 104.

¹¹ Aitken and Deprez, The Colonial Documentary Film in South and South-East Asia, p. 17.

¹² Jacqueline Reich, The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015); Rhiannon Welch, Vital subjects. Race and Biopolitics in Italy (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016).

¹³ Jaqueline Reich, The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana. University Press, 2015), p. 39; Giovanni Pastrone, Cabiria (Itala Film, 1914).

¹⁴ Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015), p. xx.

¹⁵ Ribi Forclaz, Humanitarian Imperialism p. 137.

¹⁶ Tom Rice, ‘Livingstone’, Colonialfilm.org, 2009; ‘British Films and Education. “Livingstone” and the Empire’, The Times, 29 January 1925, 10

¹⁷ Tom Rice, ‘Livingstone’, Colonialfilm.org.

¹⁸ Rapp Dean and Charles D. Weber, ‘British Film, Empire and Society in the Twenties: The Livingstone Film, 1923–1925’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, 9.1 (1989), 2–17 (p. 7).

¹⁹ Ben-Ghiat, Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema, p. 54.

²⁰ Ben-Ghiat, Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema, p. 8.

²¹ Nicola Labanca, ‘Politica e amministrazione coloniali dal 1922 al 1934’, in Fascismo e politica di potenza. Politicaestera 1922–1939, ed. by Enzo Collotti (Milan: La Nuova Italia, 2000), p. 112.

²² Kaplan, Looking for the Other, p. 61.

²³ AnneMarie Tamis-Nasello, ‘Kif Tebbi: Visions of Colonial Libya in Novel and Film’, Journal of Romance Studies, 12.2 (2012), 75–92 (p. 78).

²⁴ Ribi Forclaz, Humanitarian Imperialism, p. 33.

²⁵ The song Faccetta nera climbed the domestic charts. It was about giving enslaved Abyssinian girls a better future under the Italian fascist flag. The song was later banned because of its stance towards relationships between Italian men and Ethiopian women.

²⁶ Ribi Forclaz (p. 137) notes this association on the pages of Antischiavismo, in an article entitled ‘Per la gloria del Massaja’, September 1932.

²⁷ Ribi Forclaz also notes that Filippo Tolli’s leadership of the Italian Società Antischiavista was compared to William Wilberforce’s campaign from the early nineteenth century. p. 137.

²⁸ Colonial Film. Moving Images of the British Empire. Rice, ‘Livingstone’, 2006.

²⁹ Gian Piero Brunetta, Il cinema italiano di Regime (Bari: Laterza, 2009), p. 58.

³⁰ Alemseged Abbay, ‘The assumption of “A-Colony-Equals-To-A-Nation” and the Political Case of Eritrea’, in Africa: Rivista Trimestrale Di Studi e Documentazione Dell’Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, vol. 61, no. 2, (Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente (IsIAO), 2006), pp. 159–88.

³¹ Horace Waller (ed.), The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death: Continued by a Narrative of His Last Moments and Sufferings, Obtained from His Faithful Servants Chuma and Susi; in Two Volumes. Murray J., E Russell, Train Africana Collection, Smithsonian Libraries, 1874.

³² John Wright, The Emergence of Libya: Selected Historical Essays (London, Silphium Press, 2008), p. 125.

³³ Angelo Del Boca, The Ethiopian War, 1935–1941 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1969), p. 23.

³⁴ Brunetta, Cent’anni di cinema, p. 229. (English is mine).

³⁵ Del Boca, The Ethiopian War, p. 224.

³⁶ From the telegram dated 27 May 1937, a few days after the massacre of Debre Libanos, that Graziani sent to the Minister for African Italy, in Del Boca, p. 225.

³⁷ Ribi Forclaz, Humanitarian Imperialism, p. 139.