Moveable identities: Migration, subjectivity and cinema in contemporary Italy

Abstract

Images and stories of migration within contemporary culture in Italy are shaped by several interconnections between the past (memories of Italian emigration, Italian poverty and rural society) and the present (Italy's postindustrial and multicultural realities). Analysing different texts, this article explores how the construction of the ‘official memory’ of the Italian emigration is used both to recall an anti-racist and sympathetic reception of today migrants and to conceal the specificity of today's mobility. In this context, the temporal categories of Eurocentric modernity are functional to the maintenance of hierarchical differences between ‘self’ (Italian and European) and different ‘others’ (the migrants). Although the system of representations is articulated around traditional dichotomies between North and South, East and West, and self and other, the article shows the crucial role of ‘migrancy’ cinema. It offers new trajectories, alliances and exchanges, which are significantly represented through the multiple crossings that challenge the walls of Fortress Europe in the Mediterranean.

Keywords:

• memory
• emigration
• immigration
• the Mediterranean

Acknowledgement

Many people in different occasions have discussed the themes of this article. To them goes my sincere gratefulness. More specifically I would like to thank Prof. Tommaso Detti and the Department of History of Siena University for the funds made available for this research; Liliana Ellena for her rigorous reading of this paper and the innumerable discussion about work, politics and culture; and Ciaran O'Scea who has struggled with my English to transform it into a comprehensible language.

Notes

Notes

1. The literature on the subject is extensive; see Brah (1996); Gilroy (1992); Hall (2000).

2. For information on the film screenings, see http://www.amka.ch/amkasite/fiction.php?oppo=detail&id=5

3. http://www.coeweb.org/index.php

4. http://www.saverianibrescia.com/csam.php

5. http://www.festivalcinemaafricano.org/index.php

6. http://www.africanfilm.com/waalo_fendo.htm

7. For a different approach to contemporary Italian cinema, see also Wood (2005) and Brunetta (2007). Although diverse in terms of style and cinematic language, films such as Carlo Mazzacurati's Un’altra vita (1992) and Vesna va veloce (1998), Silvio Soldini's Un’anima divisa in due (1993) and Brucio nel vento (2002), Michele Placido's Pummarò (1990), and Marco Tullio Giordana's Quando sei nato non puoi pi[ugrave] nasconderti (2005) have dealt with migration within the cinema medio d’autore.

8. E.g., see Multiplicity's collective researches on territorial transformation in Europe and the Mediterranean (http://www.multiplicity.it) as well as Ursula Biemann's videos on borders, mobility and containment of migration (http://www.geobodies.org/home.pfl).

9. On memory of Italian emigration and its connections with the present, see Capussotti (2007).

10. Of course the use of ‘race’ refers to the criticism elaborated in cultural and postcolonial studies.

11. Foreign citizens, from the EU and beyond, who are regularly resident in Italy, are estimated to be around 6.7% of the total population (Caritas 2008). The Caritas dossier also emphasises the deficiency of integration policies at all levels of society and politics.

12. See the film pressbook at: http://www.mymovies.it/filmclub/2006/08/264/mymovies.pdf

13. Reviews have been published online at: http://www.mymovies.it/dizionario/recensione.asp?id=43453