PUNCTUATED IDENTITIES

IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN CINEMA

By

Vincenza Iadevaia

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of

Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letter

In Partial Fulfillment of the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, FL

May 2019

Copyright 2019 by Vincenza Iadevaia

ii PUNCTUATED IDENTITIES

IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN CINEMA

by

Vincenza Iadevaia

This dissertation was prepared under the direction of the candidate's dissertation co­ advisors, Dr. Haria Serra, Department of Languages, Linguistic and Comparative Literature, and Dr. Anthony Guneratne, Department of Communication and Multimedia Studies, and has been approved by all members of the supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letter and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Ilariati~~

Michael J. H ell, Ph.D College D , Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters

April I I 2019 Khaled Sobhan, Ph.D. Date Interim Dean, Graduate College

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My parents, in the last 20 years have given help and shelter to many immigrants,

who had and still have “un posto a tavola” (“a seat at the table”). For them, starting from

the Albanian Adrian and his little son Aenea to many others of which we have lost traces,

my mother was and is “mama Lucia.” First and foremost, I have to thank my parents for

installing me the desire to look at the other Italy in a different way, with different eyes.

The years at Florida Atlantic University have been intensely interesting and

productive, as they have strengthened my film interest, and allowed me to develop new

points of view. In this beautiful voyage, I met special and enthusiastic mentors Ilaria,

Anthony, and Myriam. A very special thank-you goes to each of them. This path would

be completely different without them. I thank Myriam Ruthenberg for being a very

humble and special Professor, for always sharing her knowledge and cultural thoughts (in

primis on Erri De Luca!). Thanks Myriam for supporting me in each step!

My sweet advisor Ilaria Serra, the raison d'être for my being at FAU. She is a

professor and a woman able to give without measure. She has always been there to share her experiences, but also being open to explore new adventures.

Thank to the “Barbiere di Siviglia,” Anthony, who can brilliantly sing, draw, write, give advice even about plants and flowers! Our film conversations have always been deeply engaging, and “fuori dalla norma.” Myriam, Ilaria, Anthony, your advice on both research and my career have been invaluable.

iv

I express my gratitude to Prof. Adam Bradford. I cannot forget his guidance and

great support when I decided to move to Istanbul to start a new path. I am grateful for the

administrative excellence he displayed.

Thanks are in order to the Dean Michael Horswell, who was the first person I met

in Florida and always available, and friendly, as well as Dr. Munson and the Department

of Languages, Linguistics, and Comparative Literature, my family for almost four years.

A very special appreciation goes to Gabrielle Denier, our Ph.D. Program

Coordinator. Her patience, loveliness, and professionality have always made me feel at home and secure. Her ability to solve all kinds of issues is remarkable. I will miss her sweet voice and her smile.

My time at FAU was made enjoyable in large part due to the friends that became a part of my life. I raise a metaphorical rakı - the Turkish beverage - to Emanuele

Pettener, and to Marianna De Tollis, who have always been there to find solutions and have helped with patience and smile. Other special friends have also had also left a mark

on my path. My colleagues and friends have all extended their support in different ways,

and I gained a lot from them, through their personal and scholarly interactions: Kamela,

Stephanie, Jonathan, Viviana and Federico. Special thanks go to a FAU former student

Simone Puleo, the one who suggested me to come to FAU. I am also deeply grateful to

Hanson Ennai for making me feel as if I were his sister and for his hospitality.

My truthful thanks go also to all the filmmakers I encountered during these years,

for their sweet way of recounting their stories. Fariborz Kamkari “un figlio della guerra,”

whose kindness and great humanity have struck me. I am also indebted to Suranga D.

Katugampala, for being ready to answer all my questions, and to Chiara Bove Makiedo.

v

To the list I wish to add the producer Antonio Augugliaro (Gina Films) for his kindness

and time in answering all my questions, as well as Fabrizia Falzetti (Farout Films) for providing me useful information and biographical data.

Along the sometimes arduous yet mostly enjoyable path leading to this Ph.D., I

encountered other people whose kindness helped me immensely: Laura Rascaroli and Le-

onardo De Franceschi were always ready to address my inquires albeit never in person.

“Un grazie di cuore” to Prof. Maria Pia Pedani (University Ca’ Foscari, Venice)

– “che la terra le sia lieve”- whose incredible knowledge on Ottoman History proved most precious for the chapter on Ferzan Özpetek, and to a wonderful Italianist, Franco

Masciandaro, who has believed in me since I arrived in academia.

On the Turkish side, a special appreciacion goes to “la turchina” Serra Yılmaz, an

extraordinary and lovely actress, who has made and makes my life in Istanbul very spe-

cial. Your opinion and suggestions, and all the information related to Ferzan Özpetek’s

cinema were very valuable. Teşekkür ederim Serra’cığım!

My gratitude also goes to Prof. Murat Güvenç, the Director of the Istanbul Studies

Center, for the incredible Doctoral Fellow opportunity there, and to Professor Deniz

Bayrakdar (Kadir Has University) not only for her many recomendations of useful

literature, but also for shering her insights and critical point of view about migration and

transnational cinema.

On the USA side, I am grateful to zia Lisa for her support, and to my dear, late zio

Tony … wherever you are, I am sure you are singing and smiling.

vi

I owe a lot to both my families, the Italian and the Turkish one for their love and

encouragement. To Francesco and Lucia, my nephew and niece, and their eager curiosity

about the world I am living in: Parli Turchese?

Thanks to Istanbul where I found my home.

No words suffice to say thank to Kadir, whose support has been extraordinary, for tolerating my endless grumpy moods, for his endless patience and his funny joke, to make me laugh. Your joi de vivre was extremely important in this long voyage.

Teşekkürler aşkım!

vii

ABSTRACT

Author: Vincenza Iadevaia

Title: Punctuated Identities in Contemporary Italian Cinema

Institution: Florida Atlantic University

Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Ilaria Serra

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

Year: 2019

At a time of major political disruption in Italy, this dissertation aims to explore the landscape of contemporary Italian Cinema in connection with the nation’s new demographic trends and social configurations. Focusing on a selected, inherently representative group of filmmakers, the current study proposes a new form of film theory that sees the emergence and recognition of multi-ethnic filmmaking in a hitherto largely monocultural context as an indicator of a profound cultural transformation rather than a mere aesthetic tendency. The critical terminology I propose, “punctuated identitties,” document the characteristics of contemporary filmmakers, since they cannot be easily defined under the categories established by previous critical vocabularies. While these multi-ethnic filmmakers are part of a larger trend in European filmmaking as a whole, and hence constitute a case study of the evolution of a particular trend within individual national cinemas, my aim is to show how their punctuated identities complicate and color

viii

the Italian mediascape, and perhaps add a pluralistic dimension to the most recent chapter

in the story of one of the most influential national cinemas.

The filmmakers analyzed are selected according to specific elements and not on

any categorization as first-and-second-generation immigrants. The present analysis includes two immigrants who have consciously chosen Italy as their homeland (Ferzan

Özpetek and Jonas Carpignano), a migrant other who rejects nationality (Laura

Halilovic), a political exile who relishes a certain sense of freedom in his Italian sojourn

(Fariborz Kamkari), and a naturalized son of immigrants (Suranga Katugampala). All move in a fluid and conceptual space that creates a new path inside the traditional domain of national cinema, establishing the validity of others’s points of views and proving that coexistence can enrich even established and influential art forms.

ix

DEDICATION

To my Turkish delight, Kadir …

PUNCTUATED IDENTITIES

IN CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN CINEMA

LIST OF FIGURES ...... xv

WHERE EVERTHING STARTED ...... 1

INTRODUCTION ...... 4

Italy Has Changed: The New Film Law ...... 6

How Did We Arrive Here?...... 16

NEW VOICES IN ITALIAN CINEMA ...... 22

Accented (but not) Italian Style ...... 22

Hyphenated or not Hyphenated? ...... 25

Punctuated Identities (in the Spirit of Roland Barthes) ...... 28

FIVE PUNCTUATED FILMMAKERS ...... 35

Ferzan Özpetek: A Prototype of Punctuated Italian Celebrity ...... 36

Laura Halilovic: the Spectral Figure ...... 41

A Documentary Preview: Io, la mia famiglia Rom e Woody Allen ...... 43

Fariborz Kamkari: An Interstitial Artistic Refugee ...... 47

Jonas Carpignano: an ItalianBarbadianAmerican in Gioia Tauro ...... 54

Suranga D. Katugampala: a Sri Lankan Italian with a Veneto Accent...... 62

The Language of Kunatu – Tempeste: Katungampala’s Web Series...... 64

The Delivery: Katungampala’s Intergenerational Short ...... 67

SIX FICTION FEATURES (and a DOCUMENTARY) ...... 70

xi

Six Punctuated Films ...... 70

CHAPTER 1: VEILED MEMORY and COLORFUL OTTOMANISM ...... 71

Ferzan Özpetek’s Harem Suare ...... 71

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Gallery of Memories’ ...... 71

Story and History in Harem Suare ...... 76

‘Gallery of Memories:’ Past vs. Future, Ottomania vs Occidentalia ...... 77

Anatomy of a Scene: Turkish Delight on Stage ...... 82

Women as Objects of Staged Desire...... 84

The Harem ...... 90

The Harem as a Community: Three Apples and a Tale ...... 93

Brushstrokes in a Frame-Shot ...... 97

The Play of Chronotopes in Harem Suare...... 106

Preserved Space ...... 108

Imitative Space ...... 111

Imagined Space ...... 112

Istanbul: Between Fog and Memory ...... 113

CHAPTER 2: a PAIR OF JEANS, and a WEDDING DRESS ...... 119

Laura Halilovic: Io rom romantica ...... 119

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Bebe in Her Eden’ ...... 119

The Story ...... 123

Generational Knowledge ...... 124

Nomadism vs. Sedentarism ...... 128

Spaces: Freedom vs. Constraints ...... 131

xii

Bebe, the Leaves and Oral Tradition ...... 137

Gioia and Laura, the Jeans and the Wedding Dress ...... 140

Another Way of Looking: Alternative Romani Cinematic Practices ...... 147

Beyond the Bench ...... 153

CHAPTER 3: a CREOLIZED PITZA ...... 155

Fariborz Kamkari’s Pitza e datteri ...... 155

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Italian Flag Apron’ ...... 155

Characterization as a Nonverbal Strategy ...... 159

Pizza with Dates: A Creolized Italian-ism ...... 164

Pitza not Pizza ...... 168

The Color of Pomegranates and Barthesian Memory ...... 171

The Kurd Who Never Turns Back ...... 174

A Performed Semi-Humoristic Ummah ...... 176

CHAPTER 4: RIHANNA, LEMONS and a BONFIRE ...... 183

Jonas Carpignano’s Mediterranea and A Ciambra ...... 183

Mediterranea - Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Rihanna and the Peroni Beer’ ...... 183

The Story ...... 185

‘Rihanna and the Peroni Beer’ ...... 186

Mimicry and Self-Directed Irony...... 190

Subalternity, Silence and Agency ...... 192

A Ciambra - Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Water and Lemon’ ...... 195

The Story ...... 196

‘Water and Lemon’ ...... 198

xiii

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘The Bonfire and the Shanty’ ...... 200

Pio, the Italian Other ...... 202

An Imagined “Italie.” Place, People and Characters on the Margins ...... 206

A Realist Style ...... 211

CHAPTER 5: a MADONNA, a MOTHERand a PROSTITUTE ...... 215

Suranga Deshapriya Katugampala’s Per un figlio ...... 215

Anatomy of a Scene:‘a Beraya and a Demon’ ...... 215

The Story ...... 218

‘A Beraya and a Demon’...... 219

The Apartment: a Claustrophobic Chronotope ...... 227

The Solitude of the Immigrant: a State of Mind? ...... 231

The Eye of the Breast: Mother - Motherland - Prostitute ...... 236

Film Production. Between Interstitial and National ...... 239

Katugampala, the Son ...... 243

CLOSING REMARKS ...... 247

FILMOGRAPHY ...... 254

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 256

xiv

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Reproduced with permission © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All

rights reserved...... 103

Figure 2. Frame from Harem Suare (1999) ...... 103

xv

WHERE EVERTHING STARTED

[Mimesis] was written during the war and

at Istanbul, where the libraries are not

well equipped for European studies.

International communications were

impeded.

-Auerbach, Mimesis

As with Erich Auerbach’s history of realist representation in Western literature,

Mimesis (1936), my dissertation was conceived and written in Istanbul, a stone’s throw

from the historic neighborhood of Bebek, where the foremost comparatist of his time

lived for eleven years, and from where, within sight of the calm waves of the Bosphorus

he conceived and wrote his magnum opus. Like Auerbach, who fled the turbulence of

National Socialism in Germany, I, too, albeit not for political reasons, was destined to

wander as I wrote. And like him, but in the reverse situation, I moved to the United States first, and to Turkey afterwards, finding my eventual home in Istanbul.1 As Auerbach and

Dante before him, I am now also tasting “come sa di sale / lo pane altrui, e come è duro

calle / lo scendere e ‘l salir per l’altrui scale.”2 Tasting “the salty bread” of a faraway

life, in this dissertation I am choosing to follow the point of view of those who shared our

1 Auerbach spent eleven years in Istanbul where he taught from 1936 to 1947. Then in 1947 he moved to United States to join the faculty at Yale University. In 1949–50 he was a member of the Institute for Ad- vanced Study at Princeton, N.J. 2 Dante Alighieri. Paradiso, Canto xvii, v. 58-60, p. 370. 1

experience of displacement: multicultural and multi-ethnic filmmakers in Italy. While

Auerbach’s Mimesis is in some way a response to the near-annihilation of a centuries-old

tradition of Humanist thought in Europe, my work is instead inspired by the vibrant

integration of punctuated identities into Italian society and consequently into Italian

cinema, specifically a recent group of so-called migrant directors working and leaving in

Italy.3

Emboldened by this tangible connection to one of the pillars of the discipline in

which I have immersed myself for some years, I have borrowed a stylistic device from

him that in all hope will seem more like admiring imitatio rather than dangerous mimicry.

The influence of Mimesis and the stylistic approach used by Auerbach have, in fact, been

essential in developing my dissertation. Edward Said notices the innovative writing style

adopted by the philologist that he describes as: “beginning each chapter with a long

quotation from a specific word cited in the original language, followed immediately by a

serviceable translation ... out of which a detailed explication de texte unfolds at a

leisurely and ruminative pace.”4

Departing from Auerbach’s stylistic approach, I will begin each chapter with a

technical analysis from a specific film, which I define “anatomy of a scene.” However,

while Auerbach considers only a single quotation, in my case I reflect upon multiple

scenes that parallel each other. Isolating crucial ones, I highlight specific cultural puncta.

The scenes contain key components, such as the representation of a character, the

technical style used, or for a particular detail that stood out and captured my imagination,

3 Henceforth, I will not locate the term punctuated in italics inasmuch as it has been established as a new term here. 4 Said wrote the introduction to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Mimesis. 2

what Roland Barthes, contemplating photographs, called the punctum that for him decoded the entire text. The following step is a detailed equivalent of the explication de texte. This expands in a unit of comments about the film, and its relationship with the

Italian socio-political context in which it appeared, drawing especially from those contemporary branches of theory and critical thought which best engage such a textual terrain.

3

INTRODUCTION

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signaled the emergence of a new Europe. Wars broke out near Italy’s own territorial borders, and human displacement within Europe reached unprecedented levels since World War II. Looking back on what was for many a calamitous moment of transition, this dissertation aims to explore the post ‘89 landscape of Italian Cinema in connection with the nation’s new demographic trends and social configurations. Focusing on a selected, inherently representative group of filmmakers, the current study proposes a form of film theory that sees the emergence and recognition of multi-ethnic filmmaking in a hitherto largely monocultural context as an indicator of a profound cultural transformation rather than a mere aesthetic tendency. While these multi-ethnic filmmakers are part of a larger trend in European filmmaking as a whole, and hence constitute a case study of the evolution of a particular trend within individual national cinemas, the goal of the present work is an assessment of their contribution to the cultural scene of contemporary Italy. My aim is to show how their punctuated identities complicate and color the Italian cinema mediascape, and perhaps add a pluralistic dimension to the most recent chapter of the story of one of the most internationally influential of all national cinemas.

Paradoxically, the key to appreciating this new Italianness is by seeking out what the filmmakers I treat have brought to Italy. So, in the vein of Hamid Naficy’s concept of interstitial filmmaking (4), we must consider the Turkish inheritance expressed in Ferzan

Özpetek’s second film, Harem Suare (1999), set in 1908, the fading twilight of the

4

Ottoman Empire. Or, in order to appreciate citations of Woody Allen’s auteur aesthetic we have first to consider a Bosnian-Romani subculture in Laura Halilovic’s Io rom romantica (2014), a semi-autobiographical story of a Romani girl in a suburb of Turin.

Likewise, while Fariborz Kamkari’s Pitza e datteri (2015) tells the story of an Islamic micro-community in Venice, we must keep in mind his own trajectory as an exilic filmmaker of Kurdish origin. Consider, too, that isolation within particular enclaves seems to be the governing thematic of one of Italy’s most internationally-celebrated contemporary filmmakers, the American Barbadian Italian Jonas Carpignano, whose

Mediterranea (2015) narrates the difficult journey from Burkina Faso to Italy, and A

Ciambra (2017), examines childhood in a Romani community in Southern Italy. The inevitable conflict between one national tradition and another (both challenged by generational conflict), finds eloquent reflection in the media productions of a Veronese filmmaker who originates in the local Sri Lankan community of emigres, Suranga

Deshapriya Katugampala, whose Per un figlio (2016) depicts a mother-son drama set in an unidentified northern Italian city.

These works are especially representative for a study of this nature. For instance, in the case of Özpetek, the first of these filmmakers to gain international recognition and whose filmography is substantial, I selected his second, breakthrough film since, in my opinion, it incorporates many attractive elements that are tightly linked to his cultural background. Regarding the other new filmmakers, at the time of my writing, only

Carpignano has directed two feature films in Italy (with the consequence that I treat his attention to social marginalization in both of them). For Kamkari, whose work is

5

well-known in Iran, the film analyzed herein is the first he directed in Italy, the others being part of what he calls his “previous” life. Halilovic and Katugampala are the youngest of them, and each has contributed a feature film to the emerging cinema of an

Italy in the throes of transition.

In the pages that follow, I endeavor to provide a background to the close analyses that form the backbone of my dissertation. To set the scene, therefore, I describe the socio-political and cultural shifts that lead to the current situation in Italy regarding cinema made by filmmakers to whom I apply a new formulation: punctuated identities. I then turn to the foundational theoretical work of Hamid Naficy whose conceptualization of “accented cinema” has inevitably influenced this work, followed by the description of the significance of Barthes’s definition of the term “punctum” in relation to the more expansive constellation of related ideas that “punctuation” encompasses. Finally, I introduce each director in detail by considering the nature of their accentedness, or, more precisely, the biographical details that have shaped the stylistic elements distinctive to their work, drawing attention thereby to the reasons for my selection of their specific feature films as representative of a larger trend. Thus, I hope to provide a sufficiently comprehensive background for a close analysis of these feature films.

Italy Has Changed: The New Film Law

The pace of change, beginning with the momentous watershed of 1989, has only accelerated in the following decades. This complexity that demands explanation because at that time and for some time afterwards the porosity of Italian borders led to the country

6

becoming a magnet for displaced people and economic and political refugees on a scale

few other European entities had experienced.

To continue to view this evolutionary or revolutionary era as merely a

continuation of post-1968 post-modernity problematic to Zygmunt Bauman. To better describe the condition of constant movement across territioral and cultural barriers following the collapse of the Soviet-dominated Second World, he adopts the term “liquid modernity,” characterized by the uncertain, inconclusive condition of identity and a crisis of belonging. Modernity, in Bauman’s view, is distinctive of ambivalent aspects: on the one hand, there is the necessity to categorize and regulate the world to make it controllable; on the other hand, modernity is distinguished by its radical change, by the rupture of traditional forms of relationship, culture, and economy. Taking a parallel

position is Nestor García Canclini, who, using Latin America as a model, asserts that

identity, which he defines as “multitemporal heterogeneity” (2-3), is multi-ethnic,

migratory, and made of a complex element coming from different cultures.5

The plethora of rapid cultural shifts following the watershed of ‘89

engendered mixed responses in Italy, ranging from acceptance and celebration of

diversity among migrant communities, particularly in highly educated sectors of the

indigenous community, to panic among the general population about what continues to

be perceived as an inundation of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. The most

5 Canclini offering a different approach, asserts, “[t]he postmodern contribution is useful for escaping from the impasse insofar as it reveals the constructed and staged character of all tradition, including that of modernity: it refutes the originary quality of traditions and the originality of innovations. At the same time, it offers the opportunity to rethink the modern as a project that is relative, doubtable, not antagonistic to traditions nor destined to overcome them by some unverifiable evolutionary law. It serves, in short, to make us simultaneously take charge of the impure itinerary of traditions and of the disjointed, heterodox achievement of modernity” (143-44). 7

noticeable material changes that have resulted from the latter reaction are the rise of

populist parties and “la battaglia per la riforma della cittadinanza” (De Franceschi

2018:76), whose proposed solutions are as drastic as they are impracticable.6 In his

detailed and insightful study of second-generation migrants in Italy, film scholar

Leonardo De Franceschi addresses this fundamental political and cultural crisis from the

perspective of a film scholar, supporting the notion of “visual citizenship” which

originated with the theorist of photography, Ariela Aïsha Azoulay, whose conceptions

have been extended to other visual media. While citizenship in her eyes can be seen as

subordination to power, “visual citizenship,” as she explains in an interview, “is

something that can be thought of as relation among different protagonists, that is not

necessarily mediated or submitted to power.”7 De Franceschi’s analysis raise questions

such as: are the relationships between visual media and spectators mediated by the

nation-state, or are they based on group partnership, solidarity, and equality?

For him, the point of departure is the continued visibility of the “second generations” in

Italian cinema from the post-World War II era to the present, and must account for any

critical perspective regarding issues of nationalism, citizenship, and the presence of

second-generation immigrants.

6 “The battles for citizenship reform.” Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. As De Franceschi underlines specifically for the case of Italian-Africans, the question of the citizenship has been at the center of the debate about the “razza Italiana” since the Fascist era. As he writes “le relazioni di indole matrimoniale fra cittadini italiani e nativi africani furono a più riprese oggetto di provvedimenti legislativi, come la legge n. 999 del 6 luglio 1933 che negava il diritto di cittadinanza ai figli nati in AOI [Africa Orientale Italiana] da genitori ignoti che non superassero la “prova della razza” (“the relations of a matrimonial type between Italian citizens and African natives were repeatedly the subject of legislative measures, such as law no. 999 of 6 July 1933 which denied the right of citizenship to children born in AOI [Italian East Africa] from unknown parents who did not pass the "proof of race," p. 78). 7 The interview with Ariella Azoulay as part of the Visual Citizenship Conference at NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge https://vimeo.com/25369128 8

The Peninsula continues to undergo further, unprecedented political change, in this instance in response to what appears to be a fresh political upheaval on a global scale. Following the re-emergence of ultra-nationalisms and far-right political parties throughout Europe, in the wake of the Brexit referendum, and of Donald Trump’s populist presidential victory in the United States, the geopolitical contagion has affected

Italy as well. Following many days of negotiations and impasses, a new government has created by two populistsparties with a history of antagonism toward the European Union: the Lega Nord (Northern League) led by Matteo Salvini, and the amorphous coalition known as Movimento 5 Stelle (also known as M5S, or Five Star Movement) currently led by Luigi Di Maio.8 The campaign has witnessed a marked rise in a public expression of racist sentiment, resulting in, as elsewhere in Europe, a shift to the right, while the hitherto centrist Democrats have adopted a harsh rhetoric in matters of migration and have articulated the need to defend the “razza Italiana.”

Why is this political turn pivotal in terms of the cinema I am exploring? The most compelling reason perhaps lies in the strategies adopted to deny second generation migrants as Italian citizenship.9 As De Franceschi (2018) points out,

L’esito delle elezioni ... consegna al paese un parlamento formato da forze ostili o

indifferenti alla domanda di cittadinanza che prima vari segmenti della società

8 The term populism here is used in a very broad sense. For an insightful analysis of the concept of populism see Ernesto Laclau On Populist Reason (2005), and Margaret Canovan “Trust the People! Populism and the Two Faces of Democracy,” https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9248.00184. 9 An insightful work on second generation migrants, specifically Italian-Africans in Italian cinema, has been done by the Italian film scholar Leonardo De Franceschi, who, in La cittadinanza come luogo di lotta. Le seconde generazioni in Italia fra cinema e serialità, writes “si tratta dunque di analizzare i modi in cui le pratiche audiovisuali condizionano esacerbano, ostacolano o rendono (in)consequenziali i diritti, i privilegi, i doveri e le concessioni tra le persone che sono incluse ed escluse, viste e non viste, udite e silenziate” (“it is therefore a matter of analyzing the ways in which the audiovisual practices condition, exacerbate, hinder or make (in)consequential rights, privileges, duties and concessions between the people who are included and excluded, seen and not seen, heard and silenced” (18). 9

civile e poi gruppi sempre più consistenti di giovani di origine migrante hanno

avanzato in prima persona, lungo un arco di iniziative ormai più che ventennale

(11).10

One of the questions De Franceschi raises in his book regards the deep connection

between cinema and society. National cinema reflects the dominant narrative that society tells about itself, “simply because most of the time [Italian others] are absent or merely

“bit players” in these narratives.”11 The lack of inclusiveness and pluralism in recent

Italian cinema as well as the limited appeal of non-indigenous characters not only in the

national but also in the international market are only some of the points observed by the petition titled “Per un cinema diverso,” which was submitted in 2016 to the Prime

Minister and to the Minister of Cultural Heritage. In and of itself, “Per un cinema diverso” could be seen as an important step in the recognition of the irreversible trend

towards diversity in Italian Cinema. 12 The petition begins by foregrounding the

signatories: a category of new Italians, most of whom are first and second-generation

immigrants, journalists, writers, actors and activists. The idea of a nation as a uniform

white space ought to be reconsidered. As claimed by the signatories,

We are citizens of Italy, EU countries, and non-EU countries as well as stateless

persons who, living and working in Italy, contribute to the richness of this

country. We do not see ourselves reflected in the dominant narratives that Italy

10 “The outcome of the elections ... gives the country a parliament formed by hostile or indifferent forces to the demand for citizenship that first several segments of civil society and then increasingly large groups of young people of migrant origin have advanced in person, along an arch of initiatives for more than twenty years now.” 11 From the petition: https://www.change.org/p/a-pietro-grasso-e-altri-per-una-legge-che-favorisca-plural- ismo-diversità-e-opportunità-nelle-industrie-creative 12 “For a different cinema.” 10

tells about itself, simply because most of the time we are absent or merely “bit

players” in these narratives. (1)13

The logic of the market, as well as that of most commercial film industries, reflects a reality in which these identities are regarded not merely as belonging to the margins but mostly as remaining hidden in the shadows.14 In analyzing data from Italian film productions, De Franceschi and the journalist Chiara Zanini - both promoters of “Per un cinema diverso”- point out that only one Italian feature film out of sixteen among those released in the theaters is directed by an Italian naturalized or second-generation filmmaker.15 The data are even more daunting if other sectors of film production are analyzed. Increasing diversity onscreen and off-screen has been growing in all Europe.

However, Italy is still confined onto the old ideology of a Nation, in which perceptions of ethnic homogeneity (increasingly associated with skin complexion) has become a

13 From the petition: https://www.change.org/p/a-pietro-grasso-e-altri-per-una-legge-che-favorisca-plural- ismo-diversità-e-opportunità-nelle-industrie-creative 14 It seems that there is a contradiction between what the Italian Constitution declares and the reality. The article three of the Italian Constitution ensures that it is the task of the Republic to remove “economic and social obstacles” that “impede the full development of the human being and the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic, and social structure of the country.” “E’ compito della Repubblica rimuovere gli ostacoli di ordine economico e sociale, che, limitando di fatto la libertà e l'eguaglianza dei cittadini, impediscono il pieno sviluppo della persona umana e l'effettiva partecipazione di tutti i lavoratori all'organizzazione politica, economica e sociale del Paese.” https://www.senato.it/1025?sezione=118&articolo_numero_articolo=3 15 In an interview made by Collettivo Antigone, focusing specifically on the last years, the scholar underlines the criticality of the Italian audiovisual system regarding the production of films made by women, hybrid filmmakers, gays: “Nel 2015 sono usciti in sala 185 lungometraggi italiani tra finzione e documentari, di questi soltanto 19 sono diretti anche da donne (solo 1 su 10) e solo 11 sono opera di autori o autrici stranieri naturalizzati o di seconda generazione (1 su 16) e forse solo 1 è opera di un autore dichiaratamente gay. Questo fa cogliere la gravità della situazione e la criticità del sistema audiovisivo italiano.” (“In 2015 there were 185 Italian features, including fiction and documentaries, of which only 19 were directed by women [only 1 in 10] and only 11 were by naturalized or second-generation authors or authors [1 in 16] and perhaps only 1 is the work of a opened gay author. This makes us understand the seriousness of the situation and the criticality of the Italian audiovisual system”). In his book, La cittadinanza come luogo di lotta (2018), specifically in the chapter “Le seconde generazioni fra piccole e grandi schermi,” De Franceschi gives an overview of the Italian mediascape starting from 1949. 11

political category.

Does this idea demand “the suppression of all particularity” (Restivo 15), or is

this a diversity-blind habit, a fear of cultural contamination or a determination to reaffirm

boundaries? In the petition it is claimed that in Italy, “the debate on diversity never

caught on” (1) and that “the adoption of an agenda focused on the value of diversity ...

could improve the health of the entire sector of creative industries” (1).16

Can non-inclusion be only “a pretext for the reaffirmation of an exclusive Italian

identity rather than an opening out to more inclusive articulations of belongings and

citizenships?” (Duncan 196).

The reaffirmation of an exclusive identity can be seen analyzing in more detail the

new Film Law, approved on November 14, 2016 by the Chamber of Deputies.17 Article

n. 5 n. 220 claims that a film can be placed under the category of “Nazionalità Italiana”

(Italian Nationality) only if it conforms to specific requirements and parameters, such as

“Italian citizenship or European citizenship of the director ... screenwriter, most of the

main characters and most of the supporting characters.”18 Likewise, “the film crew must be tax residents and subjected to taxation in Italy.”19 Another pivotal parameter regards

the language used in the film: it must be Italian. As with nineteenth-century nationalist

movements, therefore, language is taken to be a defining feature of national identity,

which is then further defined as the prerequisite for citizenship. Therefore, Italian

16https://www.change.org/p/a-pietro-grasso-e-altri-per-una-legge-che-favorisca-pluralismo-diversità-e-op- portunità-nelle-industrie-creative 17 Henceforth FL Legge 14 novembre 2016, n. 220. The new Cinema Law was approved after 51 years from the last reform (1965). 18 “Nazionalità Italiana o di altro Paese dell’Unione europea del regista ... dello sceneggiatore, della maggioranza degli interpreti principali, degli interpreti secondari.” http://www.senato.it/leg/17/BGT/Schede/Ddliter/46621.htm 19 “[C]omponenti della troupe che siano soggetti fiscalmente residenti e sottoposti a tassazione in Italia.” 12

Legislation and the recent 2016 Film Law are deeply intertwined. As pointed out by

Graziella Parati, in Italian Legislation, in general,

migration laws function in a time frame that deals solely with today: they become

difficult to modify and are already obsolete the moment they are implemented.

They insist on a perception of migration as a temporary phenomenon, while

migration is a global issue spanning the past, the present, and the future.

(2005:143)

Italian Legislation defines Italianness through the model of Jus Sanguinis (right of

blood). Consequently, as Guido Tintori observes, a nationality law is “charged with an

identity-defining value that exceeds [its] functional scope and encompasses a

political-cultural narrative that marks out an ‘us’ in opposition to a ‘them’” (436).20 The necessity for legislative change about citizenship is a very visible topic in Italy. In his critical review of the 2017 public and political debate concerning the legislation, Tentori emphasizes the “recurrent patterns” (446) that govern the long and winding road taken in defining citizenship that led to the approval of the Nationality Law (446). 21

Although the future of immigration legislation is uncertain, the dissatisfaction of a large part of the Italian population is clear.22 De Franceschi and Zanini point out that the

20 Tentori, quoting Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, underlines that the contribution to the economic, social and cultural fabric of the nation by legal immigrants "posits a challenge to citizenship narratives constructed upon the ‘invented’ or ‘imagined’ homogenization of the community"(436). 21 Inability of the center-left to set a valid communication strategy "to counteract the fraudulent claims of the populist anti-immigrant front" (446); the left-wings has often used the ius soli "as a field of identity politics by the left-wing of the center-left coalitions" (446); ius soli has never been a priority for the Italian politics. 22 In terms of citizenship, the need for change is seen in the increasing groups of people who want to change the Italian Citizen Law. Many movements http://www.litaliasonoanchio.it/index.php?id=572 started to cooperate with immigrants and second-generation migrants to find a way to change the Italian Legislation. Italy has to rethink what it means to be Italian. In current news, for example, the Association "Neri Italiani-Black Italians”, a group of students and workers, wrote a letter to President Sergio Mattarella, to express the struggle of second-generation immigrants. They request simply to be recognized as Italians, because they are Italians, explaining the difficulties suffered by a generation of young multiethnic Italians, 13

Film Law “is already born old, which shows a Nation that has never existed except in the

minds of its leaders.”23 While the new measures claim to ensure a pluralist film and

audiovisual industry, it does not introduce effective measures to achieve greater balance

between the forces within a market that currently marginalizes film personnel who

represents a composite sector of ethnic and socio-political diversity. As a matter of fact, not only did this promulgation fail to consider the petition’s demands, but it also failed to

mention diversity in any of the new measures. On the contrary, it magnifies the

possibility of rewarding the already well-known filmmakers. What is worse is that even resources formerly devoted to associations promoting film culture -- particularly local and regional entities that promote cultural diversity -- have been diminished.

The widespread reactions against the new legislation should be regarded as the expression of a need to challenge the paradigms rapidly established by the newly emergent varieties of ethno-centric nationalism. These challenges, acknowledging the irreversible heterogenization of Italian cultural life, are in tune with Kobena Mercer’s attentiveness to how necessary it is to acknowledge “the cultural expression of different diasporas,” and the urgent need for “a genuinely dialogic response to living with differences, which means dealing with things that make life a misery as well as the things we enjoy” (252). Likewise, Stuart Hall, in analyzing black British cultural production, claims that “we are approaching … the end of a certain critical innocence,” and accept

victims of a law that does not consider them Italians, “a law which creates a legal and social separation that creates embarrassment, feeds the identity crisis, stifles that 'natural love that each of us experience for native soil, leading us to feel invisible” (“una legge che riconosce la cittadinanza soltanto dopo la maggiore età, creando una separazione giuridico-sociale che crea imbarazzo, alimenta la crisi d'identità, soffoca quell'amore naturale che ognuno di noi prova per il suolo natio, portando a sentirci invisibili”). http://www.repubblica.it/solidarieta/immigrazione/2015/04/16/news/lavoratori-112103390 23 In “Ddl cinema. Si punta solo su impresa e omologazione,” Il Manifesto, 04 novembre 2016 https://il- manifesto.it/ddl-cinema-si-punta-solo-su-impresa-e-omologazione/

14

the fact that we are entering a new phase, in which there is “the recognition of the immense diversity and differentiation” of ethnic and cultural differences” (1992: 254).

This challenging, on-going, and by now decades-in-the-making transition seems to be still at a complex stage in Italy, unfortunately tipping towards the denial of pluralism and diversity due to the retrograde posture of the new government. Indeed, through such promulgations, the government itself underlines the imbrication of laws, nation, and media production, fully illustrating the negative consequences of reaffirming a form of national identity that makes the reality even worse than before, since the various instantiations of discrimination today appears to be more subtle.

In describing the relation between laws and culture, Italian philosopher Adriana

Cavarero points out that each political model constructs and reshapes its subjects at the same time (95). Politically inflected language might contrast with that of the subjects it defines, and for this reason partisan politics cannot afford a sincere dialogue with its others. Under this frame of reference, it becomes clear that the non-inclusion of diversity, in such a national law, not only means the repudiation of diversity in the world of the arts, but at the same time, mandates its exclusion from society as an acknowledged form of political identity. The diversity-blind approach in the new legislation echoes some of the former configurations of subtle forms of racism, where it is not perceived as still prevalent. The practice of minimization allows the dominant group to deny any necessity to promote racial equality.

Whites’ racial views ... constitute a racial ideology, a loosely organized set of

ideas, phrases, and stories that help whites justify contemporary white supremacy;

they are the collective representations whites have developed to explain and …

15

justify contemporary racial inequality. Their views, then, are not just a “sense of

group position” but symbolic expressions of whites’dominance. (Bonillo 302)

Politically opportunistic and ahistorical forms of racism feed on existing elements of nationalist discourse that can be traced to the nineteenth century, and thus co-opt existing markers of social and subcultural difference, hence their apparent “rootedness in institutions and local culture” (Parati 2005:185). Consequently, the refusal to acknowledge the growing necessity for diverse artistic expressions is in a sense a way to place any actual.

How Did We Arrive Here?

At the same time that immigrant voices have proliferated and the physical

presence of immigrants expanded, political attitudes have begun to harden: in many EU

countries, hard-line governments and parties have spawned other right-wing responses,

and Italy is witnessing a trend that is at once geopolitically general and nationally

particular. But why and how did all this happen?

Much of the present neo-nationalist discourse arises from a confusion that may be

rooted in Italy’s long search for nationhood. Settled in the course of the centuries by

Greeks, Etruscans, Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, Franks, Arabs, and Germanic

tribes, today’s polity had, by the sixteenth century devolved into nation states occupied

and fought over by a succession of empires. It is only in the nineteenth century, therefore,

that Italian nationhood transformed from a post-Dante linguistic and cultural basis into a

mechanism of territorial reunification, the Risorgimento, whose discourse of inclusivity

has been co-opted and distorted into one of exclusivity and cultural superiority from

16

Mussolini onwards.24 The Fascist gesture was one of political necessity. The

glorification of a Roman past was a recuperation of national pride since famine, rampant

poverty, and economic and political instability had in the previous decades caused a

massive outflow of Italian immigrants to the seemingly more hospitable shores of the

New World. As Italy’s economy prospered in the 1950s, however, the country began

once again to attract waves of immigrants, this time from the impoverished Third World.

So, while the phenomenon of migration was predominantly outward, towards the New

World or Northern Europe, until the 1960s, the reverse trend has accelerated from 1989

onwards, with the collapse of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe. As a result, this

inward flow into Italy and the proportion of foreign-born and second-generation Italians

has changed drastically. Indeed, having once been a magnet for less privileged groups

originating in Asia and Africa, the last decades of the 20th century witnessed new waves

of immigrants from former Soviet bloc countries and beyond.

The post-1989 represents a common experience on a geopolitical level. The

“subsequent expansion of the European Union ... opened the gates for what have been

termed ‘new migrations’” (Gott and Herzog 1). The resulting political instabilities have

been manifested in all aspects of cultural representations, and in particular in such

popular art forms as cinema. Thus, cinema reflects a society that experiences cross

culturalism and multiculturalism, opening a debate on national identity, and consciously

multiculturalist media production represents a reaction of “a rotating chain of

marginalized communities against an unstated white norm” (Shohat and Stam 4), where

24 For an excellent history of Italy from the Enlighthment to the present, including the search for a national identity, see Spencer M. Di Scala’s Italy: From Revolution to Republic, 1700 to the Present, Westview Press, 2009. 17

within the national context new forms of expression, and subaltern identities emerge from

the margins. In this sense, the topic of rampant immigration to Italy rekindles nationalist discourse and debate about Italian society, which has itself undergone a social transformation that is clearly visible in its “national cinema,” a label that no longer defines the essential Italianness of contemporary cinema. As a discourse, neo-nationalism

remains blind to the contemporary Italian mediascape.25 In other words, in contrast to

certain forms of political rhetoric, the cinematic depiction of Italian society mirrors

today’s political and social context. Indeed, there appears to be a growing self-

consciousness within Italian cinema about the status of “cinema della realtà” (“cinema of

reality”) which seems in some way to recuperate Neorealism and its unflinching

representation of contemporary reality.

Already by the1990s, a significant space within Italian film production was

oriented towards the immigrants and economic migrants inhabiting Italian society. It

represents a new emerging phase, defined broadly “migrant cinema,” which focuses on

concepts of social identity and national belonging. 26 The cinema of this transitional

phase attempts to locate and present stories which had hitherto remained invisible. Yet, in

the 1990s, these stories were told about migrants and immigrants, but not by the migrants

themselves. In other words, even when the focus is on the immigrant experience, the

point of view is that of native Italian filmmakers. 27 The work of such pioneering

25 Grace Russo Bullaro (2010) remarks that, “in the early 90s, Italy still appears to be for the most part a racially homogeneous country” (155), where the shared cultural identity is clearly visible in its representation of Italianness in all Italian feature films and television series. 26 As Sandra Ponzanesi (2011) remarks, this term “remains a rather controversial notion since cinema depends on an extensive collective effort … and therefore complicates the limitations of the label of ‘migrant’ via a correlation to the director” (74), “Europe in motion: migrant cinema and the politics of encounter,” Social Identities, vol.17, n.1, 2011, pp. 73-92. 27 The Italic is used to remark the fact that the nationality refers to those directors with no experience of migration and who are considered Italian by law (“jus sanguinis”). As Enrica Capussotti observes (2009) 18

directors who have sought, often compassionately, to represent the experience of the

other through their eyes is not the subject my analysis, which specifically focuses on

cinema made by new authorial voices that cannot be defined “national” in the classic

geographical sense.28

In the Italian mediascape, the advent of the new millennium seems to mark a

turning point. In recent years, festival organizers and the general film-going public of

Italy began to notice some changes in their traditional diet of popular films and comedies,

and of the occasional “well-made” films by auteur directors with strong connections and

allegiances to the key figures of Italian film history (an internationally respected line that

extends from Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio De Sica and Luchino Visconti to Bernardo

Bertolucci, Marco Bellocchio and Giuseppe Tornatore). The result was to start

showcasing movies by new Italian directors who are second-generation descendants of

immigrants or who were born abroad and relocated to Italy.

These new voices are changing the way of narrating stories, and the way of making films. The space in-between in which they work reflects not only Homi Bhabha’s concept of the third space of hybridity, but also the one analyzed by Canclini, according to whom it is this space that produces “intercultural hybridization,” new elements, new signs of identities, and original cooperation.

“with the exception of diasporic filmmakers such as Edmund Budina, Mohamed Soudani and Hedy Krissane, the ties between cinema and migration in Italy have been developed mainly by ‘native’ white filmmakers” (57). 28 The attention paid to migrants by the Italian film production of the early 90s shows a different approach to the theme. Italian cinema has dealt with immigration in a way that cannot be clearly defined as a genre. Here are some of the most significant films that dealt with the immigration and that see foreign protagonists in the Italic territory: Pummarò (M. Placido, 1990), Lamerica (G. Amelio, 1994); Terra di Mezzo (M. Gar- rone, 1996); L’Assedio (B. Bertolucci, 1998); La sconosciuta (G. Tornatore, 2006); Io sono Li (A. Segre, 2011). 19

This new Italian cinema has the potential to offer a different insight into how

Italianness can be re-constructed. The cinema produced by punctuated filmmakers thus represents a way to reconsider what it means to be Italian today. As the leading scholar of the New German Cinema, Thomas Elsaesser, suggests for the emerging pan-European filmmaking context, punctuated filmmakers working within particular national contexts should be analyzed “beyond the binary oppositions, towards something that defines it positively ... a national history as counter-identity” (46).

Since Neorealism, Italian cinema has been taken to be representative of a specific cultural identity (i.e. Italian films shot in the national language, with an entirely national indigenous cast, and with stories that appear to reflect the essence of Italian culture).

Instead, the emerging Italian cinema contains more layers than the old authorial cinema, intertwining such concepts as global and local, transnational and national, as well as marking each film with biographical elements shaped by being part of a minority surrounded by an indigenous culture. These directors “exist outside and prior to their film,” notes Hamid Naficy, who goes on to point out that their “interstitial” films contain a double address to a wide international audience and a local, culturally-specific one (4).

It is not a matter of coincidence, therefore, that Jonas Carpignano’s A Ciambra (2017) foregrounds a ‘minor’ language, the Calabrese dialect, which harks back to Neorealism’s emphasis on regionality. The film was Italy’s choice as its candidate to represent the nation in the “Best Foreign-Language Film” category at the Academy Awards. A further example comes from Ferzan Özpetek’s latest film, Napoli velata (2017). Set in Naples, the dialogue is in standard Italian and the Neapolitan dialect that has remained the subject of both tragedy and comedy from the Neorealist filmmakers onwards. Adapting what it

20

has been said for other contexts, these films “are on the one hand intensely [Italian],” on the other hand, they are infused “with a no less intense Third-Worldism” (Nowell-Smith

118) characterized by social issues such as migration, other-otherness, post-colonialism, identity inscription, and global Oriental framing. Above all, the filmmakers’ identity is characterized by a complex multiculturalism.

Precisely because it focuses on such treatments of culturally complex and highly particular settings inhabited by characters with layered Italian backgrounds, this dissertation does not consider the films made with African settings made by African-

Italian filmmakers. This may seem surprising, since African immigrants represent not only the majority of accented filmmakers inside the Italian context, but were also among the first filmmakers of sub-Saharan African origin to make their voices heard, thereby introducing the problematics of the Third World to a Western society by telling the stories of their homelands.29 However, comprehensive treatments of the films already

exist, with the African-Italian diasporic cinema being the subject of sustained research by

the aforementioned De Franceschi. This dissertation instead focuses the attention on

filmmakers who cannot be analyzed under a specific ethnic category, or a group who

shares a certain set of defining features. My investigations gather specific fragments of

recent Italian cinema, focusing primarily on feature films, and considering directors never

previously studied together as a group, but interacting with other to growing

constituencies of audiences within Italian borders and beyond.

29 The work of those Afro-punctuated Italian filmmakers is not a “unique and monolithic project” (Martin 3). 21

NEW VOICES IN ITALIAN CINEMA

Accented (but not) Italian Style

History always outruns its apparent victors and victims. In today’s Italy the forms of cultural heterogeneity may have exhausted the vocabularies of hyphenation and accentedness to the extent that they demand a more encompassing terminology that can include a wide range of usages that conjoin nationalities and ethnicities. This is by no means to diminish the relevance of such studies as those of Bhabha, Naficy, Elsaesser, or

Anthony Tamburri to these phenomena. But the complexity of the present Italian situation obliges any researcher into these films to consider new ways of describing identities beyond the use already proposed by other scholars.

It is only then, giving full consideration to a fraught socio-political context, that we can begin to understand and appreciate the contribution that punctuated filmmakers are making to the contemporary cultural landscape of contemporary Italy, a richly diverse addition to a long history of Italian cultural innovation and treasured tradition. Although a detailed discussion of all the phenomena associated with cultural change in recent Italian filmmaking would entail a study of greater scope than the present one, I have attempted to categorize some of the most evident features of this new trend by paying attention both to the individuating features of narrative and the use of cinematic techniques as features of authorial style.

The definitive study to date of cinema and migration is probably Hamid Naficy’s

An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), a work that focuses on

22

films that ethnic and postcolonial filmmakers have made in the West since the 1960s,

phenomena that result in a “liminal subjectivity and a sense of interstitiality both in

society and in the film industry” (10).30 For Naficy, accented cinema refers to a

constellation of distinct types of films, ranging from feature to experimental

documentary. The sub-categories he invokes are based on “the varied relationship of the

films and their makers to existing or imagined homeplaces” (21). As his work reveals,

language -- multifarious nits accenting -- is always at the root of culture. His analysis provides a compelling model for the work of filmmakers with displaced identities living and working in the West. The term ‘accented cinema’ is referred to an emergent genre that “cuts across previously defined geographic, national, cultural, cinematic and metacinematic boundaries” (1996: 119). Accented films originate from unique and personal experience, they are ‘created … in the interstices of social formations and cinematic practices’ (2001: 4–5).

At the time Naficy promulgated the idea of accented cinema, there were few valid examples to consider within the context of Italian filmmaking. Italy differs from countries such as Great Britain, France or Germany, where immigration was a consequence of (de)-colonization, political agreements, or industrial workforce needs

(which led, for instance, to the sizeable and cinematically-productive Turkish community

in Germany). The Italian case is quite different since colonization was not a major,

ongoing feature of a state economy dependent on cheap labor and raw materials. Even

historians treated Italy’s African “adventure” lightly as a “colonialismo straccione,

30 Specifically, Asian Pacific American filmmakers such as Mira Nair and Trinh T. Minh-ha; Iranian exile cinema; British postcolonial filmmakers and Beur Cinema in France; Turkish in Germany; Chicano Films. 23

bonario e di breve durata” (Rivera 16).31 Italy did not experience a post-colonial

immigration, but a simple labor-driven migration.

While my analysis follows the application of Naficy’s emphasis on

“accentedness,” it should be underlined that his concept captures only part of the situation

in the Italian mediascape. To give an example, following up on the accent as a linguistic

term, it can be said that, during our interview, the filmmaker Fariborz Kamkari answered

my questions in Italian with a rich, recognizable Middle Eastern accent. So, he is indeed

accented in the way Naficy formulated his theory according to which a migrant author

retains his accent as a cultural-linguistic feature of speech, which is “one of the most

intimate and powerful markers of group identity and solidarity, as well as of individual

difference and personality” (2001: 23). On the other hand, Suranga D. Katugampala grew

up in the Veneto region of Northern Italy where he arrived at a very young age from Sri

Lanka. Hence, he acquired a distinctly Veneto-inflected accent, so he is actually not

accented in the way Naficy describes. Nor is this form of accentedness applicable in the

case of Ferzan Özpetek too, who as Ryan Calabretta-Sajder remarks, is a filmmaker

“beyond the margin” (8), whose accent through the years has become more diluted, both

literally and metaphorically. 32

Even though I have briefly mentioned some distinctions between accentedness

and my theory, I should underline that my research hopes to become an historical

continuation of a study such as Naficy’s, albeit in an Italian context. In fact, the

theoretical formulation I advance develops in the spirit of his study, and for this reason I

31 “[R]agged, good-natured and short-lived colonialism.” 32 As Calabretta-Sajder underlines, the expression is borrowed from the Italian-American (or Italian/American) Studies. (See note 6, p. 8). 24

will be quite attentive to nuances, since, as he reminds us “[a]ttention to the specificity

and situatedness of each displaced filmmaker … is an important safeguard against the

temptation to engage in postmodern discursive tourism or the positing of an

all-encompassing grand Exile or Great Diaspora or a homogeneous Accented Cinema”

(9).

Hyphenated or not Hyphenated?

Whether illuminated in a blaze of publicity or preferring the quiet shadows of relative anonymity, the filmmakers I am analyzing have already generated new languages, other points of view to express a diverse sense of ethnic identity originating with their cultures, and the contrasting realities of their life in Italy. Consequently, “we are inevitably confronted with mixed histories, cultural mingling, and composite languages” (Chambers 17). Their recognition came along with convoluted forms of identity politics applied to them and controversial ways of describing them. One of these controversies that retains its currency revolves around the concept of hyphenation which defines “[t]he formation of social grouping with dual or multiple allegiances” (Berghahn

and Sternberg 20).

Naficy reminds us that the politics of hyphenation is also associated with a sort of

“resistance to the homogenizing and hegemonizing power of the ... melting pot

ideology,” specifically the American one (15). In his view, the hyphen is seen as “nested

... consisting of a number of other intersecting and overlapping hyphens that provide

inter- and intra-ethnic and national links” (16). On the same account, describing the

new/old Europe and its geopolitics, Thomas Elsaesser (2005, 2009) defines the politics of

25

hyphenation as something apparently harmless, which encompasses diverse political

formations. The hyphen ends up being “a sort of provocative stumbling block, forcing a

reflection on power and politics even in the field of culture” (2005:51). Elsaesser presents

two situations in which hyphenation turns out to obstruct the process of identification and

the sense of belonging. First, hyphenation of national identity, which he positions in a

sub-state level, includes immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees who live on the margins of society and “within their own diasporic communities and closed family” (51).

Second or third-generation immigrants, as Elsaesser remarks, are not only affected by

such hyphenation, but they are also positioned under a category he calls “double

occupancy.” Paraphrasing Elsaesser, while possessing language and skills, they feel excluded from both social categories. Their ambiguous position places them in a state of not belonging either to their parents’ nation, or to the nation-state in which they were born (51).

This crisis of representation will always hold many dimensions, from the political to the aesthetic. As a matter of fact, in recent years Western Europe has witnessed two strategies to deal with the politics of hyphenation. On the one hand, the EU strives “to

‘de-ethnicize’ the nation by rewriting its identity in civic terms; on the other hand, it has adopted stronger immigration laws, which is a method that reinforces ethnicity instead, thus disabling the first strategy (Antonsich 792).

The identity crisis is of course not restricted to Europe, and similar discussions have been witnessed in the past about Italian immigrants. One of the most significant discussions on the hyphen has emerged in the Italian-American context. One alternative proposal to describe Italian-Americans in the American society has been to use a

26

different punctuation mark. Anthony J. Tamburri (1998) considers the concept of the

hyphen as characteristic of the dominant culture to not fully accept the other. As

Tamburri remarks,

within the general discourse of American Literature, Daniele Aaron seems to be

one of the first to have dealt with the notion of hyphenation. For him, the hyphen

initially represented older North Americans’ hesitation to accept the newcomer; it

was their way, in Aaron’s words, to “hold him at ‘hyphen’s length,’ so to speak,

from the established community. (28)

Tamburri prefers the idea of a shared identity, to which end he proposes the use of a slash

as a form of punctuation, and, as an Italian/American, underlines Aaron’s celebration of

its increasing modification and eventual disappearance in three stages as it undergoes a

transformation. In the first stage, the hyphenated writer is representative of a specific

ethnic group. As Tamburri remarks, Aaron considers this stage “conciliatory toward the

dominant group” (29). In a second phase migrant writers distance themselves from the previous stage, abandoning the “use of preconceived ideas in an attempt to demystify negative stereotypes” (30). In the third stage, they move from the margin to the center.

This last stage becomes a new universe, in which the acceptance of their “ethnic or racial

past” evolves into another dimension, “the province of the imagination” (13). The authors

I am investigating might be representative of this phase. Now possessing the necessary

tools, such as the language and the adopted culture, they are out of the margins and

capable of navigating the new reality in which they live.

Tamburri points out that the hyphen in “Italian-American” creates a disjunctive

physical division. As a result, the introduces a new way of looking at the newcomers,

27

modifying the hyphen and turning it forty-five degrees “Italian/American.” Of course, his proposal is a progressive one. However, in the case of the new identities in Italian society, even this punctuation mark is not sufficient to fully describe their complexity. In other words, the use of a uniform punctuation mark needs to be re-evaluated and, at least in the present Italian context, absorbed into a new formulation.

Punctuated Identities (in the Spirit of Roland Barthes)

The complexity of Italian society and its artistic products suggest a phenomenon that I describe by the term of “punctuated identities,” which refers to filmmakers whose identities cannot be simply defined as hyphenated or accented. I should note at the outset, however, that my purpose is not to classify or mark this new path as a specific category, but to raise the question about the fluidity of these new identities. They are not simply in between, but the space they navigate is multilayered.

In the contemporary Italian mediascape, punctuated filmmakers have already emerged and their work is gaining importance. I am aware that the space they occupy represents a convergence of extremely different trajectories and thus it is not self-contained as it would be if they were positioned within a film movement (such as Neorealism or the

French New Wave). In a sense, one could argue that this new path of Italian cinema is geared “to trash the monolithic and homogeneous in the name of diversity, multiplicity, and heterogeneity” (West 93), and, as such, it defies simplistic categorization.

Punctuated filmmakers have wide appeal, and while their work can be seen in some way as having reference to Third Cinema, it cannot be analyzed under the rubrics of the

“Cinema of Hunger” (Glauber Rocha) or “Imperfect Cinema” (Julio Garcia Espinosa)

28

that Third Cinema gathered under the umbrella of socially-conscious activist cinema.

Films made by punctuated directors have no apologies to make with respect to their

technical deficiencies. Their work shows that a cinema -- technically and artistically masterful -- can also be a counter-conservative cinema, meaning a way to provide other

alternatives, a counter-narrative without being revolutionary in the direction made by

Third Cinema.

It is my contention, rather, that no one mode of analysis can individually be

applied to the contemporary socio-cultural-political mediascape of Italy, let alone

individual films by highly personal directors, but together they constitute part of a

collective index of social transformation. My argument is that there is a prevailing

fluidity, which characterizes the identities and the work of these directors. They are part of the post-1989 generation of “liquid modernity” (Bauman 2000), a condition of persistent mobility and change seen not only in identities, but also in relationships, and

global economies (Bauman 9).

With this in mind, let me clarify the utility of the concept of punctuated identities.

Although the term itself as I use it is more encompassing, it originates with the Barthian

distinction between the studium and the punctum. Barthes defines the punctum as “a Latin

word [that] exists to designate [a] wound, [a] prick, [a] mark made by a pointed

instrument” (Barthes 26).

Punctuated identity derives from Barthes’s contrast of the studium and the punctum

in photographic images. The punctum, the telling detail, pierces through the

denotative context, the discourse of the photographer or studium. Following Barthes’

mainly visual suggestions, I will apply this aspect of the concept in terms of visibility

29

and individual puncta. More precisely, punctum will symbolize a coded memory and

seemingly accidental detail crucial for the work of interpretation. In Camera Lucida

(1981), Barthes claims that studium “is “enthusiastic commitment” to the overt

“message” of a project/photo (26). The observer takes part in it, enjoying it without

going to a deeper level. It refers to any cultural information that is being transmitted

or any element of human interest in the image. Punctum, on the other hand, is

something that is “like an arrow [that] pierces and wounds” the viewer (26). In other

words, the punctum is an infraction. It is a component that disrupts the studium,

suspends information; it pricks, splits, or “tweaks” the image. The movies I am

analyzing present several puncta, arrows that pierce and wound both visually and

conceptually and form the basis for my analysis.

By the same token, punctuated identity encompasses hyphenation and other forms of

punctuation applied to the multiple identities of transnational or immigrant

filmmakers. Just as in musical notation of Christian liturgical chants as well as in the

earliest medieval polyphonies, a neume represents a small sign above a line of text

that indicates a musical inflection, punctuated identities need not refer to specific

notes or even note values, but rather to a cultural direction or synthesis.33 As the

origins of musical notation have motivated various explanations in the same way, the

rise of punctuated identities cannot be seen as a unique, fixed mode. Like neumes,

that combine to shape a melody, punctuated filmmakers are quite complex in

33 The term neume refers to a system of musical notation: “neume from Greek 1) ‘breath’. In plainsong, a prolonged group of notes, sung to a single syllable; 2) from Greek ‘sign’ The sign employed in the earliest plainsong to indicate the melody. These signs are probably derived from the accent-marks of the grammarians. They are thought to date from the 8th century.” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford UP, 2005, p. 1148. 30

combining elements of their background and cultural dispositions. The best example

of such complexity is perhaps Jonas Carpignano. We should say that he is

Italian-African because his father is Italian and his mother is Barbadian. However,

the filmmaker was born and raised in New York, and a few years ago, he relocated

to Italy (where he feels at home in Gioia Tauro in the Calabria region). His American

identity is an addition to his parents' originary identities: Italian, Barbadian, and

American.

Punctuated identity suggests a space of temporal succession (almost a series of bullet

points), i.e. the series of generations within immigrant communities that inflects their

ethnic identity, a phenomenon studied in considerable depth in the case of

Italian-American communities by Tamburri and other Italian American scholars. The

gradual loss of an originary identity as one immigrant generation follows the other,

differs from community to community there is no straight, smooth line that connects

them, but each one derives meaning from its own history.

Punctuated identity may, paradoxically, define a communal rather than an individual

experience. To the extent that no ethnic minority is marginal except as a result of the

prejudices of the majority, filmmakers whose identities are so punctuated may mediate

between cultural positions, serving as counterparts to the dominant traditions of a

homogenous national cinema. They represent not only a cultural exception but also a

counter-model, and in some way a resistance to the terra firma, which is rooted in

national identity and its discourse concerning internal and external others. As Michele D.

Serra claimed, such filmmakers represent “a tool for interculturality. They make [us]

31

walk the same street, but in their shoes.”34 In sum, as Barthes maintains, the punctum at

once augments and defies total comprehension:

[I]t is this element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow … the

word suits me all the better in that it also refers to the notion of punctuation … This

… element which will disturb the studium I shall therefore call punctum; … sting,

speck, cut, little hole -- and also a cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is that

accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me). (26-27)

In this sense, filmmakers with a wider cultural experience destabilize the typical national

discourse encapsulated by a state-supported, auteur-driven model of filmmaking. An

example is the film A Ciambra (2017) directed by Carpignano, that follows the story of

Pio, a young Roma boy who experiences a precarious existence in Southern Italy. The

filming of marginal otherness, like Barthes’s wounding arrow, shows how the experience

of Italy constitutes a complex reality that most of the time has been obscured by canonic

Italian auteurist cinema. While the Roma ethnic group has a long history in Italian

society, it has never been represented in film as indigenous. Like our proverbial punctum,

they have always been there, often disparaged as a thorn on the side (literally piercing)

the well-being of society, but not enough “there” to be considered or represented as a

coherent community.

The punctuated filmmakers I am analyzing are not the marginally or culturally

isolated individuals as studied by Naficy. Therefore, the concept of radical cinema as

experienced during the 1960s and the 1970s does not fully apply to the cinema made by

these Italian filmmakers with punctuated identities, since there is no rupture with or

34 Conversation with Dr. Ilaria Serra, my Ph.D. advisor, who recounted me the story of her father and his long relation with many migrant filmmakers. 32

revolutionary movement against “first and second cinema.” There is no manifesto which

expresses a common identity. Low budgets, or refusing technical perfection are aspects

more related to a personal point of view, interest, or needs, rather than pursuit of a

particular ideological direction. In the cinema of punctuated identities there is not a

unitary and common program, but the individuality of their background positions them as

cultural counterparts to a mainstream.

Filmmakers with such punctuated identities occupy a space that mimics in some

way the trajectory of Homi Bhabha’s “Third Space” (1994), since such space

makes the structure of meaning and reference an ambivalent process, destroy[ing]

this mirror of representation in which cultural knowledge is continuously revealed

as an integrated, open, expanding code. Such an intervention … challenges our

sense of the historical identity of culture as a homogenizing, unifying force. (54)

My present argument necessitates re-viewing such space from an optimistic perspective,

as a strategy of negotiation between affinity and difference characteristic of the historical

context of Italian culture. I would thus invite providing a politics of cultural inclusion ra-

ther than exclusion that “initiates new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collabora-

tion” (Bhabha 1994: 1-2).

Given their inherent ambivalence, the identity of punctuated filmmakers cannot

be simply defined under a specific national or supra-national category. More precisely, the understanding of a repository of cultural memory and detail are crucial for my work.

The invisible, inaudible punctum of interstitial filmmakers and their stories pierces through the grand narrative of the national history of any of their adopted countries.

33

While the Italian situation may not be unique, it is certainly among the most interesting among today’s European film industries for a variety of reasons. First, the work of these filmmakers signals a future that has not yet been clearly established. These filmmakers operate in a context that has expanded beyond what Naficy terms the interstitial, largely parallel to a more traditional Italian filmmaking and, as in the case of

Özpetek, crossing into mainstream production. Second, there is no internal point of cohesion in this cinema of punctuated identities in which common cause is the result of a series of historical accidents. Nor can we adduce any single unifying stylistic or technical feature that could be considered representative of this new trend in Italian filmmaking, in contrast even to international film movements such as Dogme’ 95, with real or pretended adherences to a set of filmmaking “rules.” Third, in spite of a lack of co-ordination, the work of these filmmakers has gained increasing international attention in the art house circuit and at international festivals, becoming an unavoidable topic of discussion among cineastes.

34

FIVE PUNCTUATED FILMMAKERS

Filmmakers with punctuated identities carry their biographies with them. What remains of this introduction serves to introduce them and their work in a variety of ways, such as their participation in global modes of production and distribution, their authorial styles, and the critical and public reception of their work. This study stresses the importance of the filmmakers' identities as they have progressed through different stages of immigration. They move in what has been demarcated as a “conceptual space” (italic in the text, Ponzanesi and Waller 2012: 1), one not subject to an overriding cultural essentialism. It is a space that teaches us “how to navigate [in a] fluid, situational, relational model of knowledge production, … that requires mutual recognition and engagement as well as new methodological and aesthetic strategies” (1-2). These filmmakers are subjects not because they are suspended in between cultures or as oscillating between identities. They have undergone a process of becoming that overlays an old identity. The space in which they place their creative lives gives them the freedom to be both here and there, to be positioned simultaneously in the past and in the present, between inherited traditions and the novelties of modernity. Their personalities are often as fluid as their work, which gives rise to a corpus of films made from new, diverse, and often precarious inter-and intra-national positions.

The analysis includes two immigrants who have consciously chosen Italy as their homeland (Ferzan Özpetek and Jonas Carpignano), a migrant other who rejects nationality (Laura Halilovic), a political exile who relishes a certain sense of freedom in

35

his Italian sojourn (Fariborz Kamkari), and the naturalized son of migrants (Suranga

Katugampala). I propose to divide their punctuated identities into the following categories:

Ferzan Özpetek: a Prototype of Italian Punctuated Italian Celebrity

Laura Halilovic: a Spectral Figure

Fariborz Kamkari: an Interstitial Artistic Refugee

Jonas Carpignano: an ItalianBarbadianAmerican in Gioia Tauro

Suranga D. Katugampala: a Sri Lankan Italian with a Veneto Accent

Ferzan Özpetek: A Prototype of Punctuated Italian Celebrity

Ferzan Özpetek was born in Istanbul in 1959. He moved to Italy at the end of the

70s, starting his career studying film in Rome. Holding dual Italian/Turkish nationality, the director travels frequently to his country of origin. “[O]ne of the most prolific and commercially successful directors in contemporary Italy,” Özpetek represents a special case in contemporary Italian cinema (Nathan 23). Rada Bieberstein considers him “one of the most acclaimed representatives of contemporary cinema” (202), and acknowledges his penetrating views of Italian society in all of his other films, but she regards it as

“problematic to consider the filmmaker and his work in an exclusively national context”

(201). However, as Özpetek states in an interview for the Turkish news source Cihan

Haber Ajansı, “it is not important where you were born or make films. What is important is how the film looks, which feelings accompanied its creation.”35 As Vetri Nathan

(2017) remarks, he cannot be defined an immigrant filmmaker, because “both his own

35 Cihan Haber Ajansı, "Türkiye'de Film Çekmeyi Çok Çok İstiyorum," October 12, 2008 https://www.haberler.com/turkiye-de-film-cekmeyi-cok-cok-istiyorum-haberi/

36

personal identity and the “Turkish-ness” of his films are notoriously difficult to define,”

and “his lush, operatic, and relatively big-budget productions, make [his works] even

more difficult to designate ... as ‘accented’” (23).

Özpetek’s work has been often analyzed from a dual perspective: as a director who produces an Orientalist vision of Turkey, and that one who, as suggested by Nathan,

“utilizes a plethora of hybrid identities -- or ‘marvelous bodies’ -- on screen that question

social roles related to sexual orientation, race, gender, nationality, and family in order to

neutralize multicultural discourse of foreign immigration by internalizing, domesticating,

and diffusing otherness” (24).36

The first among our filmmakers to produce films in Italy, Özpetek introduces

many important questions that will be at the center of my dissertation. Can a movie with

an Italian cast set in Italy and produced in Italy by an accented, hyphenated, diasporic,

exilic, i.e. punctuated filmmaker be classified as Italian? Can a film be analyzed

superimposing a director’s biography on it rather than purely from an artistic point of

view? How far has Italy encouraged the production of films made by those with

punctuated identities? These are some essential questions to raise in the context of

understanding the emergence of recent cinemas that cannot be given a single national

“brand name.”

36 Özpetek's films are often are often analyzed within the context of queer theories. My work, leaving out the aspect of queerness and sexuality, focus on a different path. The queer narratives has been in fact at the center of the work of Ryan Calabretta-Sajder Divergenze in celluloide: Colore, migrazione e identità nei film gay di Ferzan Özpetek (2016); Sergio Rigoletto, “Sexual Dissidence and the Mainstream: The Queer Triangle in Ferzan Özpetek’s “Le Fate Ignoranti,” The Italianist 30, 2010, pp. 202–18; Elisabetta Girelli,“Transnational Orientalism: Ferzan Özpetek's Turkish dream in Hamam,” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, vol. 5, n. 1, 2007, pp. 23-38; Alberto Zambenedetti, “Multiculturalism in New Italian Cinema,” Studies in European Cinema 3, no. 2, 2006, pp.105–16; Derek Duncan, “Stairway to Heaven: Ferzan Özpetek and the revision of Italy,” New Cinemas, vol.3, n.2, 2005, pp. 101-113. 37

As a celebrated exponent of contemporary European “art” cinema, Özpetek’s

work can be positioned in a “fluid geo-national position” (Girelli 2007), and it can be

defined as pan-European, a consciously transnational modus operandi. Özpetek

represents “[u]n buon esempio di cinema non convenzionale e culturalmente aperto ...

Capita di rado di vedere un film Italiano girato in due lingue, rispettoso delle differenze

antropologiche, non schiacciato dai toni della commedia esotica” (Marcello 43).37

Initially, Özpetek’s films were set in a nostalgic version of Turkey settings - with

the space defining the aim of the films’ subjects, whose mode of representation conveys

also the filmmaker's aesthetic preferences. From his third work - His Secret Life (Le fate ignoranti, 2000), Özpetek’ films were always set in Italy with an almost entirely Italian cast and crew, and they were produced by Gianni Romoli and Tilde Corsi with the R&C

Produzioni S.r.l., a well-known Italian production company. However, while Özpetek’s accent gradually vanished, his nostalgic Turkishness has never disappeared. With his last film, İstanbul kırmızısı (Rosso Istanbul, 2017) -- shot for the first time entirely in Turkey,

in the Turkish language, and with an entirely Turkish cast -- he returns to his first homeland, its call proves to be more than nostalgic.

In his monograph on Özpetek, Gabriele Marcello points out that his cinema does not have “pretese autoriali” (“authorial pretense,”16), but it is however a cinema “degli affetti speciali” (“of special affections,” with a word play on special effects and special affects), which has the aim to address ordinary people (16). The label of “a cineasta popolare” (16), seems to come mainly from an emphasis on his biography instead of the stylistic approach he himself would prefer.

37 “A good example of unconventional and culturally open cinema ... It is rare to see an Italian film shot in two languages, respecting anthropological differences, not trampled by the tones of the exotic comedy." 38

Italian film history and its exploration of the polarities of past and present, fiction and reality, reside at the heart of Özpetek’s films. As Marcello underlines “in ogni film di

Ferzan Özpetek è evidente in che modo la lezione dei grandi maestri, italiani … sia stata compresa e rielaborata in uno stile assolutamente nuovo ed originale” (13).38 In his work flows the influence of authors from the “commedia all’Italiana” with some of its representatives, as Marcello remarks, from Antonio Pietrangeli and Pietro Germi to the venerated auteurs Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. There are also aspects of genre of films, “identified with the movement known as

‘calligraphism,’ films that utilized earlier literary texts, melodramas especially, and [that] were presented in a highly stylized manner” (Landy 20).

One such influence could be Luchino Visconti’s style (especially in Senso, 1954) which may have contributed to Özpetek’s stylistic approach with its melodramatic realism and its thematic shifts between historical melodrama and operatic grandeur. Like

Senso, Harem Suare (1999) is not merely a melodrama, but a melodrama embedded in a realist context. The film is not simply the story of an Italian favorite, Safiye and her relationship with the keeper of a Sultan’s harem, Nadir, but focuses on an encounter between cultures and identities, between imagination and representation of the Orient by the spectator familiar with fables of oriental excess, yet very much part of Özpetek’s projected cultural identity. Not surprisingly, as in Senso, which opens with a performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Harem Suare begins with La Traviata.39

38 “In every film by Ferzan Özpetek, it is evident how the lesson of the great masters, Italians ... has been understood and reworked in an absolutely new and original style.” 39 The interest of Özpetek for the Opera is not only visible from the film. In 2011, he directed the Aida at the “Maggio Musicale Fiorentino” with the conductor Zubin Mehta, and in 2015 he has also directed La Traviata premiered at the “Real Teatro of San Carlo” in Naples. 39

Another significant influence could be Bernardo Bertolucci and his The Last

Emperor (1987), “one of the first attempts of cinematic collaboration between West and

East” (Baschiera 1), with “its transnational legacy” (4).40 One cannot help wondering if his cultural cosmopolitanism has had an impact on Özpetek. The Orient the spectator sees in Harem Suare can be the mirror of the one in The Last Emperor: “a diaphanous veil through which the West can be viewed imperfectly, but perhaps more suggestively”

(Marcus 2002: 62). Furthermore, by structuring Harem Suare on a double narrative, and adopting an intricate approach to historical melodrama, Özpetek seems to follow

Bertolucci’s narrative strategy in The Last Emperor, which is likewise structured as a series of flashbacks. Like Bertolucci, he creates resonances between past and present, history and myth, that “reflect a doubly filtered vision” with a “richly colored, highly emotional ... dreamlike mode accompanied by all the trappings of grand spectacle cinema” (Marcus 66).

Özpetek's cinema has also opened up a series of issues on the relationship between film, personal biography and historical representation. To put it in Miguel

Andrés Malagreca’s words “[is it] Özpetek’s own transnational identity that allows him to do cinematic research focusing on those aspects of cultural behavior ... that are sometimes taken for granted”? (214). Perhaps, his distinctive film aesthetics and the rich textuality of his films deserve more intellectual effort than the present reception that reign in contemporary (film) discussions, which often confine his cinema to facile oppositions,

40 In addition to this, Novecento (1976), with its multinational aspects and “its melodramatic view of things which grew directly out of [Bertolucci]’s practically atavistic love of Verdi” (Gerard, T. Kline, Sklarew 170), is another example that could have gained importance in Özpetek’s construction of a stylistic choice. 40

whether post-modern or conservative, or equally stereotyped identity markers such as

queerness or auto-orientalist.

Laura Halilovic: the Spectral Figure

This section explores the depiction of identities, cultures and national boundaries

through the work of an unusual female figure, Laura Halilovic. A Romani filmmaker of

Bosnian origins, Halilovic was born in a nomadic camp in the Piedmontese capital Turin.

When it comes to marginality, Halilovic represents the most compelling and

illustrative case. Besides, and perhaps most poignantly, the Roma have a notional -

Rromanestan - and not a national homeland, thus they cannot identify themselves with a

territory. 41 Since the Roma women are more invisible than other women, and in a culture where a woman’s identity is defined relationally to her ethnic group and to men,

the filmmaker's voice deserves to be fully recognized. The very fact that she has made

herself a protagonist invites attentiveness to her concerns, both as an individual, and as a

representative of an ethnic group.

Halilovic appears to be a “spectral figure.” Belonging to a marginalized people,

such as Romani, or “zingari” (the Italian derogatory term for gypsies), she is “for various

reasons, perceived and/or perceive[s] [herself] as in some way ghostly, spectral,

phantasmatic or spooky” (Peeren 4). The Latin etymology of the word “spectrum”42

means appearance, image, from spectāre to observe, from specere to look at. As

suggested by Esther Peeren, “‘specter’ ... strongly invokes something visible, even

41 Hancock, Ian. “A Glossary of Romani Terms.” The American Journal of Comparative Law, vol. 45, no. 2, 1997, pp. 329–344. www.jstor.org/stable/840853 42 The Collins Dictionary: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/spectrum

41

spectacular ... and tends, in everyday speech, to refer to something terrifying and horrific”

(4). The filmmaker’s work explores the spectral figures of marginalized people.

Halilovic, both as a woman and as a director is a mystery. She is a subject, or an object,

“of intense fascination: any inkling of a haunting presence is followed by an overwhelming desire to locate [her], a frenzied insistence that shows itself again” (2).

Halilovic’s refusal to appear in the public arena makes us clueless about her, and this might be an intentional move to protect herself from becoming a “convenient” object of analysis, against the way female images are explored often reiterating traditional approaches. Perhaps, her aim was simply to have a voice of her own, and not to have someone else speaking for her.

As a second-generation immigrant, the filmmaker is part of a social change in which she feels the responsibility to actively participate. In an interesting article, Bjørn

Thomassen provides a critical overview of the debate concerning Italian citizenship and the second-generation immigrants in Italy,

They pose different challenges to society: challenges of a legal kind, pertaining to

questions of citizenship, and challenges relating to broader social-cultural

processes of integration. The questions of ‘assimilation,’ ‘adaptation’ or

‘integration’ change meaning from the first to the second generation. (25-26)

The figure of Halilovic, as a migrant other, posits her in a different setting: she belongs to a still persecuted minority group. First of all, as nomads, the Roma are the quintessential outsiders, “Zingari cacciati dalla Madonna ... esclusi da Cristo,” as an Italian interviewee claims in her documentary Io, la mia famiglia Rom e Woody Allen.43 Romani people

43 “Gypsies hunted by the Madonna ... excluded by Christ." 42

differ also from other migrants, who can claim a specific country of origin. Second, and

no less problematic in the context of identity, is that we “should not obfuscate the

importance of ... gender, self-identifications … and degrees of integration” (Thomassen

28). Her identity contains multiple layers, she is not only a second-generation immigrant, but also a young Romani woman, who is a Romani woman filmmaker. As a woman, but mostly as a filmmaker of Romani origins, she had to face first of all her father's biases, and his conception that cinema was synonymous with pornography,

Da noi le ragazze non fanno questo tipo di mestiere perché il cinema è visto come

pornografia, chi lo fa è guardata come una prostituta. Potete immaginare le

difficoltà che ho avuto, soprattutto con mio padre: tutti gli dicevano che facevo i

film porno, gli chiedevano perché me li lasciasse fare e perché lavorassi con i

Gagé.44

Halilovic's struggles to reach from within and from the world outside. In the boundary

between her and the rest of society, cinema becomes the only way to raise her voice:

“behind the camera … I express myself.”45

A Documentary Preview: Io, la mia famiglia Rom e Woody Allen46

The filmmaker’s first film Io, la mia famiglia Rom e Woody Allen (2009), is a

documentary which can be analyzed under the category of the “cinema of duty,” a

44 Gagé are all non-Romani. “[Within my culture] girls do not do this kind of job because cinema is seen as pornography, someone who does it is considered as a prostitute. You can imagine the difficulties I had, especially with my father: everybody told him I was doing porn movies, they asked him why he let me do it and why I worked with the Gagé.” News “Mantova Film Fest” http://www.mantovafilmfesti- val.com/news/dettaglio/71 45 News “Mantova Film Fest”http://www.mantovafilmfestival.com/news/dettaglio/71 46 Produced by Zenit Arti Audiovisive (Torino) in association with Aria Viva, and with the support of Radiotelevisione Italiana - Rai Tre, Open Society Institute - Rome Decade Initiative 2005-2015, Film 43

signifier for migrant filmmakers who feels the obligation and the responsibility to portray

migrant issues, and to represent those who have no means to voice their experience.47

While often encountered in descriptions of the films of first-generation immigrants, it

also well defines Halilovic's work since her documentary portrays the Romani experience

in the host society and the consequent issue of adaptation.

The documentary opens with a split-screen shot of a baby girl, a visual metaphor

for Halilovic’s entry into the world of filmmaking.48 Adopting the first-person narrative

approach, the narrator tells a story using the Italian language, while all other protagonists

are dubbed.

Io sono nata in Italia, ho la carta di identità Italiana, peró il mio passaporto è della

Bosnia ed ogni anno devo dare le mie impronte digitali per rinnovare il mio

permesso di soggiorno. Ma la mia identità è ancora un’altra, io sono Rom.49

A voice-over narrates her story. Born in a nomad camp, after many years her family

obtains an apartment which elicits the ironic voice-over comment: “viviamo come voi gagé.”50 The message is clearly addressed to us, the audience, the gagé. The

documentary puts together a home-movie footage reel that Halilovic’s father over the

Commission Turin Piedmont. For further information regarding festivals and prizes http://www.fctp.it/movie_item.php?id=990 The documentary broadcasted by the Italian National Television Rai Tre can be seen on You Tube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aho96I-HzQ 47 Coined by the film critic Cameron Bailey, this kind of cinema defines social issues using the documentary form “to foreground stories that were largely informed by a black Diaspora experience” (Crooks 30), positioning “its subjects in direct relation to social crisis, and attempts to articulate ‘problems’ and ‘solutions to problems’ within a framework of centre and margin, white and non-white communities’ (Bailey in Malik 203-204). 48 The girl with long blond hair, and a vivid purplish red color dress dances and poses in front of the camera with self confidence. The camera lens zooms into the subject and soon after a fast movement turns to an Italian identity document showing a name, “Laura Halilovic,” and her photograph. 49 “I was born in Italy, I have the Italian identity card but my passport is from Bosnia, and every year I have to give my fingerprints to renew my residence permit. But my identity is still another, I am Romani.” 50 “[W]e live like you gagé.” 44

years documented, a record of the daily life of the Romani community struggling to live

their life. Part of the footage comes from Halilovic’s interview of her community, and of

their gagé neighbors. In addition, some historical footage shows the concentration camp

to which the Italian Romani were deported during the Second World War. The

filmmaker’s mother is the one who recounts the story of the persecution. As a harsh

reminder of the present situation, the narrator claims “i campi [nomadi] sono ghetti

lontani dalla città e dai suoi abitanti.”51

The documentary explores a family's life, but also that of a kumpania, their

togetherness, their sedentary life, as a contrast to the world around them. It also contains

thematic elements that will reappear in her first feature film, Io rom romantica: the

filmmaker’s relation with her grandmother, the wedding tradition, the legacy with the

Romani culture. The camera becomes a way to express her indignation against those who

reject their presence as a community: “[l]a gente se potesse ci eliminerebbe dalla terra,” but it also represents her disappointment with Romani people who are not able to take action: “non capisco come mai noi continuiamo ad accettare questa situazione senza ribellarci.”52 Attuned to the principal issues facing her community, Halilovic uses the camera rebelliously, as a companion and witness to the expression of identity and being an “insider.” Hers is a strategy that updates the mission of Third Cinema in promoting the acceptance of difference as a form of political change, just as the primordial cinemas of rebellion sought radical incitements to overthrow totalitarianism and entrench the concept

“of a new culture and of changes in society” (Chanan 378-79).

51 “[Nomad] camps are ghettos far from the city and its inhabitants.” 52 “People, if they could they would eliminate us from the earth;” “I do not understand why we continue to accept this situation without rebelling." 45

The documentary shows how filming becomes an imaginary space where a

community can express itself. The camera helps to develop awareness; thus, cinema

becomes humanly useful: Io, la mia famiglia Rom ends with Laura’s grandmother

wandering into a wild garden, a real sequence, which in Io rom romantica transforms into

a fictional representation at the beginning of the feature.

From the outset, therefore, cinema appears to be a powerful vehicle to change

Halilovic’s life. A close up of a pen writing a letter to Woody Allen, and the voice of a little girl asking “Auntie, who is Woody Allen?” change the documentary’s trajectory.

Her work is not simply a tool to represent the other, but also to tell a story of aspiration.

The filmmaker’ passion for cinema is born at the age of eight, when she sees a TV broadcast of Allen's film Manhattan, which finds many visual and thematic parallels in Io rom romantica as well. Halilovic even goes so far to adapt obviously referential elements from the American filmmaker. For instance, Allen’s films outline figures who suffer an existential isolation, often manifesting as a reluctance to adjust to change. His protagonists are embedded in a cultural milieu that demands repetition, ritual, and routine. As a result, like some of the characters of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, any superficial change masks a desire for things to stay the same; and so, they are overwhelmed in the end when the world around them intrudes on their private worlds.

Halilovic finds a way of doing the same, featuring part of her family, especially her father and her grandmother - in general the entire Romani community - as figures inhabiting an imaginary territory. And just as Allen’s characters in in Manhattan are separated and confined by glass doors, shop windows, and mirrors, the mise-en-scènes seem to recreate a feeling of obstruction for Gioia, a kind of allegorical reflexivity visible through the train

46

windows, mirrors - the mirrors reflecting the cramped wardrobes in her apartment, and

the lens of the camera itself - she is being filmed twice,53 - for she always seems to end

up on the “wrong side” of the lenses of photographers and filmmakers.54

In her documentary, Halilovic tells the story of a very difficult childhood, as the

kids at school saw her as “una sporca zingara.”55 Here one is inevitably reminded of the

protagonist of Allen’s 1980 mock-documentary feature Zelig, the perfect assimilationist,

who, because his parents agreed with the anti-Semitic bullies in his school, sought to belong to the dominant group by transforming himself into one of them.

Both the documentary and the film represent an autobiographical perspective which aims to narrate the figure of the other from within. The seduction of cinematic narrative is thus figured as a false antidote to Halilovic’s ethnicity, which, being inescapable can flourish only when caricature and the representational regimes created by outsiders give way to self-aware and sophisticated self-representation.

Fariborz Kamkari: An Interstitial Artistic Refugee

In the fourth volume of the book A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Hamid

Naficy offers the opinion that Fariborz Kamkari remains a unique and singularly

determined filmmaker who “not only contributes to the rising output of Iranian Kurdish

53 During her audition and when the filmmaker interviews her to make a documentary. 54 Elements also visible in Woody Allen’ film Alice (1990), where the protagonist (played by Mia Farrow) appears to contain aspects that are reflected in Gioia. In Allen’s film there are mirrors, tv screens, walls which often act as a mediator or obstacle. Gioia, like Alice attempts to manifest her identity through a film: while Gioia visits a film producer/filmmaker suggesting him a semi-autobiographical story for a film she wants to direct, Alice visits a friend who has become a successful television producer, and is brushed aside when suggests her a a semi-autobiographical plot for a TV show she is planning to write. Another interesting element can be seen in the encounter with the ancient Chinese herbalist culture. As in Io rom romantica, herbs are seen as spiritual healing. 55 Cotticelli, Angela. “‘Io rom romantica,’ la regista dal campo nomadi alle case popolari di Torino,” Il Fatto Quotidiano, 3 agosto, 2014. 47

filmmakers, but also to the roster of audacious experimental films” made by transnational

filmmakers (199). Kamkari was born in the Kurdish sector of Iran in 1971. An exilic

filmmaker, he might be though of as “un rifugiato artistico” (“artistic refugee”) as he

defines himself, who first left Iran at the age of twenty to study filmmaking in the

Netherlands. After two years he returned to Tehran where he studied Dramatic Literature,

and where he also started to work as a playwright and a screenwriter for cinema and

television. He also directed some TV-series.

After an episode of attempted ethnic cleansing by the Iranian government,

Kamkari increasingly felt the responsibility of supporting the struggle for Kurdish

autonomy and consequently found his political environment even more restrictive. After

a number of debacles, he sought asylum in Italy and was immediately enchanted by

Rome, his new home he called “la città del cinema.” He responded directly to a question from me: “l’Italia è la terra che mi ha accolto, vivo qui perché mi permette di lavorare, di fare film senza avere problemi di censura.”56

Yet his connection to Italy goes beyond his obvious affinity for a way of life and a

sense of freedom. In fact, it began at an early age when, as a teenager, he had a chance to

work as a runner at the censorship office. At the time, all films, including acknowledged

world classics, were censored by the theocratic regime, and through dubbing their

meanings were adjusted to suit the prevailing ideologies. However, the filmmaker gained

the confidence of his superiors and was allowed to screen international films in their

pre-censored versions. He considers Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) as a

formative experience, while the films of the auteur directors in the generation that

56 “Italy is the land that welcomed me, I live here because it allows me to work, to make films without having problems of censorship.” Skype Interview Mon, Feb 20, 2017. 48

followed served as a bridge to Italian language and culture.

Neorealism remains foundational to Kamkari’s idea of cinema and shaped his initial stylistic approach to representational truthfulness (Rossellini himself claimed that

Neorealism was an attempt to unify memory and history, rejecting spectacle and restoring reality back to the screen, allowing spectators to “see things as they are” (448). Kamkari increasingly associated the hegemonic practices of the present Iranian regime with the kinds of filmmaking Neorealist filmmakers pointedly rejected, the products of the Fascist regime, which had a “strict control over the national cultural production and consumption,” with severe political connotations and with the consequence that many post-war Italian film directors “felt that their work ... bore an inherent political responsibility” (Bertellini 2). The filmmaker tries to convey the same sense of political responsibility in his filmmaking mode. The importance of Italian film history is also

visible in his documentary Water and Sugar: Carlo Di Palma, the Colours of Life (2016),

inspired by the life and work of one of the towering cinematographers of the Neorealist

epoch.57 Water and Sugar is in some way a tribute to Italian cinema through Di Palma,

who made his reputation working with Michelangelo Antonioni.

Kamkari’s filmography thus enlightens us about an important aspect of

punctuated identity as it shapes a particular filmmaking practice. As Naficy writes,

57 Italian Title Acqua e zucchero: Carlo Di Palma, i colori della vita, produced by Adriana Chiesa Di Palma in and Acek, in collaboration with RAI Cinema, Regione Lazio, Istituto Luce Cinecittà, Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, Ministero Affari Esteri. Official selection Venice Film Festival (2016) and Toronto Film Festival (2016). The film won the Nastro d'Argento and it was nominated for the David di Donatello. As explained by Kamkari in a statement written on the press kit of the film, “This is not a biographical film ... It is a way of recalling and rediscovering the methods and values of “golden age” cinema, Italian yes, but one that has had an impact and influence upon filmmakers in all the world. It is also a lesson in living: to live and to work with passion, simplicity and rigor ... It is also a lesson in art, one that refuses compromises.” Di Palma has been the director of cinematography of Woody Allen, to whose work, as the documentary shows, he added his cosmopolitan, pan-European look. 49

‘[d]iaspora, exile, and ethnicity are not steady states; rather, they are fluid processes that under certain circumstances may transform into one another and beyond’. (2001: 12). The trajectory of his oeuvre attests to just such a fluidity, a process whereby "circumstances may transform” stories, identity, film plots (12). What cannot be transformed is the filmmaker’s own history, the processes that shaped Kamkari’s both as a human being and as a film director, one marked by a childhood experience of war: “da bambino, ha vissuto i 40 giorni di assedio del Kurdistan da parte dell’esercito di Khomeini.”58 Those psychological scars serve as reminders to never to forget who he is, and where he originated:

La mia intenzione è sempre quella di raccontare le lotte, le storie della mia gente

usando un approccio diverso, non penso sia utile usare un filtro per narrare storie

specifiche. Il mio scopo è di raccontare - attraverso immagini e dialoghi il Medio

Oriente da un punto di vista personale, il punto di vista di chi ha vissuto la

guerra.59

Naficy describes Kamkari’s first debut feature film, Black Tape: The Videotape

Fariborz Kamkari Found in the Garbage,60 (2002) as “haunting,” an “audacious, powerful film told in a fresh style different from commercial movies and art-house films”

(2012: 199-200). With dialogues in Farsi and Kurdish (and subtitled in English), Black

Tape is an underground, subversive work on a young Kurdish woman played by Shilan

58 “[A]s a child, he experienced a 40-day of siege of Kurdistan by the Khomeini’s army.” All information about Kamkari’s biography are from his producer Fabrizia Falzetti. 59 “My intention is always to tell my people’s struggles, my people’s stories using a different approach. I do not think it is useful to use a filter to narrate specific stories. My intention is to tell – through images and dialogues, the Middle East from a personal point of view, the point of view of those who experienced the war.” Skype Interview Mon, Feb 20, 2017. 60 Produced by A Shyan Films Production. International sales: Farout Films, Rome. 50

Rahmani, Galavije, nicknamed Gali by her friend. Daughter of a head of a band of

Kurdish rebels, she is the reluctant “chosen" bride of a member of the military force,

Parviz (Gholamreza Moasesi), who turns out to be an army commander tasked with crushing the Kurdish resistence. The film becomes essentially Gali’s journey through a painful awareness of her status.61

Black Tape “is a domestic drama that seems to hide a much wider political warning in its bloody denouement” (Miller 51). What lifts it out of the ordinary is its inventive premise is that the “filmmaker” pretends to have come across a discarded videotape containing the story of Gali. The film opens with a black screen, while Arabic script in white letters appear across the top, as if they were being written with a typewriter: A Tehrani Diary. The Videotape Fariborz Kamkari Found in the Garbage.

The story is told through fragments, with a camcorder-diary clips filmed primarily by

Gali, and shot from her point of view, so conveying the idea of an increasing sense of panicked claustrophobia.62

In a late nightime scene, with Parviz away, she confides her thoughts to the camera, filming herself for a few seconds sitting at the kitchen table. Gali exits the frame and starts to film the contracting space she is forced to inhabit in a restless manic manner.63 The camcorder becomes part of the game of depicting the terrors many

61 The young woman is a wife but also a slave. “Their relationship,” as Naficy writes, is fraught with power imbalances, violent fights, voyeurism, and sadomasochistic sex play, unusual in its candor for the demure art-house cinema. This is because he has acquired her in a manner that Kamkari says he heard about in real testimonies of Kurdish refugees: poor parents sell their young daughters to rich Persians and Arabs as wives. The film dramatizes the violent crumbling of this family relationship with a brutal surprise ending, and it goes beyond the hermetic diegetic story, as there are frequent references to Parviz torturing and killing Kurds, including members of his wife’s family” (2012: 200). 62 The woman cannot go out, she is completely cut off from friends, family and her language. 63 Voice-off: “My name is Galavije Salary. It has been years that I have not spoken my own language. Nobody has called me by my real name. I wanted to choose my own destiny. The destiny of the homeless girls who were sold. The girls who were smuggled. Girls who don’t speak in their own language. Girls who 51

women may face in similar situations. Still banned in Iran, Black Tape won many

international awards, and it was an entry at the Venice Film Festival, among others.

Kamkari’s second feature film The Forbidden Chapter (2005), which he wrote

and directed while still resident in Iran, was also acclaimed at film festivals. A political

thriller based on a real story, it provides a shocking account of the circumstances that

foster fundamentalist extremism.64 Despite belonging to a vastly different genre, The

Forbidden Chapter can be seen as the predecessor of some of the comic aspects of Pitza

e datteri (2015) which transforms the gruesome ironies of cultural incomprehension of

the earlier film into charming misapprehensions on the part of people sharing good will.

Even so, the filmmaker’s indignation at the religious, ethical and human abuses in his

native country remain visible in Pitza e datteri, a film that a later chapter will consider in

detail. The striking genre difference in fact illustrates the filmmaker's ability to treat the

same issues in a new, less forbidding environment. Religion, women, and identities are

thus seen through two contrasting perspectives, the darkness of the political thriller and

the lightness of social comedy. While The Forbidden Chapter can be seen as a Jacobean

tragedy, the levity of Pitza e datteri arises from the Italian film comedy of the 60s.

Kamkari best explains the motives for this dual perspective:

I miei film vivono in uno spazio interstiziale. L'idea è di unificare due culture,

sottolineando i dettagli di ciascuna cultura, mostrando anche due diversi punti di

don’t live in their homelands. Even their history doesn’t belong to them. I have been imprisoned in this cage for years. I have no connection with the outer-world. He has disconnected the TV, phone and computer ... he has taken all my books.” 64 “The film is inspired by a ... news story: a man, after killing more than fifteen prostitutes, was finally captured by the police and defended his actions by calling them an act of cleansing society. The film tells a dark story using the thriller as genre, “che mi ha permesso di stabilire velocemente l’atmosfera da incubo e la tragica catena di eventi di cui avevo bisogno per rappresentare la società che volevo descrivere.” (“that allowed me to quickly establish the nightmarish atmosphere and the tragic chain of the events that I needed to represent the society I wanted to describe”). 52

vista. I miei film non hanno risposte, i miei film mettono in discussione il mondo,

la società, l'essere umano. Sento che come cineasta ho il dovere di narrare il

vuoto, le fessure della società.65

The case of Kamkari in the context of Italian filmmaking remains unique. In his analysis of exilic identities, Naficy claims that the difference “among the exiles is not only generational but also geographic and historical, for they evolve differently across national boundaries and over time” (2001:77). The filmmaker’s work, which remains consistently interstitial, poised between different mode of production and diverse audiences, constitutes the defining characteristic of his particular approach to punctuated filmmaking.

In Accented Cinema, a thematic category outlined by Naficy is represented by the cinema of panic and pursuit (italics in the text). This category clearly pertains to

Kamkari’s first production, where “there is a sense of both spatial claustrophobia ... and panic among diegetic characters whose actions are driven by chase, stalking, assassination, and terrorism” (2001:77). His transnational cinema “does not deal with

Iranian issues [alone], … [but] instead with universal issues of love and displacement”

(78).

An exiled filmmaker whose work is banned in Iran, Kamkari demonstrates how

“such constraints … force [him] to develop an authorial style” (Naficy 2001:11). His filmography amply illustrates the breadth of a transnational and transcultural view that does not focus exclusively on Kurdish history and politics. Kamkari’s works demand to

65 “My films live in an interstitial space. The idea is to unify two cultures, underlining the details of each culture, showing also two different viewpoints. My works have no answers, question the world, society, the human being. I feel that as a filmmaker I have the duty to narrate the emptiness, the cracks in society.” Skype Interview Mon, Feb 20, 2017 53

be analyzed through the double perspective he adopts, one which focuses on his Kurdish

identity, and another perspective which centers on his ongoing connection with Italy,

defined by him “la terra del cinema.”

Jonas Carpignano: an ItalianBarbadianAmerican in Gioia Tauro

Jonas Carpignano’s feature films Mediterranea (2015) and A Ciambra (2017) do

not represent typical immigrant filmmaking. His biography indicates that he is not part of

a migrant family in a broader sense, even if he is not a native Italian as are Gianni

Amelio, Michele Placido or Andrea Segre, some of the more prominent directors who

have explored the lives of migrants from an intra-cultural point of view. I therefore focus

on what makes his work different. Born in New York, Carpignano grew up between Italy

(Rome) and the USA (the Bronx), as son of an Italian and a Barbadian American mother.

The filmmaker, who defies labelling, had an unusual entry into filmmaking. After

studying film at Wesleyan University and New York University, he worked for a while

between New York City and Rome before embarking in 2010 on an intensive experience

at Court 13, a non-profit organization based in New Orleans which “serves as an

incubator for art and filmmaking rooted in unique collaborations, social inclusion,

recycling materials, and education.”66 The filmmaker was part of the crew on the acclaimed film Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) directed by Benh Zeitlin on one of

those collaborations. Beasts “inspired me,” he recalls. “The ambition of the project was

matched only by people’s desire to see it through. Because people cared so much, you

66 “About”.” Court 13 Arts, http://court13arts.org/about/ accessed May 19, 2018. 54

were able to get past insurmountable challenges.”67 Today, Carpignano lives and works

in a town in Gioia Tauro, a town in the Calabrese ‘toe’ of the peninsula, that he perceives

as “a vivid microcosm of the seismic cultural realignments that are defining the 21st

century.”68

The filmmaker’s polyculturalism and the elective, interstitiality of his filmmaking and his regionally-specific Italianness, might actually be a result of his personal life experiences. His unique visual techniques are characterized by an apparently casual,

“unplanned” style, no doubt influenced by his film apprenticeship. On closer examination, however, his Dogme ’95-like use of hand-held cameras, his reference for light, and insistence on rigorous location shooting, align his work with a number of international filmmakers at work today. His work, therefore, “can be understood as the

[result of] global forces that link people or institutions across nations” (Ezra and Rowden

1). Like all films made by those with punctuated identities, his approach to cinema suggests that national borders make no sense anymore, and that one’s grounding in such a world must be local. In using the term “across” Ezra and Rowden describe a situation in which multi-national collaboration has become the operative vehicle for European film production. In Italy today funding that accounts for cultural support like Eurimage,

sponsored by the Council of Europe, which plays an important role in funding and distribution of co-produced film, mandates international co-production and an ever-

expanding international audience. It is precisely at this juncture, however, that

67 Zax, David. Fast Company, Nov. 23, 2015 https://www.fastcompany.com/3053848/the-backstory-of- mediterranea-a-timely-film-about-migrants-in-europe. Accessed May 19, 2018. 68 Ehrlich, David. Cannes Review, May 10, 2017. “‘A Ciambra’ is Jonas Carpignano’s Messy Follow-Up To ‘Mediterranea’” http://www.indiewire.com/2017/05/a-ciambra-review-jonas-carpignano-mediterranea- cannes-2017-1201828778/ . 55

filmmakers can blend the global with the local. In this sense, A Ciambra stands out

among recent films as an example of a convergence of transnationality and

intra-nationality. The film represents the first title to be produced under the fund set up to

support emerging filmmakers by a partnership between Martin Scorsese and other

independent production companies.69 The transnationality of Carpignano’s work is

however a result of his deep interest in contributing to “the various communities he’s fostered in his young career” working on set and helping people get their movies made.”70 As he reports in an interview on Filmmaker Magazine,71

I love working on sets, I love the community element of it. I feel like if you get a

lot of friends in a place, you can make anything happen, you know what I mean?

If everyone really cares, if it’s not just a job or another project, the impossible can

happen. I’m really committed to that idea in filmmaking.

Judging by the stylistic features of his work, his approach to cinema as a collective

endeavor seems to have been fostered by Lars Von Trier’s example. The Danish

filmmaker considers collectivism as a way to prepare “the grounds for the roles of the

actors” (Akçalı 86).72 In the same manner, Carpignano’s method of filming is strictly

related to the idea of a film crew as a community in which he stands behind the actors

without imposing his views on them. His starting point is always the individuation of

69 Emma Tillinger Koskoff’s Sikelia Productions and the Rodrigo Teixeira’s Brazil-based RT Features. Aftab, Kaleem. Screen Daily, May 12, 2017. https://www.screendaily.com/news/first-film-from-martin- scorsese-fund-for-emerging-directors-to-launch-at-cannes/5117497.article 70Harris, Brandon. “Jonas Carpignano.” Filmmaker Magazine, https://filmmakermagazine.com/people/jo- nas-carpignano/ 71 Brandon. https://filmmakermagazine.com/people/jonas-carpignano/ 72 Elİf Akçalı remarks specifically for Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2005), that the Danish filmmaker “calls the attention to the fact that ‘the team of actors will be onstage all the time ... We are going to live together, like a collective.’ … There is a possibility that the actors’ continuous collective presence on the set might also modify their performances ... Shooting the scenes collectively for stories that are directly re- lated to conformity and collectivism prepares the grounds for the roles of the actors” (86). 56

character and to “delve delicately, but with great detail and empathy, into the lives of

minorities.”73 His profound enthusiasm in understanding the other is surely the result of his personal experience:

I spent a lot of time in Italy. My mother is African American and my entire family

lived in Italy … Whenever we’d be back there for summers and Christmases,

spending time with my father and my grandparents, I was always very aware of

the fact that my mother was the only middle-class black person in her entire social

circle. So, I’ve always been paying attention to what role black people had in

Italy.74

What Carpignano seems to remark is that, compared to many other countries and

certainly to the United States, Italy is experiencing the phenomenon of a sizable presence

of black Africans since a relatively brief span of time. As he emphasizes,

The immigration, but also the heavy African or black presence in Italy, is not as

ingrained in the history of Italy as it is ingrained in the history of the United States

of America. We have many generations of black people in America, of

Americans. They’re not Africans. In Italy, they are still very much African. There

are very few blacks, especially in the South, black Italians. I think that is what

differentiates the discourse entirely. In America, it’s about coming to terms with,

tolerating, and getting over prejudices that have existed for years and years. In

Italy, it is more like making sense of the situation that no one is equipped to

handle.75

73 Brandon. https://filmmakermagazine.com/people/jonas-carpignano/#.W5eCsS1aY1g 74 Brandon. https://filmmakermagazine.com/people/jonas-carpignano/#.XIIR5C2B0mJ 75 Rapold, Nicholas. “Interview: Jonas Carpignano,” Film Comment, November 13, 2015 https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/interview-jonas-carpignano/ 57

Given such an evident sense of social responsibility, the filmmaker's primary interest in his films is to give voice to the marginalized, his filmmaking techniques remaining consistently in the service of this overarching ideology. As could be expected, in

Mediterranea and A Ciambra, we find the creation of something "in which no side was taken and no cause defended" (Hall 27-28). Even so, Carpignano’s approach to filmmaking cannot simply be defined as “observational cinema.” The camera is not merely a tacit observer as in direct cinema, or even an active participant such as in the cinéma vérité, but an independent presence, as if it were another character. As noted by

Bill Nichols in his analysis of documentary, Representing Reality, “[o]bservational filmmaking gives a particular inflection to ethical considerations. Since the mode hinges on the ability of the filmmaker to be unobtrusive, the issue of intrusion surfaces over and over within the institutional discourse” (39). In Carpignano’s case immersion in the world of his stories retains an ethical basis that rejects didacticism:

Italian political cinema ... is overly didactic, and that misses one of the greatest

things that cinema can give you. Facts can be very misleading, but emotions can

be very, very real - when you can have people connect to a character like Ayiva,

or the small [wheeler-dealer] boy, or someone that has a greater capacity to create

compassion for a situation than just bombarding people with numbers, horrible

images, and facts.76

By making explicit a series of oppositional elements such as Italianness and its others, by visualizing narratives of hope defeated, by foregrounding the never-ending drama of ethnic difference, and by asserting the capacity of multilingualism to express

76 Rapold, “Interview: Jonas Carpignano.” 58

multiculturalism, Carpignano clearly demonstrates his personal aesthetic values. These he

draws from his predilection for Italian cinema and from the lessons of Third Cinema. His

narrative elements come in particular from Italian films that focus on spatial places,

linguistic and cultural displacement. Instructively, for Carpignano, idiom is an expression

of localism, a counterweight to the tentacular impact of globalization even on regional

cultures. The Babel of languages, the linguistic amalgam in A Ciambra, shows the

coexistence of multiple features and identities. The emphasis placed on peculiar elements

such as vernacular and accented language seems to be an aspect of counter-globalization.

However, as underlined above, A Ciambra is productively a transnational film, and

narratively it contains a double aspect: it tells a universal story using a minor language.

Consequently, it is both global and local.

Carpignano’s films are “[an] exploration of the strategies of aesthetic resistance via language” (Iordanova 13). This aspect of Carpignano’s filmmaking is essential in order to understand not only multiculturalism and multilingualism imbued in each punctuated film, but also a significant trait of Italian Neorealist cinema, which has been characterized by feature films where the national language is not always spoken by the main character on the screen. As Marguerite Waller remarks, Roberto Rossellini’s “Paisà

(Paisan, 1946) is a polylingual film that proposes encounters and dialogues not only between English and Italian but also among the many dialects of the peninsula” (539).

The film holds out not only cross-cultural encounters and interactions, but it also shows the richness of poli-lingualism in a film considered a classic Italian milestone.

Conversely, in analyzing Luchino Visconti’s La Terra Trema (The Earth Trembles,

1948), Millicent Marcus (1993) asserts that the recourse to the voice-over narration

59

protected the film, since the use of “authentic language, a regional dialect – so

idiosyncratic and localized that not even other Sicilians could decipher it” (29) was in

some way a strategy that could have penalized the film. The limitation that Marcus

associates to the use of a minor language is, instead, a powerful element in the cinema

made by punctuated identities.

Mediterranea and A Ciambra are characterized by a distinctive feature, a “Babelic environment” (Bertellini 2003: 268) which makes Carpignano’s films perfect counter- hegemonic, transcultural and transnational products. Both of the films seem to push the

“semiotics of encounter - between nations, cultures, regions, languages ... races, and so on” (Waller 539). Both films -- involving dialogues with different languages and varying accents such as French, Arabic, Bisa, and Moshi (Burkina Faso’s language), Italian and its dialects (Calabrese) -- create a space in which multiracial and multilingual voices can become part of the discussion on the cinema made by punctuated filmmakers.

Transnationalism is central to the redefinition of Italian identities, Mediterranea and A

Ciambra are “situated but universal” (Naficy 10).

Interestingly enough, even without recurring to standard Italian language, A

Ciambra was chosen to represent Italy at the 90th Academy Awards for Best Foreign

Language Film. The very prominence of this film in this category is in an acknowledgement of its debt to Neorealism which first introduced dialects as deeply ingrained within cultural formation. As in Neorealism also, Carpignano insists on the use of real locations, of non-actors in leading roles, the eschewal of pre-established scripts,

and a refusal to tamper with reality as it unfolds before the camera. In his films,

especially in A Ciambra, the perspective even belongs to children, who reflect the many

60

represented in Neorealist filmmaking, “[a] concrete, all-embracing depiction of the human attitude of a child in a given situation.” The child protagonist in A Ciambra is captured by the camera in his “'neutral' way.” He “lives and exists there before us, captured in his 'existence’” (Ayfre 183-84).

Carpignano makes particular note that living in Gioia Tauro together with Ayiva

Koudous and others immigrants, provides an opportunity to take an alternative approach to the process of making a film like Mediterrranea:

it was less about working with actors on a scene than taking things that happened

to us in our lives and giving them enough of a dramatic purpose to fit in the film.

Once we’d chosen the people, that process happened over the course of living

there. It was just about getting people used to the camera, and being able to figure

out how to shoot the scenes with enough freedom to allow them to move around

without feeling like they had to stop to hit a light or something.77

The joint experience of the filmmaker with the reality of a marginal area (that South always seen as “area di disgregazione sociale”) has rooted his conception of reality in the experience of the individual, accepting therefore all the variety, richness, and ambiguity that such a perspective brings. As Rossellini once claimed, and Carpignano seems to reiterate, “[t]hings are there. Why manipulate them?” (Hoveyda and Rivette 6).

However, what significantly distinguishes Neorealism from Carpignano's cinematic novelties is that there is “no moral position which gives a perspective on the world” (qtd. in Cahiers du Cinéma 209).

77 Rapold, “Interview: Jonas Carpignano.” 61

In most of the chapters in the present work I have chosen to focus on a single,

highly representative feature film by a director. However, as I hope to illustrate,

Carpignano’s first two fiction features form a diptych, and for this reason I have chosen

to place them in dialogue, paying especial attention to their convergences. Together they

chronicle a subtle shift in the punctuation of Carpignano’s identity as a filmmaker as his

perspective shifts from the global to the local, from broadly inter-national to minutely

intra-national.

Suranga D. Katugampala: a Sri Lankan Italian with a Veneto Accent

Suranga Deshapriya Katugampala is a Sri Lankan-born filmmaker, a naturalized

Italian, who immigrated to Italy with his mother at a very young age, joining a small

enclave of Sri Lankans in Verona.78 This life and background, where identity, migration,

and generational conflict, were daily preoccupations would, not surprisingly, determine

his film narrative.The filmmaker’s punctuated identity is positioned in an interstitial

space that differs dramatically from Kamkari’s, although they share preferences for

certain tastes in filmmakers and filmmaking practices: “Amo molto il cinema Iraniano e

soprattutto quel cinema che mischia culture … un cinema che racconta la memoria, il

disagio, il disorientamento, l’estraniazione.”79

His aesthetic preference and his narrative imbued of existential idiom and of an ambiguous relation between past and present, conveys a widely divergent cultural

78 Katugampala got his Italian citizenship only five years ago. 79 “I really love Iranian cinema and especially that cinema that combines cultures ... that recounts the memory, the discomfort, the disorientation, and the estrangement.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. Personal Interview. 18 June 2018. 62

repositioning in which the present generation of Sri-Lankan Italians find they have more in common with Italians of their generation than with their forebears.

In a conversation, Katugampala, who speaks Italian with the regional accent of

the locality in which he grew up, admits that,

rispetto a mia madre, ovvio che essendo cresciuti qui abbiamo molte cose che ci

legano a questo paese. Ovvio che costantemente ci sentiamo - parlo di quella

categoria di persone cresciute qui - con un piede qui e uno di là. Con la maturità

mi sono reso conto che avere due culture è una cosa molto bella e positiva, invece

tempo fa era per me una crisi di identità.80

Having grown up speaking Italian, Katungampala’s identity is a result of transnational

hybridity, and resembles that of descendents of immigrants with punctuated identities,

rather than that of first-generation newcomers. While the older generation clings to the

values of their past, the present generation positions itself in opposition to their parents’

apparently atavistic values and beliefs. For youngsters, especially, “references to their

parents' cultures are practically absent. Rather, they are incarnations of an Italianness that

ironically no young Italian would feel forced to prove in these terms, given the proverbial

fragility, disunity, and vagueness of Italian identity” (Fiore 9). In one of our

conversations, the filmmaker recalls his childhood:

non parlavo bene l'italiano e allora mia madre che lavorava come badante presso

due signore, mi faceva andare da una di loro per imparare la storia. La signora

80 “Compared to my mother, of course, having grown up here we have many things that bind us to this country. Of course, we constantly feel - I'm talking about that category of people who grew up here like me - with one foot here and one over there. Having grown up, I realized that having two cultures is a very beautiful and positive thing, but long ago for me it was a reason for an identity crisis,” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Received from Suranga D. Katugampala, 2 July 2018. 63

metteva via il libro e mi raccontava sue storie di guerra, cose che nei libri non

c'erano e così presi il primo buon voto ...Tornavo a casa e dopo aver sentito

parlare italiano e di cultura italiana, mia madre insisteva dicendo di parlare

Sinhalese, altrimenti lo avrei dimenticato. Mentre qualche anno prima mi diceva

di parlare Italiano per non sentirmi escluso!81

The Language of Kunatu – Tempeste: Katungampala’s Web Series82

Katugampala’s process of coming to terms with being torn between two languages is evident in his work. The filmmaker’s first audio-visual entry into the crowded field of Italian media production, Kunatu- Tempeste (2013), is a web-series that mirrors life in a migrant community such as the one in which he grew up.83 The web series is an ensemble of characters and is divided into five episodes. The language used is

81 “I did not speak Italian fluently and my mother who worked as a caregiver for two old ladies would let me go to one of them to learn history. The lady used to put the book away, telling me her stories of war, episodes that were not in any history book, and so I got my first good grade … I used to come home and after hearing Italian language and Italian culture, my mother insisted that I speak Sinhalese. Otherwise, I would forget it. While a few years ago she used to tell me to speak Italian not to feel excluded!” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: domande.” Received from Suranga D. Katugampala, 2 June 2018. 82 Storm, Web series HD / color / 16:9 / 17 min each episode / 2013. The web series can be seen on you tube http://katugampala.com/kunatu/ 83 The burden of representation is visible in all Katugampala’s projects. His work is composed by two ways of being, that of a second-generation migrant, and that of a filmmaker. The first affects the second, while the latter incorporating all aspects of his migrant identity, turns it into art. An interesting example of Katugampala’s other works is “the positive guernica” a photograph, which seems to represent his identity work in progress. It is a collage of pictures made by Katugampala for a commercial shop in Veronette, a neighborhood of Verona. The concept which stands behind the photograph is to show a place where the importance is given to human beings, without any kind of discrimination. A slogan nomenclature which appeared in the presentation of the work of art says “It doesn’t matter where you come from and where you go.” What really matters is that people can be energetically part of a place where they live. The photograph frames an hairstyling shop opened several years ago by Romesh, a Sinhalese man known in Veronette with his Italianized name Romeo. The striking and poignant work of Katugampala lies in his depiction of a multicultural space through a frame that is closer to a painting than a photograph. However, the space is not the main element. A group of young men and a woman - Italians? Italian-Srilankan? Does it really matter? - stand in different positions, dancing, smoking, looking at something or someone. The filmmaker’s main interest focuses on giving voices and faces to a migrant community living in shadows, without forgetting that his family’s story is one of those stories. 64

predominantly Sinhalese, although the episodes bore Italian subtitles. However, there are notable scenes in which a character uses the Italian language.84 Paradoxically, it is the

Italian of the Veneto region that seems the marginal dialect while Sinhalese is the more natural “in-group” vernacular.

Thus, in a multiplicity of ways, the web series (as readily accessible in Sri Lanka as in Verona) participated in the intercultural space that marks such a product as

“simultaneously local and global” (Naficy 2001: 4). Although qualitatively different from

35mm feature filmmaking, the web series contains elements that Naficy regards as typical of accented cinema:

fragmented, multilingual ... self reflexive, and critically juxtaposed narrative

structures ... lost characters; subject matter and themes that involve ... historicity,

identity, and displacement … politicized structure of feeling; interstitial and

collective modes of production. (4)

As Katugampala explained in our conversation, Kunatu is an experimental work intended

to display a hidden side of Italian society, perhaps more hidden, regarding immigration,

and the relationship between society, the underbelly of Italian attitudes to immigration,

84 For instance, the second episode emphasizes the clash of culture, the rootedness and the legacy with the migrant’s past. One of the characters, a girl who studies in an Italian University, goes back home. While her parents talk to her in the Sinhalese, she replies using only Italian, a language that according to her father is not the language of her culture, her native language. “Always stuttering this language that is not even yours! Bla bla bla, as if it were your father's language.” Italian cannot be the adopted language, as Italy cannot be the adopted mother-land. “Where are you from? ...Where are you from?” Tells her father addressing her with anger. While the girl’s parents are eating with their hands, a common practice for Sri Lankans, she is using a fork: “Do you eat like this in Sri Lanka?” The dialectic of displacement is visible through identity and belonging. While the girl’ s father, like Sunita, lives in a cultural continuum that is linguistically and culturally connected to his homeland, the girl, like Sunita’s son fluctuates between a Sri Lankanness, which in some way is being weakened, and her Italianness, with its dangerous way of feeling of the society in which she grows up: “How did you forget your culture?” The narrative structure of the web-series contains developing elements, which are evocative of a complex interaction among an audience that is not specifically Italian. For instance, in the first episode the opening and closing titles are written in Italian, while from the second episode to the last titling is written in English. 65

and the multi-layered relationship of immigrants to their host communities. He

determined from the outset that none of the participants would be professional actors.85

He describes the web series as follows:

una sorta di terapia, una videoterapia. L'obiettivo era creare un lavoro artistico di

gruppo. Il processo, per noi, era più importante del risultato stesso. Le parole, i

manierismi, le azioni e le sensazioni sono state scelte dai partecipanti. Kunatu è

un progetto a budget zero grazie allo sforzo, all'energia e all'entusiasmo della

comunità locale dello Sri Lanka e di altre associazioni locali.86

The idea of generational conflict, in particular the anger of the second-generation, torn

between the customs and values of their adopted geographical homes and the ones lodged

in the memories of their parents who persist in retaining their local traditions and

languages, is readily evident in Katugampala's work. Cultural misapprehensions and the

clash of cultures have remained constant tropes in his cinema. Moreover, by exploring an

alternative mechanism of production and filming, Kunatu has the characteristic of being

what Deleuze and Guattari reference, with a positive connotation, as “minor,” a

characteristic that as Naficy notes, results in a “deterritorialization of language, the

connection of the individual to a political immediacy, and the collective assemblage of

enunciation” that grants universality to an intensely local phenomenon. (45).

The web series provoked different reactions among the naturalized community,

mostly positive from youngsters who speak the Italian language fluently, and who are

85 Iadevaia, Vincenza. Personal interview. 15 May, 2018. 86 “It is a kind of therapy, a video therapy. The goal was to create an artistic work together. The process, for us, was more important than the result. The words, the mannerisms, the actions and feelings have been chosen by the participants. Kunatu is a zero-budget project realized thanks to the effort, the energy and enthusiasm of the local Sri-Lankan community, and other local associations.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. Personal interview. 15 May 2018. 66

well integrated in the host society. They recognized the fact that finally there was someone, one of them, who was telling their stories. On the other hand, those of the first generation of immigrants were less enthusiastic as they saw the series as critical of their mother-culture. This latter feeling is “one of the key paradoxes of accented filmmakers, that is, the ‘burden of representation’ that subjects ethnic and identity filmmakers to sometimes impossible demands and to criticism from both within and outside the community” (Naficy 2001: 64).

The Delivery: Katungampala’s Intergenerational Short

The concern brought forth by the web series regarding the gradual erosion of a language and a cultural outlook is also visible in Katugampala’s most recent work, the short film The Delivery (2017).87 While the feature film Per un figlio (2016) focuses on a relation between a mother and a son, The Delivery draws the attention to a little girl and her father. Both works share several themes and characteristic such as inter-generational relationships, life in the host country, and plurilingualism.

In exploring how a language forges identities, in multilingual and multicultural interactions, the short film The Delivery is an outstanding example of code-switching, a common occurrence in punctuated Italian films but foregrounded in Katugampala’s oeuvre. In his works multilingualism is at the core of the characters’ discursive strategies,

87 The Delivery was screened at the 74th Venice Film Festival (2017), in the Migration section, and winner project of MigrArti 2017, an initiative supported by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. As reported by La Citta Nuova, the interesting blog created by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera which gives an overview on multiculturality in Milan, The Delivery shows “un melanconico messaggio di ritorno alle origini” (“a melancholic message back to the origins"). This is the story: an unexpected call from work changes the plans of Gaia and her dad, a Sri-Lankan man, who works as a delivery man. On a summer afternoon, the delivery of a package in the Lessinia mountains (Veneto Region) turns into a little adventure, intertwining ordinary and extraordinary. 67

and such code-switching is instrumental both to plot development, and to the characterization of bilingual immigrants with their often multiperspectivalism.

We can take a closer look at the short film to investigate the conversational functions of code-switching. The visions of the world held by the two generations, Gaia and her father, are illustrated by means of the juxtaposition of linguistic codes across conversational turns, showing the way in which language participates in self-recognition and identity. The little girl speaks Italian correctly, while her father switches constantly between Italian and Sinhalese. The adopted language is mostly used functionally, as a means of practical communication, while Sinhalese is reserved for more intimate family talk, spoken as it were in a private world, within the Sri-Lankan community and family.

In The Delivery another view of such an alternation of language represents what

Hua Zhu characterizes as “intergenerational conflict talk” (1799): “code-switching is a natural verbal behavior of bilingual speakers and in some sense, a type of conflict talk by its very nature, as differences in language choice and language preference are on display”

(1800). Gaia speaks the adopted language of her family in a natural way. For each question, she always responds in Italian, similar to the girl in Kunatu, who is accused of

“sempre a balbettare questa lingua ... come se fosse la lingua di tuo padre.”88 The hybrid language Gaia’s father must adopt, the necessity of code-switching, is a distinctive feature of the daily life of innumerable immigrants, who like the filmmaker, have experienced the feeling of being here and there.

In different forms of filming, such as his web series, and video-interviews and short films, Katugampala pictures his memory and his past essentially as a landscape of

88 “[A]lways stuttering this language, as if it were your father's language.” 68

ruins, gaps, missing links, or transit spaces. The Sri-Lankan Italian filmmaker’s concern is to reveal this unseen landscape. His gaze has brought to light the feeling of the unknown. With his works, he has raised questions of identity and the relationship between memory, adaptation, and imagined spaces.

At its core, Katugampala’s work grapples with issues of memory, displacement, and alienation. His way of looking at the past is not nostalgic in the traditional sense in that he problematizes the failure of on the one hand, a first generation that struggles between memory and present reality, and a second generation that confronts the resulting clash of cultures.

His work consciously employs art to confront the psychic realities of the generational conflicts in immigrant communities, showing that “the price of hybridization

[can] .... also include the loss of regional traditions and of local roots” (Burke 7). To this end his film centers on lives of ordinary, working-class Sri Lankan immigrants, and the challenges they face in their host country. Katugampala entrusts his camera with the task of conveying, and in order to do so conveying a sense of realist authenticity by using on location shooting, non-professional actors, and a detached observational style indebted to the documentary tradition.

69

SIX FICTION FEATURES (and a DOCUMENTARY)89

89 As in the case of Naficy's accentedness (an accented filmmaker makes an accented film), a punctuated filmmaker can be assumed to make a punctuated film. 70

CHAPTER 1: VEILED MEMORY and COLORFUL OTTOMANISM

Ferzan Özpetek’s Harem Suare90

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Gallery of Memories’

INT. AN OBJECT- FILLED ATTIC ROOM - LATE EVENING

A medium shot of Nadir, the chief eunuch of the harem, who is opening an

ornate wooden door. The static camera shows his point of view as he slowly

scans the room while Safiye enters from the right of the frame. Both are seen

from the back. 91

Low key lighting and background music permeate the sequence. The static

camera frames the character from outside the door. Safiye who wears a gown

with transparent long sleeves, stands on the right. Her long hair is adorned by

a ribbon surmounted by red ornaments. Nadir wears a fez, a long jacket

decorated with a dark pattern on the back. The room is filled with antiquities.

90 Harem soirée, a night in the harem. French title: Le dernier harem. The title Harem Suare appears with no accent on the final vowel, while in some articles, the title is reported with an accent. 91 The figure of Safiye is still shrouded by mystery. She has been often confused with Nur Banu, her mother in law. She was the consort of Murad III. Both history and films, for a long time, misrepresent the history of this Sultana, which is also the case in Harem Suare, where Safiye is described as having Italian origins. A thoroughgoing study on this figure has been conducted by Maria Pia Pedani, who reports that Emilio Spagni, an historian of early twentieth-century Ottoman Society, is the first to discover Nur Banu’s frequent mediations with the Serenissima, and he reports that in Venetian historical memory a legend grew around her. Spagni relates that Nur Banu was a Sultana of supposedly Venetian origins, but that the historical details about her story are sparse. Documents analyzed by Spagni report that her name was Cecilia Baffo, a beautiful girl, kidnapped by Turkish pirates while she was travelling by boat to reach her father, a governor of Corfu. In 1575, she was sold into slavery and transported to Istanbul where her beauty captivated the Sultan Murad, who chose her as his favorite. After Murad’s death, Cecilia - nicknamed Nur Banu - was locked in the "Vecchio Serraglio" (the oldest part fo the women’s quarters) and died forgotten in 1605. However, other documents report her death well within Murad’s reign, in 1583 (see Leslie Peirce “Shifting Boundaries: Images of Ottoman Royal Women in the 16th and 17th Centuries,” 1988, pp. 43-81. 71

CUT TO a medium close up of the young woman looking around.

Nadir - Dialogue in French (off screen)

A century ago, Sultan Esma adored English furniture and comfort. Any-

thing old or Oriental was sent up here.

Full frame of Safiye walking toward the camera. Medium shot of Nadir walking through carpets, tapestries and curtains. The entire frame is illuminated by a vivid red color. A mirror on the left (spectator’s point of view

POV) reflects Nadir moving through the labyrinthine space. Medium shot of

Safiye walking slowly.

CUT TO a medium close up of her reflected by a mirror.

Nadir’ POV: who slowly turns to look back. We hear no dialogues, only background music.

CLOSE-UP chandeliers - framed on the left (spectator’s POV) - covered with a veil. A medium close-up of Safiye, cuts to a corresponding medium close-up of Nadir. The camera now pans slowly from left to right, placing Nadir in the frame in such a way as to emphasize the darkness of his complexion, which contrasts with the pallor of that of Safiye, who enters from the left. Successive shots indicate that the characters are exchanging glances as they observe a skiff which belongs to Sultan Esma docked at the side of an adjacent canal.

Nadir - (speaking in French)

She’d taken this boat in search of boys to quench her desire

The camera slowly pans from right to left framing the opulently-decorated skiff.

Voice-off (in Italian, og the older Safiye)

72

Everyone knew her boat, with its cargo of splendid boys.

She dominated them all, on her throne, or standing,

like a bird in flight in search of prey.

When she’d chosen one, she brought him back to her palace

and after one night of love, she had his throat cut.92

The sequence ends with a frame of a face carved into a baroque console.

This elaborate scene takes place in the first half of Harem Suare (1999), the second feature film directed by Ferzan Özpetek and co-produced by Italy, France and

Turkey.93 Despite being selected for the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes film festival, and addying visibility for being an international co-production, the film was more a critical than a box-office success.

At first glance, this contemporary melodrama94 appears to recapitulate the

incredible decadence and cruelty of a despotic system, a tale that implicitly maintains the

binary opposition between East and West ingrained into Orientalist discourse. Yet viewed

92 A determined and passionate woman who led a libertine way of life. As reported by Tülai Artan (1996) Princess Esma achieved notoriety in her own time. She was one of the richest women in Constantinople and wielded a lot of influence on her brother Sultan Mahmud II. An interesting description of the princess also appears in the anecdotal Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924 (2011) written by the English historian Philip Mansel. The author does not use Ottoman sources except in translation; however, he has made a very wide survey of travellers' accounts, articles, and monographs. “No woman was as free as the Sultan’s favorite sister Esma Sultan, equally famous for the beauty of her slaves and the looseness of her morals ... At night, her palace on the Bosphorus attracted kayaks of all sizes, moored outside to hear the music of her celebrated female orchestra ... The princess’s visits to the Sweet Waters of Europe or Asia were slave raids. In those valleys … her approaches resembled that of a bird of prey hovering above flocks of defenseless fowls” (275). 93 R&C Produzioni (Roma), Les Films Balenciaga (Parigi), Afs Film (Istanbul). The film was also sup- ported by Eurimages, Medusa Film, Canal +, Cofimage 10, ACE, Ateliers Du Cinéma Européen. 94 The definition of melodrama given by Thomas Elsaesser seems to capture the mood of the film’ “In its dictionary sense, melodrama is a dramatic narrative in which musical accompaniment marks the emotional effects. This is still perhaps the most useful definition, because it allows melodramatic elements to be seen as constituents of a system of punctuation, giving expressive colour and chromatic contrast to the storyline, by orchestrating the emotional ups and downs of the intrigue. The advantage of this approach is that it formulates the problems of melodrama as problems of style and articulation” (74). 73

more closely, the film does not simply relate an episode of a young sultana’s life in a hidden and mysterious harem, but contains multiple layers of representation and perception.

The sequence described above, titled ‘Gallery of Memories,’ is set in an attic where old and unused historical objects are stored and piled up, out of sight.

The mise-en-scène is very important here as it serves the purpose of propelling the narrative in a multiplicity of directions. As remarked by Homay King, “elements of the mise-en-scène become overdetermined [bearing] the burden of explanation for a multitude of ... enigmas that the narrative cannot resolve” (49). In Harem Suare, the mise-en-scène contains a set of implicit and explicit meanings as a result of the relation between seeing and perceiving: i.e. the way the spectator sees objects in a specific scene, and the way he/she provides meaning to them. To give an example, objects and furniture

(explicit elements) contained in a secluded space far from the eyes of the entire harem are perceived by the spectator as an instability of time-being. Other implicit elements could well relat to the filmmaker’s sense of memory and belonging. They can represent

Özpetek’s past and his cultural know-how, despite the obviously European identity that he has assumed over the years and that the discarded clutter of the attic may be the visible sign of Özpetek’s “left-behind” Turkishness, a repository therefore of colors, history, imagination, legends and tales, but removed, set apart, submerged in the innermost recesses of an increasingly Italian filmmaker’s consciousness.

‘Gallery of Memories’ is also a visible sign of a phenomenon I would call

Ottomania, which is an intense admiration or a desire to recuperate the mythologies long associated with the luxurious decadence of the ancient Ottoman world, and therefore a

74

specific manifestation of what Edward Said would term.95 It manifests itself as diverse phenomena and engages a complex of attitudes. What distinguishes Ottomania from a more general Orientalism is its specific concentration on the long domination of the

Ottoman Empire on the Mediterranean world and Eastern Europe, as well as the tendency to describe the culture from an observer’s point of view. In other words, the term I suggest assumes a dual perspective. From the Western point of view, it reflects the desire for a culture that approximates a Western one, but yet one that remains unalterably and immutably different, as if embalmed in a permanent alterity. It embodies the intangible fantasy of something we cannot be. From within, the perspective changes and it refers to an unsustainable past, one abandoned but not forgotten. While in the first case, there is a complex element of imagination and construction, in the latter case the term is associated with something experienced as historical.

The minute descriptions of worlds produced by Ottomania might be imagined as lending themselves to film, as they do to paintings and Orientalizing narratives. Homay

King observes that the existing studies “on orientalism and narrative film often bypass

95 My study does not focus directly with Edward Said’s theory. However, any mention related to East and Middle East countries engages with his concept. As reported by The Oxford Classic Dictionary, the central thesis of Said's Orientalism (1978, "is that the concepts ‘Europe’ and ‘Orient,’ as polar opposites, have been created by Europeans, esp. in the context of European imperialism, to provide a positive, strong image of Europe, with which eastern civilizations (especially the Muslim world) can be negatively contrasted. The ‘Orient’ is thus presented as lacking all desirable, active characteristics." Since Said' Orientalism, scholars have refined and expanded the meaning of the notion of Orientalism. The concept has had a significant impact on cultural research with the result that it embraces a number of fields, and has come to represent any discourse that constructs the other from a position of hegemony. Online source http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198606413.001.0001/acref- 9780198606413-e-4598 For a further reading of the intellectual history of Orientalism see Oxford Bibliographies which classifies the concept of Orientalism for themes and geographical areas. 75

mise-en-scène in favor of an analysis of racially stereotyped characters” (2).96 Giving as

example the depictions of East Asia in Hollywood cinema, King underlines the

consistency of representing characters and set of visual tropes endlessly, as if they were insulated from history.97 So, too, Jean-Claude Vatin points out that scholars who are

supposedly moving beyond Orientalism, are "still paying liabilities on that particular

estate" (272). He calls for a more truthful representation: “[t]he point is to give Oriental

actors back their role in past and present perceptions in those ... spaces of dialogues ...

created between Orientals and Occidentals and amongst Orientals themselves” (273).

Ottomania remains eternally lavish, a “fluid terrain in the exchange of desires”

(Manderson and Jolly 1). It symbolizes a space that slowly disappeared from the reality,

but that remains brightly illuminated.

Story and History in Harem Suare

July 1908. Set in the twilight days of the Ottoman Empire, in the harem of Sultan

Abdulhamid II (played by Haluk Bilginer), Harem Suare revolves around the story of the

Italian-born Safiye (Marie Gillain) who became the Sultan’s favorite. It appears that

Özpetek flashes forward three centuries, displacing an historical character into an

imagined modernity: the sixteenth century favored consort of the sultan or haseki is no

longer the favorite of Murad III, but that of the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire,

Abdulhamid II. Intellectually sophisticated, fluent in many languages and deeply musical,

96 For further readings on cinema and Orientalism see: Matthew Bernstein & Gaylyn Studlar, Vision of the East: Orientalism in Film (1997); Stephanie Dennison, Song Hwee Lim, Remapping World Cinema: Identity, Culture and Politics in Film (2006). 97 As he remarks, the filmic worlds representing the East Asia “often contain curious objects or details of ornaments that seem to lie outside of rational systems of knowledges and communication” (3). In this regard, interesting enough is the chapter “The Shanghai Gesture” (44-67). 76

she soon gains the attention of the Sultan. The harem, however, is at once a cloistered world for the women who inhabit it, but a place of vicious intrigue. Intensely threatened

by and jealous of one another, the captive women succumb to hatred and rivalry.

The plot of the movie is intricate. Late-evening storytelling is integral to the

narrative structure of Harem Suare, the evenings in the harem, and this method of

narration creates a timelessness and dreamlike atmosphere. The film juxtaposes two

simultaneous events. An older Safiye, played by an iconic star who emerged in the epoch

of Neorealism, Lucia Bose, living a hand-to-mouth existence and forlornly seated at a

station bar while awaiting a train in Italy, recounts her story to Anita, played by another

iconic actress, Valeria Golino. A story within this story is told by Gülfidan, the woman

superindent or kalfa (played by Serra Yılmaz), who with practiced artifice appears to

describe events that have yet to happen. Gülfidan recounts the story of Safiye’s rise in the

harem, and her forbidden relationship with the black eunuch Nadir, who aids her ascent.

The conjoined tales hurtle towards a tragic conclusion. The fate of the women selected

for their unique talent and beauty plunges into uncertainty with the fall of the Empire.

The institution of the harem which their lives were interwoven with is abolished by a

mob intent on humiliating them. Safiye, is forced to wander through Europe, reenacting caricatured snippets of her history under the nom de théâtre “la perla d’Oriente,” the

Pearl of the Orient.

‘Gallery of Memories:’ Past vs. Future, Ottomania vs Occidentalia

Özpetek’s films revolve around memory, place, and identity. The Istanbul of

Özpetek in Harem Suare is reflected in this sequence, a labyrinth of objects, pictured as a

77

gallery of memories. The Orient has always been represented as a primarily visual world,

but is here depicted as a microcosm. The imperial city, which the viewer never sees, and

by extension the Ottoman world, are invoked through objects. The intruder spectator,

together with Safiye, discovers a hidden space which “appears as a labyrinthine world

teeming with inscrutable objects, concealing secrets that are irretrievably lost in translation” (King 2).

In the sequence “Gallery of Memories” the hidden room is at once a process and a concept. It is a process, because the antiquities contained in the gallery of memories are part of an abandoned way of life: the process is visible through the passage from an

Ottoman aesthetic to a European one. On the other hand, it is also a concept, because it shows the construction of a binary discourse between West and East. As in Italo

Calvino’s city of Hypatia (a name that itself evokes the Hellenistic enclave of

Alexandria), the world described is one of visualized transformation where “change regards not words, but things” (47). Nadir, keeper of the secrets of the harem, leads

Safiye to a past world, a hidden place where the previous centuries were buried by

Europeaneate architecture and culture. In walking through the rooms, the spectator faces mirrors, carpets, divan, the traditional ahşap (or decorative wood panels), sumptuous curtains, veils, avize (multi-colored chandeliers), clothes and all kinds of antiquities, made obsolete by the spreading taste for Western fashion. Apparently simple, this scene reveals the aesthetic imbrication of East and West, looking back to cultural exchanges between the Ottoman and European societies that proliferated from the fifteenth century onwards. In a recent (2011) study Onur Inal points out that the continuous cross-cultural exchange of fashions between Ottoman and Jacobean English culture begins, for

78

instance, “with their first encounter in the early seventeenth century and continuing on an

increasing scale in the following decades” (245). Inal provides an overview on women’s

fashions, and the interchange of elements of dress between Ottoman and British women,

thus demonstrating that the importance of Istanbul as a center of trade, a continental

borderland where goods and ideas were exchanged.98 The desire of Ottoman women

preferring Western fashions over their traditional attire caused disappointment for

European artists and travelers who expected to find a perfectly exotic ‘otherness,’ rather

than a cultural hybridity that potentially upset the East-West divide. In Correspondence

d'Orient (1830-31), the French historians Joseph François Michaud and Jean Joseph F.

Poujoulat, describe the novelties besetting in Istanbul as ridiculous mimicry:

While waiting for the ladies of Stamboul to start following the fashions of France

or England, we have seen, just recently young princesses, daughters of the Sultan

going for walks in the street with clothing and finery that appeared to be novelties

from the West; I ought to tell you that this attempt has not succeeded, and we

have seen there but a grotesque travesty. It will probably remain thus.99 (85)

Rather than recognizing it as an exchange of culture in the form of fashionable attire, these nineteenth-century historians define the attempt as “a grotesque travesty,”

98 “British women’s interest in the clothing of Ottoman women was arguably not a phenomenon of the nineteenth century. It actually started at the beginning of the seventeenth century with the publication of travelers' accounts including pictorial descriptions of the clothes worn in the Ottoman Empire.” In “Women's Fashions in Transition: Ottoman Borderlands and the Anglo-Ottoman Exchange of Costumes,” (2011), p. 250. 99 Stamboul or Stambul is a variant form of Istanbul, as explained in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, it derives from Greek. “En attendant que les dames de Stamboul suivent les modes de France ou d'Angleterre, nous avons vu, il y a peu de jours, les jeunes princesses, filles de sultan, se promener dans les rues avec des vêtements et des parures qui paraissent être une nouveauté venue d'Occident; je dois vous dire que cette essai n'ai point réussi, et qu'on n'y a vu qu'un travestissement grotesque. Il est probable qu'on en restera là,” Joseph Fr. Michaud and Jean-Joseph-Francois Poujoulat, “De La Lettre LV,” Correspond- ence d’Orient, (1830-1831), vol. 3, p. 85. https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=vSQYAAAAYAAJ&re- dir_esc=y 79

following a scholarly tendency to describe the Ottomans “as remaining ignorant of

Europeans until the emergence of Europe as a dominant culture” (Inal 245).100 However, the novelty from the West described by the two historians more correctly describes an ongoing “interchange,” not an imitation (Inal 244). Likewise, the Turkish historian Eldem

Edhem and others historians have claimed that shared political and economic interests have helped to connect the Ottoman world to that of Europe.101 Istanbul, “was and is not an ordinary city and cannot be reduced to any ordinary function” but has long been a center of interaction between cultures, ethnicities, and the “conflicting forces” of history

(Eldem 1999: 138, 205).

As Nadir explains to Safiye, the Ottoman princess Esma102 (1778-1848),

daughter of Sultan Abdulhamid I, had a taste for foreign culture. She adored English

furniture, with the result that out-of-fashion decorations and textiles were consigned to the forgotten room. Among goods and values, the cross-cultural exchange of fashions

100 On the same account, the British traveller and illustrator Mary Adelaide Walker arrived in Constantinople around 1856. Once there, she did not find what she expected, since “the effort made by [Ottoman] women to assimilate their habits and manners with the freer mode of life usual to [French] women” (xii) is seen as a deception of expectations … The costume chosen ... was deplorable; no line of Oriental grace, ... She had robes stiff with gems, draperies of fairy tissue, yet she stood for her portrait in a dress of the poorest French silk, because it was "moda" à la franca." It was a dead unlovely white, the upper part made like a European lady's ball-dress, while from the waist downwards it was fashioned into the ... schalwars [wide trousers]. (15), Walker, Mary Adelaide. Eastern Life and Scenery with Excursions in Asia Minor, Mytilene, Crete, and Roumania, Vol. 1. Chapman & Hall, 1886. https://archive.org/details/easternlifescene01walkuoft/page/n17 101Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 174–5, 270 n. 62. Other historians also critically analyzed the assessed Ottoman borderlands perceived as frontiers with negative connotations, and referred to them as blurred zones and remote places: see Kemal H. Karpat, "Comments on Contributions and the Borderlands," in Ottoman Borderlands: Issues, Personalities, and Political Changes, ed. Kemal H. Karpat and Robert W. Zens (Madison: University of Wisconsin, Center of Turkish Studies,2003), pp. 1-15. 102 She was also a Sultan. In fact, the title "sultan" was used by Ottomans for women of the dynasty as well as men; in the case of women, the title followed the personal name. Esma was also called “the Young” to be distinguished from Esma the Elder, who was the daughter of Ahmed III. 80

was peculiarly well seen by British and Ottoman women. Many princesses in the eighteenth-century acquired “a shift in taste and behavior” (Artan 127).103

The desire for Western fashion dominated previous Sultans’ lives, who admired

luxury items from China and Japan, transported along the Silk Route, as well as those

goods brought to them by their trading partners and maritime rivals, the Venetians.104

Collecting European luxury goods, was a way that denotes a prominent change of attitude by Ottoman royal women (Artan 2010).105 Accordingly, Nadir’s comments Sultana

Esma’s tastes towards comfort and luxury, shows that Ottoman princesses seems to have been more swayed by fashion than concerned withWesternization per sé. The desire for

novelty was expressed in gathering objects and mixing cultures in houses that combined

“Ottoman luxury and English comfort” (Mansel 257).

103 They were “extremely enthusiastic about novelty in architecture and interior design. They all invested huge sums in the construction and furnishing of their palaces .... In the latter part of the eighteenth century, ... their numerous waterfront palaces along the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus were of equal grandeur and similar taste, and taken together diverged largely from other, more conventional forms. We can speculate that, as well as personal wealth, their architectural commissions were intended to demonstrate an appreciation for ... the fashionably "modern" European styles of the era such as Neoclassicism or the French Empire Style” (Artan 127). 104Based on official documents, such as Ottoman-Venetian relations preserved in the Venetian State Ar- chive, the Ottoman History professor Maria Pia Pedani, explores the intense relations between some im- portant Sultans like Nur Banu and Safiye, and the Republic of Venice. Pedani reports that the figure of the kira the woman servants of the Harem and the most important contacts with the Imperial harem were in- volved in the purchase of goods. A way that also establishes contact with Venetians, who “were considered among the most capable merchants, offering the most refined and strangest objects. We may imagine the baylo Agostino Nani smiling sadly when he wrote to his lords “onde credono qua che el bailo de Venetia tenghi botega aperta di ogni sorte di merci” (“they believe here that the Venetian baylo has a shop full of every kind of goods”). The Imperial Court had just asked him to procure some “figurina curiosa... di quelle lavorate dalle monache” (probably fabric dolls “as those made by Venetian nuns”) for the sultan’s children and his dwarf. To satisfy the harem and the most important persons of the Empire, Venice sent to Istanbul small dogs, gerfalcons, cushions, cloths, boxes of rock crystal, chairs, clocks of every dimension, even those produced in France, French sugar, glass vases, glass for windows, glass lamps, mirrors, grana cheese (called piacentino) and the softer vicentino ... The importation of particular goods, desired by the harem women sometimes created real diplomatic problems. Thus, Safiye bought large quantities of “feathers” made of Murano glass, asking the baylo Morosini to stop the importation of these items from Venice. Their sale was resumed only after some months, when they had gone out of fashion” (Pedani 12). 105 Especially porcelains, which “signify a notable change of attitude on the part of Ottoman royal women during a period of more widespread social and political reform (Artan 2010: 113). 81

Anatomy of a Scene: Turkish Delight on Stage

INT. NIGHT – DRESSING ROOM – ITALIAN THEATER

Voice-over in Italian (bridging from a previous scene)

Following her triumphs in Paris, London and Berlin …

CUT TO: high angle frames a small dressing room. Safiye is framed from

behind, sitting on a chair. Her face is reflected in a small rectangular mirror.

Gülfidan, Safiye’s kalfa stands on her left side. Four dancing odalisques enter

the frame from below, moving quickly and exiting the frame from the right

side (viewer’s perspective).

Voice-over in Italian (cont.)

We present you the loveliest flower of the Sultan’s Palace / Only a short time

ago, she lived enclosed within forbidding walls / guarded by fearsome black

eunuchs.106

A console with postcards framing cities and an oval mirror centers the frame.

Red upholstery with an oriental pattern surrounds the small room. Soft light

radiates from a lampshade. A long black veil threaded with golden strands

covers a woman seen from behind. Safiye’s features are discernible through

the image reflected in both the mirrors.

CUT TO a medium close up of Safiye centered in the frame. In her hand, a

smoking ring holder. In the background, out of focus, the shape of a man is still

106 The voice-off referring to the eunuch also says “dell’Africa Nera” (from the black Africa). The subtitles do not report the translation. However, the appellative “black” is not only derogative but also incorrect. Africa was named “The Dark Continent” by the English writer and explorer Henry Stanley, who in his travelogue Through the Dark Continent (1899), remarks that "it was poorly known" (Pimm 567). It seems that the use of the term “nera Africa” (“black Africa”), comes from the associative set of meaning relating to dark-skinned and savage. 82

visible. Tapestry with floral ornaments appear on the right (viewer’s side),

while the left frames the stairs. She slowly turns her face to look at someone

outside the frame, giving back her cigarette and whispering something. Safiye

adjusts her head-ornaments with her left hand, her wrist encircled by a beaded

meshed bracelet.

Voice-over (cont.)

A master of almost godlike power, I promised you a “Night in the Harem”

You’ll get much more. She’s going to dance for you! She’ll sing for you.

She will reveal the secret. The mysteries of her life and of her forbidden love.

Introducing the Pearl of the Orient! The Last Favorite!

CUT TO a two-shot of Safiye and Gülfidan, who holds the woman’s long veil.

A reverse tracking shot follows Safiye climbing a stairway pensively. We cut

to Safiye’s point of view of the theater stage. Odalisques and two men stand on

the right side, looking forward. 107 A man with a red fez addresses the

audience. In dim light, we see the tokens of luxury: wide cushions, a rug, a

table with a carafe and glasses are placed on the stage. The man turns to Safiye,

gesturing broadly to introduce her to the audience. CLOSE-UP of Safiye

offstage.

Whistles and clapping. Music cue.

107 The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the odalisque is: historical: A female slave or concubine in a harem, especially one in the seraglio of the Sultan of Turkey; a second meaning is “an exotic, sexually attractive woman.” The latter meaning is commonly used in Western descriptions. The Merriam Webster gives two main definitions: 1) a female slave; 2) a concubine in a harem. The word odalisque comes from the Turkish odalık, (the word oda means room). An odalisque originally meant a chamber girl or attendant. 83

Safiye’s POV. Odalisques move on stage dancing, while the man walks toward

Safiye. CLOSE-UP of Safiye who covers her face with the veil. The man exits

the frame while Safiye goes towards the stage standing in the center. She

performs an oriental dance. “La perla d’Oriente” uncovers her face and sits

down while some odalisques dance around her and prostrate themselves at her

feet.

This sequence, which takes place in the last ten minutes of Harem Suare, underlines the stereotypical images of Ottomania by offering a visual entertainment par excellence, the exotic as object of possessive representation for a heterosexual Western male audience.

The scene focuses on the figure of Safiye presented as the “loveliest flower of the

Sultan’s Palace,” a typical “night in the harem,” which can be seen as a catalyzing moment of the entire film, whose title - Harem Suare - centers exactly on a night with

Safiye.

Women as Objects of Staged Desire

According to the film, Safiye was paraded in European theaters and exhibited as

“the pearl of Orient,” embodying “the Orientalism ... outside the Oriental world [and] the

Orient speaking through the Occidental imagination” (Said 47). In Harem Suare, the performance we see takes place in Italy, following Safiye’s triumphs in Paris, London and Berlin. The garb in which the dancer is dressed deserves comment. In the scene,

Safiye’s apparel is nearly identical to a description made by Italian painter and engraver

Cesare Vecellio (1521–1601) in Habiti antichi, where his commentary on the favourite of the Sultan reflects an exhilarating sense of appreciation of “La più favorita del Turco,

84

l’oro che porta è la più esigua cosa a comparatione delle perle e gioie che adornano tal

donna: il Cidari suo è assai alto, e fregiato di un sottilissimo Velo, che descende fin terra”

(Vecellio 306).108 As in Vecellio’s description, Safiye is heavily adorned. Habiti antichi contains 420 illustrations on exotic and domestic costumes. The book suggests that

Ottoman testes tended towards antiquarianism: one of its nine chapters includes an entire

section on Ottoman costumes as modifications of ancient Occidental attire. Ottomans, in

Vecellio’s eyes are atavistic Europeans; they are near-Eastern simply by being inferior

reflections unlike the truly distant peoples of Asia and Africa.109

The veiled dancer performs on stage: the exhibition of the unknown other is a recurrent trope in the nineteenth-century European theatre and entertainment. As Edward

Ziter points out specifically fashioned for the British context, the peculiar trait of the

“theatrical East” (3) was based on the constructed representations intended for Western consumption. This can be compared usefully to Richard Dyer’s suggestion that “cultural forms do not have single determinate meanings - people make sense of them in different ways, according to the cultural (including sub-cultural) codes available to them” (2).

Accordingly, the portrayal of Safiye as a somatic representation of a dramatized “East” embodies a series of reading codes that are connected to the viewer's world. The way in which someone is presented or represented in cultural forms becomes representative of a group and a place. Safiye, for the Western audience, becomes a synechdoche, speaking

108 “The most favored of the Turk, the gold that she bears is the smallest thing in comparison to the pearls and joys that adorn this woman: her Cidari is very tall, and adorned with a very thin Veil, which descends to the ground.” Vecellio's engraving of La favorita del Turco, elegantly dressed, is probably Hürrem Sultan, known as Roxelane, the favourite (haseki) of sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66), who was also the first haseki, who got married with a sultan. 109 The seventh chapter is dedicated entirely to the Ottoman Empire. Only a short section is dedicated to Africa and Asia including in it costumes of Persians, Moors, and Arabs. 85

not only for herself, but also on behalf of a group (of women), of a place (the harem), of a

culture (that of the Ottoman Empire in its twilight). In this specific case, the most

interesting element that contributes to unmask the construction of identity otherness is

that Safiye is not an Oriental woman per se. According to the film Safiye was, indeed, an

Italian of a patrician family, whose marriage cemented a commercial alliance. The

audience is thus invited to reimagine her in a clearly counterfeit Orient. Thus, more than

other others, Safiye embodies the idea of an identity re-constructed through a figurative

lexicon based on invented nostalgia.

The camera peers constantly at the woman/object, playfully engaging in an

investigation of voyeurism. It adopts a shared male sense of possession of the unveiled

figure on the stage by never showing the audience, signified by catcalls, whistles, and

clapping. As a matter of fact, the sequence embodies a territory demarcated by an

exclusively male, heterosexual gaze granted access to a mysterious, hitherto hidden

realm. The performance of “la perla d’Oriente” represents the possibility that has always

been dreamed of infiltrating the mysteries of a forbidden space.110

The Italian/European stage becomes a counterpart of the forbidden, hidden space

represented by the harem, seen as “the ultimate site of sexual permissiveness and

decadence” (Madar 2). While both the stage and the harem are physically enclosed

spaces, the first represents a familiar ambience, the latter one that is “hermetically sealed”

(Yeğenoğlu 74) and secluded, symbolizing a penetration of the Orient by Western

110 As Meyda Yeğenoğlu underlines, “Despite his ability to freely enter the Orient and move in and out as much as he wishes, the Western subject is frustrated by the closure of the space of the Oriental woman; he had no option but to speculate on the details of harem life, its mysteries, and the lascivious sexuality the other-sex enjoys behind that closed curtain. Moreover, the veil and its mystery, which most Western travelers denounce, is dropped in this ‘inner space’” (1998:73). 86

modernities. The stage becomes a tool that can document people and places, it functions

as a replacement for the harem, the side-show of Western desire. As a matter of fact, in

the performance the announcer tells the audience that Safiye will reveal all the secrets of

her life in the forbidden harem. The pictorial geography of the harem is reduced to

essentials and reenacted as a vehicle of entertainment. As Ziter explains, the exhibition of

indigenous cultures and non-Western bodies as marvelous and freakish was a

phenomenon that appeared shortly before 1851, when London staged the Great

Exhibition, the first festival to place the wonders of manufactured products on public

display (102).111

In the scene, the Ottoman terrain exudes a different brand of pre-industrial

exoticism. Safiye embodies a culture, a locus amoenus, and an imagined narrative trope

that transforms her into a “pearl,” an appropriated object of great worth like the Hope

Diamond or the Star of India. As Edward Said maintains, the Orient is itself objectified

into a form of discourse, as well as into repertoires of images stereotyped for easy

consumption. However, Said in his analysis does not take into account the Ottoman

Empire. In Orientalism, his main focus remains on the appropriating rhetoric and

visualizations enacted by such colonial powers as Great Britain and France, for him the

primary producers of Orientalist discourse.112 The Ottoman Empire has only taken center

stage comparatively recently.113 A new historiographic turn, “Ottomanismo alla

111 The Ottoman Empire took also part in the Great Exhibition, which was guided by the Sultan Abdul-Mejid I, who was also the first prince to be educated under Western norms. For further reading see Gülname Turan, "Turkey in the Great Exhibition of 1851" (2009). 112 In “The Ottoman Empire and Orientalism: An Awkward Relationship,” Eldem notes that “Turkey and Turks ... were spared much of the weight of the orientalist discourse so strongly criticized by Edward Said” (2014: 89). 113 In “The Ottoman Empire Seen through the Lens of Postcolonial Studies: A Recent Historiographical Turn” (2013), Özgür Türesay writes: “Ottoman Studies enlivened by an unparalleled spirit of dynamism for 87

Turca”114- takes place at the end of the nineteenth century, consolidating its meaning at

the beginning of the twentieth century.115 But, as he implies, the focus on certain

elements of Ottoman culture as a basis of voyeuristic desire never disappeared.

From my perspective, rather than a critique to Orientalism, Harem Suare

introduces a reflection on the concept of Ottomania, visible especially through two

aspects, and consequently through two opposite views: the representation of space

with its exotic allure and the representation of Safiye as “la perla,” a sort of relic or

trophy that transforms the other into an ornament, something that existed merely as a

representation for Europe. Özpetek is fully aware that he provokes voyeurism by reproducing a stereotype, albeit here critiquing a world-view by underlining its excesses:

“the Orient is for the Westerner observer ... a place of pilgrimage ... so too the vision of

the Orient as spectacle, as tableau vivant” (Said 497- 498). By exhibiting the

objectification of the woman’s body, the filmmaker is conscious of driving the onlooker

to adopt a position of an intruder with a desiring gaze. Here Özpetek seems to be playing

with the stereotype of an ironical orientalist trope: he is replicating a Western

Orientalizing perception of the other as an enactment of desire, making the audience

conscious of being shown what it wants to see.

Turkish women are closely scrutinized by Italian travel writer and literary

correspondent, Edmondo De Amicis, a lively observer of the Ottoman Capital in the late

more than two decades now, [and] constantly being enriched by fresh analyses resulting from newly adopted or adapted points of view, owing to the fact that they – sometimes – are based on sources hitherto neglected by, or unknown to, historians (Türesay 128). 114 Both the terms are defined by Ussama Makdisi, Christoph Herzog, and Raoul Motika. See Christoph Herzog and Raoul Motika, “Orientalism alla turca: Late 19th/Early 20th Century Ottoman Voyages into the Muslim ‘Outback,’” Die Welt des Islams 40, no. 2 (July 2000): 139-195, http://www.jstor.org/sta- ble/1570642; Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” American Historical Review 107, no. 3, 2002. 115 Consequently, as Eldem underlines, there was a “gradual shift of European interest from the eighteenth century on, towards newer horizons [like] India, China, Japan” (89). 88

nineteenth century. In his compilation of reportage, Costantinopoli (1874), he describes

the Ottoman women in a way that did not differ much from contemporary tendencies, but

confesses that his hopes of finding exoticism in otherness were defeated: “[è] una grande

sorpresa per chi arriva a Costantinopoli, dopo aver inteso parlare tanto della schiavitù

delle donne turche, il veder donne da tutte le parti e a tutte le ore del giorno, come in una

qualunque città europea” (115). 116 Soon after, he remarks on their sense of fashion:

“[l]a prima impressione è curiosissima. Lo straniero si domanda, al vedere tutte le donne

con quei veli bianchi e quelle lunghe cappe di colore ciarlataneschi, se son maschere o

monache o pazze ...; il feregé ... è una specie di tonaca, ... larga, senza garbo,” (115-

117).117

De Amicis’s opinion, like that of other contemporary writers and travelers, is the

result of a tendency to represent Turks as symbols of unbridled sensuality, but

perceptively he noted a difference in philosophical outlook: “[l]’Oriente ha diverse idee

da noi sull’educazione e sulla morale. Loro cercano di sviluppare i sensi … noi di

soffocarli”118 (xix). Detached from a cloistered environment and thrust into a hostile, urban one, Safiye’s plight feeds into the apparatus of cinema which can produce visual evidence of tropes of otherness, some specifically constructed for an Occidental gaze.

She occupies the same stage on which Said notes the rewriting of history takes the form of processions of places and characters: “Cleopatra, Eden, Troy, ... Astarte, Isis” (185).

116 “It is a great surprise for those who arrive in Costantinople, after having heard so much about the slavery of Turkish women, seeing women on all sides and at all hours of the day, as in any European city.” 117 “The first impression is very curious. The stranger wonders when s/he sees all women with those white veils and those long cloak-like hoods, whether they are masks or nuns or insane ...; il feregé ... is a kind of cassock, ... with very long sleeves, wide, without grace.” 118 “The East has different ideas on manners and morals. They try to develop the senses, like us to stifle them,” from Le Figlie del Fuoco by Gérard de Nerval cited in Luca Scarlini “Costantinopoli: un viaggio per libri e per mare,” xix. 89

Her exhibition on a European stage is therefore linked to the concept of an ethnographic display.119 In the Western eyes, she is representative of oriental sensuality that is produced by a locale and thereby elicits the fascination of the terra incognita. As a result,

the sequences analyzed focus not only on Safiye, but also on the spaces which encage

her.120

The Harem

The physical space of the harem is the Yıldız Palace whose construction started at the end of the eighteenth century, in the reign of Sultan Selim III. From 1876 to 1909 it was the residence of Abdülhamid II, who transferred the court there from the

119 Safiye' s performance can be compared in some way to the exhibition of Saartjie Baartman, a young Koisan woman who was taken captive from South Africa, and exhibited as a ‘freak’ across Britain, under the designation of the "Hottentot Venus.” My comparison between the objectification of the two female "others" focuses broadly on the body as a visual representation of an ethnographic subject in a European context such as a theatrical space. We should also take into account that the body itself is a social process of identity, it is a production effect imposed by culture. The body is a “somatic fact created by cultural effect” (emphasis in the text, Fausto-Sterling 21). The Hottentot Venus, Saartjie Baartman was considered the central nineteenth-century icon of racial and sexual difference between the European and the black. She was considered object of scientific research that established the base of European concepts about black female sexuality. As Sander Gilman remarks (1985), “[i]t is indeed in the physical appearance of the Hottentot that the central icon for sexual difference between the European and the black was found” (16). However, the Hottentot Venus, was made to be representative of supposedly savage sexuality and racial inferiority. The analysis on Saartjie Baartman has been criticized by some scholars, such as Zine Magubane, who in “WHICH BODIES MATTER? Feminism, Poststructuralism, Race, and the Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the “Hottentot Venus” critiques the "dominant feminist analyses of the “Hottentot Venus.” since these analyses of the construction of Black women as “other,” borrowing heavily from poststructuralism, make race and gender transhistorical and metaphysical constructs” (816). Gilman, in quoting the traveler Benjamin of Tudela, reports that “the association of the black with concupiscence reaches back into the Middle Ages” when black people were associated with animals who “eat the herbs that grow on the banks of the Nile and in the fields. They go about naked and do not have the intelligence of ordinary men. They cohabit with their sisters and anyone they can find … and these are the Black slaves, the sons of Ham” (16). As Gilman claims, by the eighteenth century, the black body becomes iconic for deviant sexuality. Black is the antithesis of the beauty of Western society, and the “lowest exemplum of mankind on the great chain of being is the Hottentot” (Gilman 16). In 2003 the Swazi filmmaker Zola Maseko made a film on Saartjie Baartman’ story. The Return of Sara Baartman. Film by Zola Maseko. Icarus Films, 2003. 53 minutes. 120 In her exhibition “la perla d’Oriente” is not alone, she is surrounded by odalisques and men (representing perhaps eunuchs) who guard her. Safiye is visualized inside an imagined context, with pillows, colorful tapestries and oriental ornaments, all part of that Oriental way of life forsaken by Ottoman princesses, as we have seen in the sequence “gallery of memories.” 90

Dolmabahçe Palace. This setting also returns in Özpetek’s novel (and later a film) Rosso

Istanbul (2013), in which biographical and fictional elements are intertwined. Set in

Istanbul, the novel tells two stories, that of a Turkish filmmaker and an Italian woman.

The filmmaker's sudden return home triggers a series of memories. The city of his

childhood and adolescence seems to regain form. Unpredictably, this story blends with

that of an Italian woman encountered by chance on an airplane, who will discover her

husband's betrayal, but also the magical beauty of Istanbul and a new sense of freedom.

In the novel, the narrator points out the centrality of the harem to the story: “donne in un

harem, vestite di seta colorate e leggere, e cariche di gioielli. Vivevano davvero così, le

donne dell’harem, o è una fantasia romantica?” (11).121

Mickhail Bakhtin calls the co-ordinates of time and space that determine the

character of a work of fiction its “chronotopes,” and Ozpetek’s recurrent chronotope

merits close attention. From the Western point of view, the harem has always be seen as a

mysterious and forbidden place, “off limits to European men.” Thus, discussions

concerning it “were largely exercises in fantasy” (Madar 2).

In The Harem, a 1936 book still preserved in the library of Boğaziçi University

(Istanbul) and published in 1936, N.M. Penzer gives an interesting overview on the harem, introducing it by noting that “false ideas [of it] have lingered … long in the

Western mind” (13).122 The writer suggests two reasons for the prevalent

misconceptions: the secrecy “which always surrounded the Imperial harem,” and the

“thin and ill-defined dividing line between fact and fiction” that led to speculation (13).

121 “Women in a harem, dressed in colored silk and light, and full of jewels. Did they really live like this, the women of the harem, or is it a romantic fantasy?” (11). 122 The Harem: an account of the institution as it existed in the palace of the Turkish sultans, with a history of the Grand Seraglio from its foundation to the present time. J.B. Lippincott, 1936. 91

The word harem is borrowed from an Arabic term signifying “‘holy, protected, sacred, inviolate and … forbidden” (Penzer 15). Harem and seray – seraglio, the side of the edifice reserved for women, reflected and encouraged fantasies. 123 As Penzer emphasizes, the “vague, and sometimes conflicting description” (13) of the harem came from letters and diaries of ambassadors’ wives or secretaries, travelers, and news reports.

As late as 1993, the historian Leslie Peirce (1993) could underline the continuing scarcity of information regarding “the internal functioning of the harem and of relationships among its residents” (113-114).124 Popular views of the harem are, according to him, where “females have no rightful access” to any of the appurtenances of male privilege (6). However, the forbidden space in Özpetek’s film is shown as a complex and highly organized microcosm, where each figure plays a role according to social prestige and the trust of others.125 The harem is thus as much a pretext for the

“rhetoric of storytelling” (Giannetti 368), as it is the result of a specific staging of mise-en-scène: a chronotope fashioned more by the celebrated orientalist paintings of the late nineteenth century than by any surviving architectural traces.

123 People wrongly refer to it also as a “seraglio,” a word which in Italian means “a cage for animals.” In her article “An Accented Gaze: Italy’s Transmigrant Filmmakers” Aine O’Healy in describing Harem Suare mistakenly calls the harem “seraglio” (p. 486). As the Penzer (1936) explains “By a curious Italian adaptation of a Persian word the term seraglio was introduced, and came to be generally accepted by both Europeans and Turks. Its etymological history is interesting, and helps to explain its exact meaning. The modern seraglio is directly derived from the Italian serraglio, a cage for wild animals ..., and was adopted owing to its chance similarly with the Persian words sara and sarai, which originally meant “a building” ... and which are familiar to us in the word ‘caravanserai’... place for camels” (16). 124 “Ottoman narrative sources are virtually silent with regard to life within the harem. Just as the harem was hidden from a man's eyes, so was talk of life within it meant to be beyond the reach of his ears” (113- 114). 125 “The enormous growth in the population of the harem created the need for greater hierarchical organization and differentiation of function than had previously been necessary. It is this expanded harem that we can appropriately call "the harem institution." It consisted of the female members of the dynastic family and the extensive household that served them. The basic outlines of the harem institution were set by the first decade of the seventeenth century, although it continued to grow and mature in succeeding decades” (Peirce 119). 92

The Harem as a Community: Three Apples and a Tale

Just as the scenes we have described seem to meditate on acts of spectatorship, yet another scene (which comes early in the film) seems self-reflexive in relating the mechanism of its narrative construction. In a scene studded with lipstick-red tulips, surrounded by the young women of the seraglio, Gülfidan, a meddah126 (or practiced storyteller) entertains them with an impossible story: “What can I tell? I don’t know …

I’ve never done this before. I won’t be able to do so.”

This scene takes place in the seraglio, and it focuses on an interesting figure, that of Gülfidan, Safiye’ kalfa. For the entire duration of the film, she will play the role of a storyteller-narrator, skillfully weaving anecdotes and legends of harem life together, epitomizing what David Bordwell claims as the especial province of cinema, its

“characteristic double fabula-forming process” (1970: 88) involving an enigmatic tale that itself relates the story of Safiye's life in three overlapping stories.

Gülfidan’s story then, is a pretext for introducing other storytellers, one of whom happens to be the older Safiye, who provides anticipating elements and tells a real story mixed with tales. The second tale is presented by the other narrator, the old Safiye, who is also the protagonist and, looking back, recounts her life to Anita. In between, there is the young Safiye, living her life in the harem, who is the subject and the object of the narrated stories. Along with her, with the clues given by Gülfidan and the elements described by the old Safiye, the audience is able to construct the trajectory of her life, first as the favorite of the sultan, then as a relic to be displayed on European stages.

126 The Arts of the Meddah as a public storyteller is inscribed in 2008 in the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (originally proclaimed in 200). https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/arts- of-the-meddah-public-storytellers-00037

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While the story of the young Safiye and the fall of the Ottoman empire are

presented as linear narrative, the story the older Safiye recounts to Anita, is circular in its

raison d’être. It is this narrative that determines the circularity of the film as a whole.

The camera frames the same empty train station café at the beginning and at the end, as if to reject narrative closure. It seems that the spectator is required to carry out the work of

interpretation because Harem Suare’s mode of narration appears, in fact, to be

characterized by what appears to be a time-loop structure, in which the figure of the

cinematic narrator appears in multiple guises holding the audience -- like the women in

the harem -- captive. Likewise, as a “character-narrator” (Bordwell 61), Gülfidan seems

essential not only to entertain the harem, but also to comment on other events in the film,

events that have not yet occurred. Perhaps the most striking example of this intertwined

method of storytelling occurs when the camera cuts to a long shot of the station waiting

room where the young Anita sits as Gülfidan begins her story. The action described, in

fact, takes place many years in the future, an anticipation in which the narrator is like a

seer, capable of generating a flash forward. As Gulfidan recounts a tale that has yet to

occur, her words in Turkish recount: “Both women were waiting. But from different

voyages. One was arriving, the other departing,” a circularity that mirrors Safiye’s

departure from one form of captivity to an arrival into another. In Narration in the

Fiction Film (1985), David Bordwell underlines that,

manipulations of fabula offer obvious narrational possibilities ... Reshuffling the

fabula order can be used to break or qualify the primary effect, forcing the viewer

to evaluate early material in the light of new information about prior events ...

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Postponing the representation of some fabula events also tends to create curiosity

(78).

Bordwell goes on to describe features of temporal construction asserting that while it’s very common “for a syuzhet to present fabula events out of order by recounting them …

“it's more unusual to find the syuzhet enacting fabula events out of chronological sequence - that is, employing ... flashforwards” (78). Another example of such switching of the fabula order occurs in the scene in which the women of the harem surrounding

Gülfidanlisten to the story of their own future. Gülfidan’s tale is primarily of an encounter between past, present of the film sequences and the future: “youth is the past of old age. Old age is the future of youth,” Gülfidan intones. Time and space in Harem

Suare overlap. The story she tells, like a spiral, contains stories embedded in other stories, not only echoing Safiye’s, but also resonating with those of the other women and the two who meet in the train station. The resemblance of the film’s structure to the frame story of The Thousand and One Nights, and the reference to the story of the three apples which Scheherazade begins on the nineteenth night, offer a clear parallel in that they contain multiple inner narratives. In “Narrativity in The Thousand and One Nights,”

Karam Nayebpour analyzes Scheherazade’s art of storytelling as the main vehicle for fictional worldmaking.127 As she underlines, Scheherazade’s tales incorporate different narrative features. Gülfidan's art of storytelling, like Scheherazade's has the ability to engage the harem “emotionally through the presentation of interconnected events," attracting the attention of her audience by narrating successive events (87). However,

127 Regarding the tales from The Thousand and One Nights, the EOE reports that some of the most famous Turkish tales known as the Forty Viziers (Kırk Vezirler) and the Arabic tales from The Thousand and One Nights (Alf Layla wa Layla). “Both collections contain materials that predate the Ottoman period, but in their retelling over the centuries, they were continually modified by contemporary tastes” (Masters 340). 95

while Scheherazade's technique of storytelling “recounts interconnected events without including any additional details, descriptions, or commentary about them” (87), Gülfidan elaborates each narrative strand with many ncidental details, which only someone who has already witnessed the events could do. As a result of her experience, she can, in

Nayebpour’s words, “construct a persuasive narrative hook which transports” the harem into the storyworld that helps the women of the harem contemplate the end of their world.

Gülfidan's tale further resembles Scheherazade’s by acting as “powerful magic by capturing the [listeners’] attention and persuading them to continue listening to the narrated events” (87).

In the final fragment of the film, Gülfidan uses the formulaic endings of the kind of “three apples tales,” that are very common in Turkish folktales.128 She says: “Allah has sent three apples. One for the teller of the tale, another for the listener, and the last one for me …Always remember this ... What’s important, is not how you live your life, but how you tell it to yourself and to others.”129 So, she reminds us that what is really essential is not the events themselves, but their story as we choose to remember it and tell it to others.

128 In More Tales Alive in Turkey (Walker and Uysal, 1992), is stated that, “[t]his is one of several formulaic endings ... The narrator may vary this to satisfy his or her own pixieish fancy. In one variant the narrator says, ‘Three apples fell from heaven: one for the narrator of this tale and two for the listeners” (301 note 18). Formulaic endings together with the interconnectivity of the stories represent - as addressed by Bruce Masters in the Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire - are popular form of recounting events or to symbolize meaning. “the most popular form of folk literature was a series of interconnected stories. An individual tale would be embedded in another, creating suspenseful narratives not unlike modern western forms of narrative serialization - episodic novels - multipart films, and television and radio serials - so that the listener would be sure to return on the following evening to hear what happened next ... more popular than the tales of heroes were those of ordinary people who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances” (340). 129 Used as epigraph in Özpetek’s book Rosso İstanbul. 96

If cinema can be seen as “the preeminent storytelling language” as Jacques Levy claims, Harem Suare can be seen as a cogent example of cinema’s capacity to mediate between storytelling narrativeand symbolic language, between imaginary worlds and their tangible representation. Özpetek’s film engages each of these aspects of cinema, where the conventional separation of showing and telling is inextricably linked, but in which each aspect refers to other typologies of narration and cultural practice.130

Brushstrokes in a Frame-Shot

In a commentary that appears as a DVD supplement to this film, Özpetek

mentions that the visual imagery of the film owes a particular debt to a painter. Given his

iconic status in representing the world of the harem for Western eyes, I would like to suggest that paintings Özpetek has in mind are those of Jean-Léon Gérôme. His celebrated Moorish Bath (1870), for example, serves as a representative model of

Özpetek's stylistic approach.131 In Harem Suare, the Orient is a space of both memory and hüzün (melancholy). His characters are sometimes so still, however, that they resemble tableaux vivants. The filmmaker’s vision of the past embodies the perspective of the antiquarian who intends to achieve a monumental relation to the past as opposed

130 For instance, while the representation of the space recalls visual art, the storytelling recalls other time-space (i.e. The Thousand and One Nights and the fıgure of Scheherazade), and La Traviata modified with an happy ending “can reflect - and even alter - a cultural practice" (Hutcheon & Hutcheon xv). At the beginning of the film the final scene of Verdi's La Traviata is performed; it is acted for the sultan's delight who prefers to change the outcome of the opera, giving to it an imaginative happy end. 131 Oil on canvas part of the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Dimension: Overall: 50.8 x 40.6 cm (20 x 16 in.) Other (Framed): 82.6 x 14 x 73 cm (32 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 28 3/4 in.). Provenance: 1870, gift of the artist to Henry James Turner (b. 1831 - d. 1924), London; April 4, 1903, Turner sale, Christie's, London, lot 138, sold to Arthur Tooth and Sons, London, Paris, and New York [see note 1]; 1903, sold by Tooth and Sons to Sir John D. Milburn, Esq. (b. 1851 - d. 1907), Northumberland … Eben D. Jordan Jr. (b. 1857 - d. 1916), Boston, MA; by inheritance to his son, Robert Jordan, Boston, MA; 1924, gift of Robert Jordan to the MFA. As I write, the painting is on display at Wallach Art Gallery, NY, until February 10, 2019. Reproduced with permission © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All rights reserved. 97

to the historian who in turn examines and analyzes the past with an objective viewpoint

that intends to be free of political elements.132 According to Friedrich Nietzsche while

the historian attempts to separate himself from the object of study to develop an unbiased

perspective, the antiquarian (in this case the filmmaker for whom memory is essential)

attaches himself to the object of study. Özpetek’s mise-en-scène, his participatory vision of the past can be read as a romantic Ottomania, clearly visible thorugh the mise-en- scène.

In Harem Suare the audience is captivated by “the scents of jasmine and oranges”

(Bieberstein 201) as well as the scenic and picturesque mise-en-scène which appears to spring up from Orientalist paintings of the late nineteenth century.133 By adopting some

of Gérôme’s favorite motifs, colorful shades, strong visual representations and framing

that resembles portraiture, the filmmaker romanticizes Ottoman interiors in just the way the painter did with sensational effect on his contemporaries. While Istanbul itself, which the spectator never sees seems frozen in time, the colorful portraits of the harem's dwellers float in the foreground, especially with the filmmaker's detailed visual compositions in the interior of the palace. One soon becomes aware that Harem Suare seems less concerned with historical verisimilitude than with its sensuous visuality. Its allure derives from the depiction of a vanished world whose ornate surfaces disguise the powerlessness of its inhabitants, ensnaring the spectator in its Romantic visual imagery.

132 Here I adopt Friedrich Nietzsche’s distinction between the historians and antiquarians in The Use and Abuse of History for Life (1874), which describes different approaches to narrating the past. 133 Let’s first briefly clarify that orientalist painters of the nineteenth century should not be seen as a single category. As Walter B. Denny remarks in “Quotations in and out of Context: Ottoman Turkish Art and European Orientalist Painting” (1993), “Orientalist art generally fall into three categories, with somewhat blurry boundaries” (219): the tradition of rapportage, the tradition of political-propaganda orientalism, and the categories of paintings that “partakes of both the first two, but concentrates neither on accuracy of depiction nor on an overt political message” (219). 98

As with Gérôme’s canvases, the filmic space seems to be created by light and

color. Özpetek appears to have taken one of Blaine Brown’s recipes for good

filmmaking: “lighting creates the environment for storytelling and we must never forget

that, at its heart, filmmaking is telling stories with pictures” (12). In invoking Gérôme’s

style, Özpetek nevertheless emphasizes red tonalities in preference to the painter’s

partiality to blue, and to low-key lighting in contrast to his sunlit interiors.

Characteristically, Özpetek writes:

Istanbul è il blu e rosso, che paiono riuscire a fondere solo in certi tramonti sul

Bosforo. E il rosso, il rosso dei carrettini dei venditori ambulanti di simit … Il

rosso fiammeggiante dei vecchi tram … Il rosso-arancio con cui erano decorati i

piattini del tè … Il rosso dello smalto sulle unghie di mia madre ... lei che ricordo

sempre solo in ... tailleur grigi … Ma ora è solo il rosso che vuole, e il rosso a

renderla felice. (13)134

In a film, the function of colors tends to be “a subconscious element, strongly emotional in its appeal, expressive and atmospheric rather than intellectual” (Giannetti 25). The renowned cinematographer Vittorio Storaro believes that red tonalities embody the past

(44).135 Hence the film’s predominant color scheme underlines its reliance on memory

134 In Divergenze in Celluloide, Ryan Calabretta-Sajder analyzes the use of colors (red, white and light blue) in Özpetek’s Il bagno turco (The turkish bath). In his novel Rosso Istanbul (2013) Özpetek writes: “Istanbul is the blue and the red, which seem to be able to blend only in certain sunsets on the Bosphorus. And the red, the red of the cart vendors of simit ... The flaming red of the old trams ... The red-orange of the tea-plates ... The red of the enamel on the nails of my mother "(13). ... she that I always remember only in ... gray tailleur ... But now it's just the red that she wants, and the red makes her happy" (13). The book was also adapted into a screenplay for a film he shot entirely in Istanbul, and for the first time with an entirely Turkish cast. The color red also characterizes Özpetek’s first film Hamam (1997), known also as Il bagno turco, and in English as Steam: The Turkish Bath. 135 Storaro writes: “The color of the SELF since the origin of Man. Red represents the early years of our life, the dawn of our existence. It is the first shade of which we are Conscious on our initial awakening. Symbol of vital energy, Red is the most powerful exorcism for dark death. … In mythology, Red represents Janus, the god of Beginnings, and Mars, the god of War. In the past, various parts of the human body were 99

and a lost past, narrative tropes open to interpretation precisely because each image is imbued with several layers of meaning.

While Gérôme was fanatical in his observance of detail and old-fascioned in his study of the Oriental world, Özpetek combines epochs and time frames with greater freedom as his camera roams through symmetrical patterns of tiles and architectural features. Özpetek’s films have often been denied any serious criticism, as was long true of a derisive critical tradition that dismissed Gérôme paintings as prurient and populist as

Impressionism eclipsed his aesthetic, with the result that he was “ignored as a result of then-prevailing dogmas of taste” (Denny 219). Writers on film tend to analyze Özpetek using “a very blurred and flexible boundary” of critical judgment: instead of “read[ing] a meaning in his [films],” there is always a tendency to dismiss their transparent narrative structures. As Derek Dunkan remarks,

[a]lthough Özpetek’s work was presented at a major retrospective at MoMA in

2008, his commercially successful and well-financed products are routinely

criticized for their relatively unchallenging narrative and aesthetic structures that,

superficially at least, do little of the work that queer as an explicitly contestational

category aspires to carry out. (2017: 478)

Like Özpetek, Gérôme was also considered to be appealing to a popular audience, someone who was feeding the insatiable crowd with a “saucy anecdote” (Allan 1). Émile

Zola was one and not the first critic to deride Gérôme for blatant appeal to popular tastes.

The prevailing belief among twentieth century art historians was that the latter’s paintings

painted with this color ... to boost the vitality and fighting strength … In the realm of feeling, it is a flame that illuminates the human spirit. At the emotive level, it represents desire; at the sensory level, appetite. ... Red is the color of the South, of Warmth (45). 100

corrupted art and led to the commercialism of salon art. They also objected to his

Orientalism, which they disparaged for being historical distortions and misleading

representations of the real East. Critical revision might apply equally to Özpetek and

Gérôme as their work reveals something beyond the mere objectification of West and

East. The filmmaker and the painter share the same narrative strategies and compositional

mise-en-scène, which should be read in their totality since they “allow for an absorptive

visual experience that unfolds meaningfully in time and space” (Allan 3).

As with Ottomania, the Orient of Harem Suare mobilizes erotic spectacle in a

form acceptable for popular consumption. However, rather than reducing a film or a

painting to binary oppositions related to cultural dominance or geographic perspective,

they can be revisited in terms of historical interest and for their aesthetic quality. Often

subjected to similar criticisms during his long career, director Bernardo Bertolucci

conveyed his impatience with the search for meaning in every frame of a film since many

choices are dictated by the exigencies of production.136 Given this warning, and more

recent trends in the criticism of Gérôme’s oeuvre, perhaps the relationship of the artist and director should initially be stated in purely visual terms.

One of the versions of Gérôme’s Moorish Bath (Fig 1) reveals his harem interior to be a representation of “an imaginary place that combined characteristics of North

Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean with his own fantasies and inventions.”137 The

136 Bernardo Bertolucci reminded me once: “you are like an analyst who with a small light goes down deep to find a meaning but sometimes there are no specific meanings, only production necessities.” Therefore, my way of reading a painting, is a subjective choice. This was conveyed to me in an interview in 2006 at his apartment in via della Lungara (Rome). My interview to Bertolucci is in the appendix part of my Master Thesis on La Strategia del Ragno (1970). 137 The depiction of the Moorish Bath Gérôme represented are various. As reported by Ackerman in his monograph on the French painter, the Moorish Bath was the first in a series of bathers that eventually resulted in approximately 27 works, three of which share the title Moorish Bath. The one illustrated here is part of the RISD Museum collection in Providence, Rhode Island. 101

opulent mise-en-scène depicts the interior of a hamam, which can easily be identified as a

Turkish bath. Two women, one black and the other red-haired, occupy the center of the canvas. The red-headed woman is naked, sitting sideways with legs crossed. Her left arm is almost stretched on the wall. Her black attendant stands beside her, carrying a tas, a large metallic bowl designed for pouring warm water over the body.

The pictorial sheen of other details and colors are no less important, illustrating what could easily be taken for an ethnographic interest in representing cultures and local settings. The most impressive feature of the Moorish Bath turns out to be its visual harmony, the accumulated meticulousness of the details. For instance, the shimmering yellow of the attendant's headband, and the vibrant reds, bluish greens and the yellow gold of the silk robe against the tiles of the bath's wall, remain vibrant details which are reflected in the choices of color, the positioning of figures, and other details of the mise- en-scene in Harem Suare. As with the film’s layered narratives, each detail in the painting seems to tell the viewer a particular story, such as the lace necklace whose pale color contrasts with dark skin tones.138 Likewise, the accurate rendering of traditional

Iznik tile-work illustrates Gérôme’s photorealistic interest in spaces and places.139

https://www.mfa.org/collections/object/moorish-bath-32124 138 “[It] is a large and elaborate piece comprised of a series of circular coins and square pendants inter- spersed with red coral, a composition typical of Moroccan metalwork and jewelry design” (Childs 140). 139 In “Jean-Léon Gérôme: A Case Study of an Orientalist Painter,” Caroline William gives an overview of the “developments of the photography, and ... their effects upon painting” (121). 102

Figure 1. Reproduced with permission © 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All rights reserved.

Figure 2. Frame from Harem Suare (1999)

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As Caroline Williams points out, Gérôme reconstructs this anecdote “from memory, sketches, and photographs” (120), having as a result a work of art that embodies more than others a contrast between “romantic invention” and “realistic observation”

(117).140 The painter seems to posit himself as an invisible Western observer, a frequent

strategy of Orientalist narratives: for instance, the sharp difference between the white

body and the black body, seems also to amplify another aspect, that of the black female

body as savage, unashamed of display as the more demure white one appears to be.

In this context, the shot in the film that most resembles this version of a Moorish

Bath is the first scene set in the hamam (Fig.2). Notwithstanding Louis Giannetti

objection that “each movie image is enclosed by the frame of the screen, which defines

the world of the film” and that “[u]nlike the painter or still photographer, the filmmaker

doesn’t conceive of the framed compositions as a self-sufficient statement”, my analysis

here requires a “frozen moment” to demonstrate how Özpetek’s stylistic approach draws

inspiration from a specific artist (50-51). As a matter of fact, the filmmaker creates

compositions which invite being read as paintings.

While frames from a number of shots could be analyzed in the light of others

orientalist works, such as those of pastellist Jean-Ètienne Liotard, this one confirms that

the painter Özpetek had in mind was Gérôme’s. As in the painting the interior is of a

Turkish bath. The figures of five women are framed in a balanced, asymmetrical

140 As she remarks, the art of the French painter cannot be analyzed without taking into consideration its time, the commercial-industrial dynamism, and concurrent advances in photography. However, while she considers Gérôme's compositions “gorgeous, exotic and suggestive” which are intentionally “meant to Titillate” (134), she warns the viewer of “the apparent topographical accuracy ... which is deceiving [since] one cannot use his paintings to certify the architectural or urban environment of the city he saw it” (121). 104

composition. While four of them are clearly visible, another one on the right side is

hidden from view; the two foreground figures seize the attention.

The choice of using deep focus and wide-angle lenses keeping all of the different planes of the image in focus emphasizes its visual realism. “By using this layering technique, the director can guide the viewer’s eye from one distance to another.

Generally, the eye travels from a close range to a medium to a long [focal plane]”

(Giannetti 14).

The two women in the foreground, Safiye and Kara Nergis, are shown in a similar pose with respect to the characters in the painting, but in reverse. As in the subjects of the painting Safiye looks away, with only her profile visible as she faces downwards with her back to the viewer, while the servant’s face is hidden as she bends towards Safiye. The undressed women are both attended by servants, who are both partly swathed with a long peştemal, a large towel fringed at the edges, wound around the hips. The turbans on the

servants' heads are of the same tonality of the long towels they wear.141

The scene, disclosing interesting elements and details, seems to celebrate the

physical freedom of the chosen women in the Ottoman harem. The frame blow-up establishes the nature of Özpetek’s “borrowings” which are calculated to summon existing orientalist tropes that permit an invisible spectator to enter a forbidden space.

141 A further interesting detail seen in the frame-shot is represented by the bath clogs - in Turkish nalın - made of wooden, carved and embellished with mother of pearl inlay work. The nalın, part of the outfit utilized in a Turkish bath. Their high platform design was to keep feet above the water of the floor. An original version of the nalın is exposed at Çorum Archaeological Museum (Fig. 3). 105

The Play of Chronotopes in Harem Suare

In Harem Suare, the space of the city (Istanbul) re-created in front of the camera can be examined in terms of different kinds of spatiality, each with its own measures of time. Özpetek films in preserved spaces, in newer spaces that imitate those of the past, and entirely imaginary spaces.

Mikhail Bakhtin' s theory on the chronotope addresses the significance of these

varied choices when he coins the term: “[w]e will give the name chronotope (literally,

‘time-space’) to the intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are

artistically expressed in literature” (1981: 84). As Bakhtin claims, the categories of space

and time constitute a fundamental unity, as in the human perception of everyday reality.

This “intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships” denoted by the term

“chronotope” (84) is equal to the world implied by narrative texts, which relies on a

coherent combination of spatial and temporal indicators:

In the literary artistic chronotope, spatial and temporal indicators are fused into

one carefully thought-out, concrete whole. Time, as it were, thickens, takes on

flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and

responsive to the movements of time, plot and history. The intersection of axes

and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope. (84)

The Bakhtinian' s basic assumption follows the idea that a narrative text is not only

composed of speech acts and of a sequence of diegetic events, but also of the construction of a particular fictional space in which the actions transpire. According to Bart Keunen,

“a chronotope only becomes a chronotope when it shows something, when it brings to mind an image that can be observed by the mind’s eye. It would be fair to say that, in

106

Bakhtin’s view, a chronotope is the elementary unit of literary imagination” (35). In the case of a film, the effect produced on the observers provides “a richer representation of the narrative than text and thus more accurately conveys the intended information”

(Zupan and Babbage, 195).

We should also keep in mind Jacques Levy’s specifically film-related formulation in On Space in Cinema (2013). Asserting that any type of direct extrapolation is problematic, he writes,

space only exists in film as an accompaniment to the narrative ... This means that

... space is not a character, but merely a set. Hence, diegetic space does not play

the role of an environment – that is, as an active element comparable to that of the

characters – but is simply a context held at a distance. Its contribution to the plot

is simply that of a container that makes the action believable (an outdoor scene,

for example). At the best, it adds a particular symbolic dimension, such as a

recognizable landmark. (ix)

In Harem Suare, however, spatiality and temporality are intrinsic to the narrative, and thus exceptions to Levy’s interpretation which applies to most films. In this sense, the contrast of the representation that locates Istanbul precisely and summons other specific spaces, are not context merely used as a container for the action or as “an accompaniment to the narrative.” As a matter of fact, the space in the film contains a “recognizable landmark” (ix) that implies a particular meaning linked to an imagined construction: the chronotope of the harem, in fact, references a culture and its world-view. In Özpetek’s film, space can be seen through different levels of chronotopic representation:

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1) preserved space: created within the matrix of history, spaces that still exist: i.e

the Turkish bath (the Cağaloğlu Hamam); the theater of the Yıldız Palace; the Silahtarağa

Power Plant.

2) imitative space: born of aesthetic storytelling, reconstruction justified by

historical data and visible through visual representations (Jean-Léon Gérôme and Osman

Hamdi Bey’s paintings): i.e. the Imperial Harem

3) imagined space: created out of a pure schema of the imagination: i.e the train station (and all other reconstructed locations, some of them in theaters and outdoor settings in the film Studio of Cinecittà).

Let's take a closer look at some specific passages from the film where the chronotope serves as a prominent element of the story and not simply a location.

Preserved Space

The preserved space in Harem Suare represents “a past that we are still

experiencing,” According to Aldo Rossi (58), who describes them as “pathological

permanences, mummified presences in the city, [which] often tend to owe their

permanent character to their location within a specific context” (6, 58).

To analyze preserved spaces in Harem Suare we should consider the double process that characterizes the city as metaphor: that of the production of the city as a work of human artifice and the eroding passage of historical time.

Consider the Cağaloğlu Hamam. Walking through Ayasofya Meydanı toward

Cağaloğlu Hamamı Sokağı, one crosses that side of the city which despite the travails of tourism resist fossilization. Located in Eminönü, a quarter of Fatih, in the heart of the

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walled city first erected by Emperor Constantine. Constructed in 1741 during the reign of

Sultan Mahmud I, the hamam is the last one built during the Ottoman Empire and

combines different styles of Ottoman architecture. It was built as a ‘çifte hamam’ (double

bath) with separate sections for women and men.142

In Harem Suare, there are two sequences where the hamam is visualized. Both open with a “planimetric scheme” governing the interior. 143 In the film, the frames

“temporarily define ... the psychic territory of an image” (Giannetti 76), which in the case

of the two bath sequences refer to a space/territory confined by columns and walls and

distinguished by female bodies. As David Bordwell observes of such planimetric

schemes this one is “well-suited to a “painterly” or strongly pictorial approach to cinema.

In both sequences, two characters seem to play a peculiar part: the servant Kara Nergis

who helps Safiye, and the eunuch Nadir, who observes them secretively from behind a

grid.

The first look at the hamam takes place in the first half of Harem Suare when

Safiye, who is invited to meet the Sultan, is subjected to a ritual purification of the body.

The sequence shows an important aspect of Ottoman Muslims, that of the bath as a space

of recurrent social uses or reserved for occasional rites of passage.144 The camera, in

both the sequences, functions as an intruder, framing the large marble room with the

142 The women’s section entrance is located on a side street called Hamam, while the men’s entrance - characterized by two marble columns with classic stalactite capitals on both side - is located on the main road. 143 David Bordwell in “Shot-consciousness” January 16, 2007 http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2007/01/16/shot-consciousness/ 144 As a matter of fact, the gathering of women in the Turkish bath shows the importance of sharing pri- vate moments. “In Ottoman Empire” - as stressed by Karatosun and Nur Baz - while “men could enjoy to- gether ... women could not do that easily. Women’s entertainment places were more limited than of men’s. In this context, Turkish baths were important socializing and entertainment places for women” (88). 109

presence of young women, some naked, other wrapped in flat-woven towels, walking

around. While the first sequence is accompanied by background music, in the second

splashing of water and those made by unseen objects enrich the soundtrack. The

predominance of visuality upon the sound can be seen as an attitude to communicate

mostly through images. In these specific sequences sounds seem to be an "added value"

(Chion 5) that “enriches a given image so as to create the definitive impression ... that

this information or expression 'naturally' comes from what is seen, and is already

contained in the image itself” (5).

Opening with an establishing shot, the second sequence takes place near the midpoint of Harem Suare. Here Safiye is framed from the back. She lays on a massive marble platform (göbek taşı) which occupies the center space of the room. Various

peştemal -- Turkish bath towels -- are spread out on its marble surface. While some

women, together with Gülfidan, exit the frame, the black servant Kara Nergis approaches

Safiye who is seated on the marble platform. A smooth and slow panning shot frames the

two women, with the servant ready to scrub and massage the naked Safiye. The smooth

circular movement of the camera seems to allow the audience to observe the space and

the action of Kara Nergis in detail, and it elicits the gaze not only of the spectator but also

of Nadir.

The representation of the hamam in Harem Suare can be seen as a monolithic entity rooted and fixed over time, or an entity that becomes part of a collective memory, the “soul of the city” (Rossi 130). What is seen by our memory as an entity frozen in time is subject to various dynamics. Furthermore, the camera helps to create patterns of meaning by imbuing the objects and spaces framed with meaning.

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The Turkish baths, as the other preserved spaces in Harem Suare, serve as a

synecdoche for the city. Through them, Istanbul becomes the place where memory

overshadows history.

Imitative Space

Imitative space bears a symbolic value, because “architecture and space are used

to convey condensed meanings affiliated with particular symbolic forms in the cultural

history of humankind” (Alexander 33), their result is the imitative space that bears a

symbolic value.

The most emotionally-charged of these spaces is the Imperial Harem. The film

story is set at the beginning of 1900 in a space that mimics the Yıldız palace, which

historically was the seat of the Ottoman government and the residence of Sultan

Abdulhamid II until 1909. There are very few scenes where the spectator could see the

interior of the palace. While the film starts with a real location -- the preserved space of

the Yıldız Palace145 -- the rest of the Sultan’s palace is part of a constructed set. The

camera captures the place only partially. The first gaze by the intruder-spectator at the

reconstructed interior of the Yıldız Palace takes place in the first five minutes of the film

soon after we hear excerpts of Verdi’s grand opera about a “fallen woman,” “La

Traviata,”146 which is performed in the theater. A bird’s-eye shot frames colorfully

dressed women entering a vast salon. There are no establishing shots of the exterior,

which as a real location is walled and situated atop a hill facing the Bosphorus, and

145 It was built under the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1899. 146 At the beginning of the film the final scene of Verdi's “La traviata,” is performed; it is acted for the sultan's delight who prefers to change the outcome of the opera, giving to it an imaginative happy end. 111

consisting of three main courtyards. None of these is captured by the camera, which

never leaves the interior of the palace. The labyrinthine interior settings are partially

disrupted by doors, walls, curtains, and veils. Most of the time characters are framed in

medium shot and close up (walking through hallways, entering rooms, and performing

daily actions). Shallow focus and dark lighting characterize most of the scenes of the

interiors.

Imagined Space

At times Özpetek’s vision necessitates pure invention. Imagined spaces harness a major effort of technology and imaginative construction that creates sets that have no

immediate physical referent. Of these spaces, perhaps the most meaningful is the train

station café. The spectator is introduced to this place for the first time at the beginning of

the film, before the title sequence appears on its blue walls. Apparently, the

representation of this space is very simple: an Italian café in a 1950’s setting, sometimes accompanied by background Italian melancholic music.147 However, its narrative value

cannot be doubted. This location is repeatedly inserted into the linear structure of the

story. Nothing seems to change around that space, from where the train is never seen, its

arrival and departure signaled by whistles and sound effects. Neverthless, this anonymous

location contains multiple layers of meaning: specific objects, such as Anita’s suitcase,

convey concepts such as the journeying, transitioning between places and cultures that

indicate liminality, something either growing or declining, arriving or departing. This

147 Specifically, in the scene where the old Safiye mets for the first time Anita, a song by Carla Boni “Viale d’Autunno” (1953) is played. With this song, the singer won the Festival della Canzone Italiana. 112

unnamed locus represents a place of transition. A metonymy of intersecting lives, like

those of Anita and the old Safiye, it carries many stories.

The opening and closing shots of the film in the empty train station also reinforce

the elements of narrative symmetry. In the opening scene, there are two empty glasses and two small plates on a table. In the final scene, the same table also accommodates those three apples whose symbolism we have explained: one for the filmmaker, one for the spectator, and one for the heroes of our tale. Reminiscent of Scheherazade’s powers

of storytelling, it is a truly fitting conclusion to this tale.

Istanbul: Between Fog and Memory

The beauty of a landscape

resides in its melancholy

- Ahmet Rasim148

The presiding chronotope which accommodates most of the story is a majestic

Imperial city whose actual geography must be imagined. The fog-shrouded Istanbul is

portrayed less as an urban metropolis, or the focal point of many histories, and more as a

Calvinoesque vessel that contains and is defined by the flow of memory (Bruno 2014).

This manifestation of imagined locality remains particularly interesting since

Istanbul does not gain substance literally or figuratively but discursively. How can we

understand Istanbul if we cannot stand understand what it is? In The Architecture of the

City (1982), Aldo Rossi suggests that each city unfolds into several other cities, and each

148 In Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City. Ahmet Rasim was a journalist and writer born in Istanbul. 113

manufatto of human accomplishment contained in it, has its own story, and its own

significance. These analogous cities take shape from repertoires of associations that

include the collective memories of history, personalized remembrances of the past, and

subjective fluctuations of the wanderer within the urban maze. The city-space is seen by

the Italian architect as a metaphor of a giant man-made house. In the case of Harem

Suare the city, only shown through an aural representation, is presented as a figure of

opacity. Istanbul is not simply a setting, but more importantly, and perhaps inadvertently,

it redefines the filmmaker himself. Özpetek's visual representation can be seen as a

profoundly melancholy meditation of a past that can be evoked but that never was, is, or

can be. The filmmaker's feeling of nostalgia for a lost time seems akin to that of the old

Safiye in the train station café.

Laura Rascaroli remarks that “(t)he city, as a hub of power ... and culture, and as

major catalyst for events, is a strong historical subject. In the city, history is visibly

spatialised through architectural form, urban planning, ... and, of course, monuments and

commemorative sites.”149 Rascaroli’s description perfectly fits for Özpetek’s first feature

film The Turkish Bath (1997), where Istanbul is presented and shown by the filmmaker

“as an ancient world in peril” (29), with the intention of selectively visualizing only one

aspect of a culture, not one simply undergoing a change but it is disappearing.150 Instead, in Harem Suare the sense of loss is more deeply connected to time than to space, for here the city has no spatial presence as architectural form or urban design; it is neither

149 The post “Re/Framing the City of Cinema,”is part of a Roundtable discussion on “The Essay Film and The City.” https://www.mediapolisjournal.com/2018/10/re-framing-the-city-of-cinema/ 150 “In practice, Özpetek does not so much contrast two sides of Turkishness in Hamam, but rather deletes the signs of change: This is evident in the film’s visual depiction of Istanbul, which testifies to the director’s selective use of the city’s architecture. Although skyscrapers are visible through the windows of the developer’s office, their relegation to the film’s narrative and visual margins” (29-30). 114

included nor excluded. Istanbul is there, somewhere, the audience has the perception of

it, but it is never given visual definition. A scene towards the end of the film captures

sensation that all that was once substantial will disappear into the mist of time: Safiye

shrouded in the fog, is walking through the city with Nadir. A voice-over (the old Safiye) claims “I dared not look around. I felt Istanbul staring at me.” The feeling Safiye is experiencing is not the fear that “come[s] from outside,” but “here fear is being itself.

Where can one flee … In what shelter can one take refuge? Space is nothing but a

“horrible outside-inside” (Bachelard 218). Consequently, both the inside (the dismantled harem which does not represent the secure shelter anymore) and the outside (the city) embody the unknown.

The concept of spatiality we have seen in Harem Suare is manifested through a

technique underlined by Richard Coyne (2017) in “Melancholy Urbanism.” The contrast

between light and dark sculpts space in a way that heightens its evocative power, and

whose representation of interiors signifies interiority – the primacy of the characters’

inner lives. In Özpetek’s there is no depth of field and wide horizons to foster a sense of

melancholy, as Coyne prescribes. His film communicates this effect through absence and

fog.

As all the narrative features of Harem Suare attest, we may lose entire layers of

meaning if we fail to attend to the question of spatial representation. We have seen the

shifting of history with the figure of Safiye sultan from the sixteenth century to the

twentieth century. This temporal slippage may indicate the necessity of reconstructing

something as fragile as a sense of identity and to capture a lost time. The culturally

significant setting of the story, finally, the city of Istanbul as absence/presence, links

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more general private conflicts to a particular historical moment: the end of an epoch as

reflected in individual lives.

In Harem Suare, the mise-en-scène is frequently based on settings familiar to

Özpetek, so that his characters inhabit intensely particular spaces: the ambience is

saturated with multiple meanings and feelings. While the setting appears to conform to

orientalist tenets for a western audience,151 its obvious “constructedness” invites further

and different ascriptions of meaning, including the feeling of nostalgia that De Amicis

describes: “più che per la bellezza, Costantinopoli è una città, che non si può abitare un

certo tempo, senza ricordarla poi con un sentimento di nostalgia” (76).152 Such

perceptions of nostalgia can be considered as “a romance with one’s own fantasy”

according to Svetlana Boym (2001: xiii). This is what is called “reflective nostalgia”

(1994: 41) which emphasizes the memory of the past. The emphasis is not on rebuilding

the lost spaces of the past, a “restorative nostalgia,” but instead a “reflective nostalgia

[that] dwells in algia, in longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance” (41), a concept that can be associated with hüzün, a Turkish word which denotes a feeling of deep spiritual loss but also a hopeful way of looking at life itself. It is “that feeling

151 As Áine O'Healy notes, “Turkey as it emerges in Hamam: il bagno turco and Harem Suare, is a site of powerful if enigmatic allure, redolent with the promise of intense sensual pleasure. Many of the narrative and pictorial references embedded in these two films … are, in fact, linked to timeworn Orientalist fantasies, feeding into conventional Western constructs of the East as more enticing and sexually seductive space than that of Western modernity,” (486). 152 “[P]er questo gli europei l’ amano ardentemente e vi mettono radici profonde; ed e giusto in questo senso il chiamarla come i turchi “la fata dai mille amanti” o dire col loro proverbio che chi ha bevuto dell’acqua di Top-hané - non c’è più rimedio, - è innamorato per la vita;” “more than for the beauty, Constantinople is a city that can not be inhabited for some time, without remembering it with a feeling of nostalgia; this is why Europeans love it ardently and put deep roots in it; and it is right in this sense to call it as the Turks "the fairy of a thousand lovers" or to say with their proverb that for those who drank the water of Tophané - there is no more remedy, - she/he is in love for life” (76). 116

between sadness and nostalgia” (Özpetek 12) that the narrator, in Rosso Istanbul,

describes while looking at a postcard that belonged to his father:

Nella cartolina di mio padre, Istanbul è ritratta in bianco e nero. Istanbul la città

della malinconia, anzi dell’huzün, quel sentimento a metà fra la tristezza e la

nostalgia. Sarà per i palazzi abbandonati che si stanno sgretolando; o per le yali, le

antiche case di legno costruite sui pontili e affacciate sull’acqua del Bosforo ...

Hüzün sono le sere piovose d’inverno, e i gabbiani in certe albe tristi. (12)153

By the same token, the Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul: Memories and the

City, describes that feeling which well depicts the veiled city in Harem Suare: “to feel

this hüzün is to see the scenes, evoke the memories, in which the city itself becomes the

very illustration, the very essence of hüzun” (84). Like Pamuk, Özpetek has a complex

and perhaps contradictory relationship with his city, Istanbul. In it, he is both “a local,

European, and Westernizer” and “a wanderer in a fictitious, fantastic location”

(Helvacıoğlu 164). The different viewpoints that the sentiment foster causes him to modify “the personal … cultural, and psychological attributes of melancholy from grief, loss, defeat, and resignation into instants ... moments of rapture ‘where melancholy mixes

with joy,’ and timeless, spaceless moments in one's life that defy any representation (61,

164).154

The spatial forms seen in the film -- the preserved, the imitative and the

153 “In my father's postcard, Istanbul is portrayed in black and white. Istanbul is the city of melancholy, indeed of the 'huzün, that feeling halfway between sadness and nostalgia. It will be for the abandoned buildings that are crumbling; or for the yali, the old wooden houses built on the piers and overlooking the water of the Bosphorus ... the rainy evenings in winter, and the seagulls in some sad dawns” (12). 154 In "Melancholy and Hüzün in Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul," (2013), Banu Helvacıoğlu analyzes Orhan Pamuk’s writing through the concept of hüzün in different contexts. I adopted Helvacıoğlu's view to describe Özpetek's deep relationship with Istanbul. 117

imagined -- represent not only the emblematization of a national-oriental narrative but also the projections of Western imagination. Özpetek reintroduces elements of history or fictionalized history as a nostalgia for narrative itself. Istanbul's chronotopical representation bears meanings in Özpetek’s life, Hence, history becomes analogous to a skeleton whose condition serves as a measure of time and, in turn, is measured by time. It is this skeleton that carries the imprintings of the actions that take place in a city denied to the spectators’ vision. Istanbul's chronotopic elaboration grow out of the meanings it has had in Özpetek’s transnational life precisely because it "tends to emphasize its boundlessness and timelessness by cathecting it to the privileged sites of ... monument, and home, and the retrospective narratives of longing, nostalgia, fetishism, and return”

(Naficy 187).

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CHAPTER 2: a PAIR OF JEANS, and a WEDDING DRESS

Laura Halilovic: Io rom romantica155

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Bebe in Her Eden’

EXT. WILD GARDEN – DAY – ESTABLISHING SHOT

Two subjects (not entirely visible) are framed by a long shot. The two

characters, a girl whose name is Gioia (played by Claudia Ruza Djordjevic)

and her grandmother, nicknamed Bebe (Zema Hamidovic) are on the right side

of the frame which is visually split by a tree trunk.

A slow pan shot pivots right to left, centering the two characters in the frame.

CUT TO to a two-shot. The old lady wears a long red skirt, a picturesque shawl

wrapped around her shoulders, and a traditional diklo (head scarf) that covers

her head. Gioia has dark long hair, jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt. The two char-

acters move slowly toward the camera for a few seconds.

Dialogue in Romani, subtitled in Italian, between the young and the old

woman. 156 Bebe shows Gioia various species of leaves, explaining the

therapeutic advantages of using leaves and the natural remedy to cure diseases,

traditional knowledge transmitted generationally.

155 The film is also known with the title Scent of Peaches. 156 The Romani language takes on multiple variations, in combination with the local tongue. For further information: Yaron Matras, Romani: A Linguistic Introduction, Cambridge UP, 2004. 119

CUT TO a close-up of a white t-shirt with flowers and a colorful shawl, a

necklace, a bracelet, a ring, a branch of leaves, and a plastic bag. Then a

fast-moving hand-held camera follows Gioia’s movements for a few seconds.

CLOSE-UP of her hands collecting leaves.

CUT TO to a two-shot with both characters centered in the frame.

Their faces are not visible. Medium-long shot of Gioia and her grandmother,

now entirely visible, walking slowly through what looks like an uncultivated

garden filled with small trees and rampant vegetation. Both characters are

framed on the right of the frame.

CUT TO a close up of Gioia gathering the leaves, followed by a medium close-

up from a different angle. Bebe occupied the center of the frame and Gioia at

one edge of it. The last short dialogue of the sequence refers to “l’erba per i

pensieri” (“herb for thoughts”), which the girl is seeking. There is an inserted

close-up of sandals and sneakers.

CUT TO a medium close-up of both women, with Gioia exiting on the left of

the frame in silence.

The scene technically described is from Laura Halilovic’s first feature film Io rom romantica (2014).157 The film is a Serbian-Italian co-production (Wildside) in collaboration with Rai Cinema and distributed by Good Films and Rai Cinema. As reported in the opening titles, it is recognized as a film of cultural interest which is

157 Good Films http://www.goodfilms.it. Summer Preview, Giffoni Film Festival 2014. The screenplay has been written by a well-known Italian screenwriter, Valia Santella. 120

produced with the financial contribution of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism.158

Directed by a Romani filmmaker, the film is explicitly semi-autobiographical.159

Just like Gioia, the main character of the film, Laura Halilovic was born in Turin to a family originally from Bosnia Herzegovina who arrived in Italy during the upheavals of the 80s, but reportedly she still awaits Italian citizenship.160 Shot in Italy with an almost entirely Romani cast, the film centers on the aspirations of its protagonist, but is also a portrait of a Romani family in Italian society.161 The presence of a Romani community in the Italian peninsula is not a new phenomenon, but “Roma and Sinti have been continuously present in the Italian peninsula since at least the 1400s” (Marinaro and

158 "Film riconosciuto di interesse culturale realizzato con il contributo economico del Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo.” As reported on the Website of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the film also obtained the attribution of Film D’Essai http://www.cinema.beniculturali.it/filmEs- sai/31744/80/film-d-essai 159 Interview by Angela Cotticelli, Il Fatto Quotidiano, 3 August 2014. 160 The last article that reports this information: Stefania Ulivi on Il Corriere della Sera (July 28, 2014). 161In this dissertation, the use of the term “gypsy” will be avoided. It will be used only when it occurs in a quotation. For an insightful explanation, see We are the Romani people (2002) by Ian Hancock, a pioneering Romani scholar, and The Romani Gypsies (2014) by Yaron Matras. Margareta Matache, a Romani activist, scholar and the director of the Roma Program at Harvard FXB (Center for Health and Human Rights) has drawn up a list of “ten things Gadje scholars can do: “one is “Do not reinforce the T-word [Tsigan] or the Gypsy terminology and similar racial slurs when generally talking about the global Roma diaspora or about the Roma in a particular country where those slurs carry historical weight.” “The T-word holds heavy historical weight, along with its illegal and offensive nature. The Tsigan category connoted “slave” for 500 years. There has been evidence that Romani leaders have demanded to replace the name Tsigani with Roma since 1919 and there have been political efforts to officially recognize Roma as the umbrella term for Romani groups across the world since 1971 and even prior to that. Furthermore, the use of Gypsy as the umbrella term for Roma aims to be inclusive of all those who fit into the imaginary notion of a Gypsy, regardless of whether they embrace that identity or not. Yet, Gypsy is a racialized and fixed construction that has fed Roma oppression through their steady representation as thieves, uneducated, nomads, and uncivilized. This approach institutionalizes “the traditional image of a fictional ‘Gypsy’ by taking it as the basis for a political category of a minority people in Europe.” As she asserts, academia has contributed in the construction of the Gypsy identity: “it can be assumed that by behaving in ‘anti-social’ way, as perceived by the Gadje, every person can be turned into a Gypsy – regardless of their ethnic membership. And so, the Gypsy identity is an outside view, and the boundaries between “us” (Gadje) and “them” (Roma) reflect essentially a superior-inferior hierarchy.” In “Dear Gadjo (non-Romani) Scholars…”, June 19, 2017. https://fxb.harvard.edu/2017/06/19/dear-gadje-non-romani- scholars/ 121

Sigona 583) and for this reason they must be considered an integral part of Italian culture.

However, their presence has also created pervasive stereotypes which often are the result

of non-knowledge. For instance, the use of the "heteronym ‘zingari’ has always being

associated to a negative stereotype of an entire community.162 The prejudice against the

Roma in Italy is deeply rooted:

The description of Roma as ‘nomads’ is not only used in the service of

segregating Roma, but also in order to reinforce the popular idea that Roma are

not Italians and do not ‘belong’ to Italy. As such, the existence of local

administrative offices for ‘Nomads and Non-Europeans’ indicates that Roma are

commonly perceived as foreigners in the eyes of the Italian authorities …

Prejudices and stereotypes concerning Roma are to be found across the entire

political spectrum. (Sigona 746)

In analyzing the way cultural concepts are employed in Italy, Nando Sigona points out

that, like other migrants, Romani people who arrived in Italy escaping war and

persecution, are undocumented; they have no legal permits, or they have “short-term leave to remain on humanitarian grounds [or] an exemption from expulsion which is difficult to renew" (745). Although it is an international concern, “there is still very little accurate and in-depth information available to international scholars about the situations of Italy’s Roma and Sinti” (Sigona 745).

162 As Sigona explains, an entire community which is composed by a number of groups and subgroups, such Roma, Sinti and Camminanti, and “among these main components, there is a further distinction on legal grounds, has to be made between those with and those without Italian citizenship. Roma and Sinti began to settle in Italy in the fifteenth century: the Sinti reached the centre-north of Italy overland from the Balkan region, and the Roma crossed the Adriatic Sea from the south, settling in the southern part of the country … The origin of the Camminanti is unclear; their community is historically located in Sicily and travels throughout the whole of Italy for part of the year.” (744) 122

This background may help us understand the day-to-day difficulties that Gioia and her family experience as many other Romani families do in addition to the complex dynamics of the Romani culture that Gioia as a young Romani woman needs to challenge.

The Story163

The film centers on Gioia, a young Romani woman who has grown up within the

close-knit of Romani community but is well-acculturated to Italian life. She resides with

her family in a small apartment in Falchera, a distant suburb of Turin, the capital of the

province of Piedmont in Northwest Italy. Her father, Armando, is perturbed because his

eighteen-year-old daughter remains unmarried, and accuses her of behaving like a

gadje164 (Fonseca 7). Gioia's unorthodox behavior diminishes the family’s standing in

the Roma community and undermines her father's authority. While some in the Roma

community deem Gioia of gadjikano-like behavior, for most of the Italians we see in the

film she remains only a “zingara” (itself a variant of Tzigane).

Like many Romani-born Italians, she remains in the language of diplomacy, sans

papiers or “undocumented”. Due to incomprehensible bureaucratic reasons, she cannot

obtain Italian citizenship. Aware of her heritage but naturally adventurous and open to

new experiences, Gioia finds herself at odds with both communities, and despite her

obstinate non-conformity, she seems to have no aspirations that would guide her to a

better future. Her only close friends are Morena, whose freedom impresses her (“non è

163 Information kindly received from the Good Films Distribution, who sent the Film press book to me. 164 Many spellings have been adopted, including gadźo, gaujo, gadjo, gorgi for non-Romani “outsiders.” See Ian Hancock (2002, xxii). 123

Rom come me, ma è libera, libera come vorrei essere io”)165 and Alessandro (Marco

Bocci), an auto-mechanic, and travel lover who introduces Gioia to an unsuccessful director. Morena persuades her to participate in a casting call for a television commercial.

Initially, her only goal is to earn some money, but once on the set, she is entranced by the atmosphere and decides to become a filmmaker, a goal she begins to pursue with single-minded determination. In the meantime, her parents try to find a way to get her together with Elvis, the son of an old friend of Armando. It turns out that like Gioia, he wants to be free of the constraints imposed by Romani traditions, playing in a band while working by day in a factory.

The intricate problem of charting her own future while preserving the love of her family becomes the central conflict of the film, and her growth as an individual allows her in the end to heed her parents' advice without abandoning her dreams. The final sequence shows Gioia getting engaged to Elvis who encourages her ambitions. The film ends with a homage to Woody Allen, another “outsider” to two communities whose

“honest” films fill her with enthusiasm. This last sequence mirrors an iconic scene filmed on 58th street in Manhattan, with Armando and Gioia sitting on a bench overlooking a

Falchera neighborhood. Indeed, the bench can be considered as a metaphor for Gioia: the world can have a place for them too. 166

Generational Knowledge

The scene in the garden occurs early in the film, after Gioia’s first dispute with her father because of her trousers, preceding the scene in which her parents discuss the

165 “[She] is not Romani like me, but she is free, free like I want to be.” 166 In Manhattan, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton greet the dawn from a bench overlooking the Queensboro Bridge. 124

prospects of finding a good spouse for her. It is shot in a secluded landscape overflowing with lush vegetation, a bucolic setting that emphasizes the special knowledge passed down by women elders to younger women. The scene defines the complexities of both their situations, in that it epitomizes the nomadic way of life that Bebe has been obliged to abandon and Gioia has never known. Bebe is associated with open-air settings. Like traditional Romani, she feels discomfort when hemmed in by walls and ceilings, and she accepts it only with the greatest reluctance. Bebe’s rebellion is described in Isabel

Fonseca’s much-praised if melancholy account of life among various Romani communities, Bury Me Standing (1985). In her opening chapter, she presents Papusza, legendary Romani composer and poet. Papusza, which means doll, is the nickname accorded to the diminutive Bronislawa Wajs (1908-1987). Her lyrics may describe

Bebe’s plea, when they declare: “No one understands me, / Only the forest and the river. /

That of which I speak / Has all, all passed away, / Everything has gone with it - / And those years of youth” (qtd. in Fonseca 8).

Defying the customs of her generation, Papusza learned how to read and write by trading illicitly obtained food for lessons: “When the kumpania stopped for more than a day or two ... she would bring to a likely villager a stolen chicken in exchange for lessons. For more chickens she acquired books, a secret library beneath the harps [her family played]” (Fonseca 3-4). In this sense, while Papusza’s words reflect Bebe’s sense of loss, her fate is what Gioia fights. “[A] doll, mute and discarded” (9), Papusza was ostracized by the Romani who regarded her as one of the agents who brought about legislation to enforce their settlement, and so was considered “a culprit [who wanted] to cancel their traditional way of life” (8). Like Papusza, Gioia appears to act disrespectfully

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against her family’s traditions because she behaves like a gadjo. “Si veste come i gagè, parla come i gage,” says her frustrated father who at one point calls her a ‘curse’: “Tu sei una maledizione.”167

In spite of these generational differences and their contrasting outlook, the Edeni scene represents a haven for both women, where they do not feel unprotected. For the old lady, it is a symbol of freedom, far from an enclosed dwelling. It is her possibility to return ‘home’, to the life of the “wandering Gypsies / [that] has long passed” (Fonseca 4).

From a technical point of view, “Bebe in Her Eden” does not contain revolutionary elements, but she has a particularly deft touch for emphasizing telling details, conveying her vision through uncomplicated cinematographic precision. For instance, Halilovic pays particular attention to the way she frames the landscape, and the subjects. She positions both characters at frame’s edge, here making them elements of a more encompassing mise-en-scène, witnesses as well as characters, part of a greater wholeness. This can solicit two possible readings: on one hand, this de-centering at a crucial moment can be seen as a metaphor for a marginalized ethnic group; on the other hand, it can be a way to show the larger picture indicating the place this community occupies in a special, bucolic world. Elsewhere treated as a burden by those around her, the old woman here towers in her element and displays her immense store of knowledge.

She uses gentle affection to communicate her secrets to a girl treated as an annoyance by her parents. As a chronotope, the garden seems to be frozen in time and space, a mindscape of creative nostalgia. It enables different generations to interact and it

“provides a set of considerations on the meaning of belonging to a space and by

167 These phrases can be translated as “She dresses like gadje, speaks like a gadje;” “You are a curse.” 126

extension to a culture” (Fiore 2). Yet, the true appreciation of this garden-space is confined to a spiritual level which can be achieved only by someone who believes her to be a part of and relies on nature. Thus, her grandmother needs to introduce her granddaughter to that space not only to make sure that her knowledge is preserved but also because Gioia is external to that world by someone who comprehends the garden and its secrets. Therefore, the natural setting and Bebe can be seen as part of Gioia's education, the garden being the only space in which a Romani tradition can be reenacted, where Gioia finds knowledge and Bebe serves as a medium to transmit that knowledge.

Significantly, this is not a garden enclosed by walls or the barriers that seem to encapsulate the world of the gadjikano. Its only boundaries are the imaginary ones that make it part of a secret world to which Goia must be initiated.

In Io rom romantica, we see that two staples of Romani culture - the centrality of nature, and the education of the road that have been undermined by increasing constrictions and restrictions placed on living a traditional Romani life.168 This process has been underway for nearly three generations, and has inevitably led to changes in lifestyle, self-perception, and produced an increasingly hybridized sense of identity.

Being aware of all these changes and challenges, the filmmaker includes in the nostalgic sequence crucial aspects of the Romani community, such as the importance of oral tradition, the legacy that adheres to traditional ways as personified by Bebe, and the potential for future innovation embodied in Gioia.

168 According to Levinson et al. “nomadism covers an emotional as well as a physical landscape. It represents freedom from the official world, sometimes perceived as lawlessness and deviancy. The ‘free spirit’ of the Gypsy is central to the romantic stereotype, and this is associated with nomadism, particularly the wandering that takes place in the countryside. The connotations are with campfires, dance, song, and so on, and it has been sometimes difficult to move beyond this during the course of this study, as participants themselves often seem to be ‘buying into’ that romanticized stereotype” (2004:172-73). 127

Nomadism vs. Sedentarism

Among her community, Bebe is the only person who does not seem to accept the sedentary life chosen by Gioia’s family. She also does not want to follow the laws of a nation that does not recognize the Roma as its citizens. As the audience will discover, the old woman repeatedly refuses to discard her nomadic life to follow the gadje’s lifestyle.169 For Bebe, “[m]ovement alone appears to be an identity marker” (Levinson et al. 712). She consistently feels that giving up a wandering way of life implies forgetting

Romani tradition and language, turning her people nto gadjes. She escapes back to nature to her camp, that has been dismantled. Living in a confined space creates an irrational fear and a sense of suffering for Bebe: “voglio essere libera … Non c’è aria, non c’è vento … Voglio stare vicino alle montagne.”170 Bebe’s family lives in an apartment that is one floor beneath where gadjes live. So, when Bebe goes there, she feels that there is no sky over her head, but only the trampling of the gadje’s feet: “pure qui ci mettono i piedi in testa i gagè!”171 Only at the end, does she surrender and moves into Gioia’s apartment. Even there she resists conformity: a brief night-time panning shot shows

Bebe sleeping on the balcony. Symbolically, this is a sort of compromise between closed space (physical unease for the old woman) and open air (true nature, true self). As

169 According to Levinson et al., “a parallel bifurcation can be found in attitudes among Gypsies toward sedentarism. Thus, McVeigh (1997) noted that nomadism is not merely a distinguishing characteristic for those purporting to be Roma but is central to a sense of identity for many." (706). 170 “I want to be free … there is no air, no wind … I want to stay close to the mountains.” 171 “Even here the gadje put their feet on our heads!” During a sequence in which the woman needs to use the toilette, she hears sounds and steps coming from the upper apartment: “Who is knocking from above? (Chi è che sta bussando da sopra?)” “There are gadjos (Sopra ci stanno i gagè)” answers her daughter.” 128

reported by Halilovic in an interview, “I rom amano vivere liberi e non riescono a stare

chiusi in una casa.”172

Bebe’s feelings towards the gadje are better understood when we specifically

consider Hancock’s words “[t]he two sides [Romani and gadje] are just one manifestation

of the overall duality which characterizes the Romani world view: Rom and gadzó, God

and the devil, purity and defilement, luck and misfortune, male and female” (1997: 54).

Halilovic’s film shows that there is no interaction between Romani people and the non-Romani of older generations. In Io rom romantica, Romanies and Italians do not share any common space, even if they live in adjacent apartments.

In this sense, it seems that the space occupied by native Italians is the one Naficy defines the “profane space-time of culture and civilization” (2001:156), which contrasts

with the “uncontaminated spirituality” (156) of the sacred space-time for instance

occupied by Bebe in the wild garden. Furthermore, in his observations on space carved

out by imperial activity, Edward Said claims that it represents “an act of geographical violence through which virtually every space in the world is explored, charted, and finally brought under control” (1994: 225). Said's analysis can be applied to the Romani, who in the film have been deprived of their space, “our space … in the peripheries has been usurped ... It is therefore necessary to seek out, to map, to invent, or to discover, a third nature, which is not pristine and prehistorical” (1994: 226).

Generally speaking, a key feature in Io rom romantica is the rewriting of time and space from the perspective of the other. As a matter of fact, the garden somehow has the function of reinstating a relationship between the nature and the Romani community

172 “Romani love to live free and they do not desire to stay indoors.” Centro Nazionale di Documentazione e Analisi per l’infanzia e l’adolescenza “Io rom romantica,” la strada per un sogno 129

through Bebe despite her attachment to an impossible, pre-territorial past. The old woman seeks nomadism and embodies the nostalgic and fictionalized images of the Romani as historical wanderers. In a study on Romanies in the Soviet Union, Volha Bartash gives an insightful overview of her research about nomadic lifestyle,

Studies of former nomads show that their level of mobility might depend on the

factors that led to sedentarisation. If the transition was coerced, for example, by

military, political, or other means, a former nomadic group is likely to resume

mobility as soon as this external factor disappears. By contrast, the group that

faces climate or socio-economic change may settle voluntarily because of the

advantages they see in a sedentary lifestyle. (24)

In the light of Bartash’s ideas, Bebe’s nostalgia for nomadism is built upon a fictionalized image since the Roma group of she is a member of has already chosen a settled existence. While traveling is part of the Romani history, and consequently, the idea of a stable place does not seem to be part of their life, the Roma linguist Ian

Hancock explains why this “stereotype of the ‘traveling gypsy’” (2002:101) needs to be explained:

A distinction must be made between traveling on a journey, with a purpose, and

traveling because local laws in an area forbid one to stop and therefore leave no

choice. Once reaching Europe, our ancestors soon become subject to legislation

… that kept them on the move. That being the case, ways of making a living had

to be developed which were portable and which did not require fixed, heavy

equipment. (2002: 101)

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Hancock concludes this aspect of his argument with the statement that “that there

is no ‘genetic’ disposition to travel; it is solely the result of circumstances” (101). As in

many cultures, traditional, even ancient practices are treated with reverence, which is

how the film portrays Bebe, as a repository of a vanishing past whih which, like the open,

uncontaminated places of the earth, have largely vanished.

Spaces: Freedom vs. Constraints

Space has a conceptual dimension in this movie, as in many other punctuated

ones. In discussing the role of entrances and exits, Arnold Aronson turns to the idea of

simultaneity in Greek tragedy, where there is a “potential of drama taking place ‘inside’

and ‘outside’” (331). We can extend this concept to Io rom romantica, in that it draws a

clear distinction between imagined spaces and adopted spaces. While in general one’s

family home grants protection against the negative forces of the outside world, in the case

of Gioia it is the opposite: for her the outside represents the possibility of self-discovery, and this outweighs the protection afforded by her own immediate environment. However,

as Bachelard asserts, while the inside and outside is based on a dialectics of division, they

depend upon one another (215). For the sake of preserving her dreams she needs to

become conversant with the technoscapes and ethnoscapes of the world outside, but she

also needs the motivating conflict of dwelling, however unwillingly, inside the confines

of her house, which makes her reflect upon her sense of ethnic identity.

While the apartment where Gioia lives can be categorized an adopted space, the

film set where she finds a temporary job as a crew member, a city square can be an

imagined space par excellence. It represents her adventure, her “escapades of

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imagination” (Bachelard 215). A further imagined space is the wild garden. For both

Gioia and her grandmother it embodies the nomadic space of the Romani past, a magical microcosm. The garden-space also defines spatial boundaries, because it somehow appears to be Roma domain while, to a large extent, the public space within the film is not readily accessible to the Romani community.

The dialectical tension between outside and inside also generates the fear of trespassing and consequently the construction of a defensive space. In the film, although the Romani community shares a space with Italians in the suburb of Falchera, we see contact between them only in a few scenes, such as the one in which Gioia’s father is in a bar and her brother is in a mall playing video-games. Yet Gioia seems comfortable with crossing the boundary between public and private space. The audience follows her wandering around the city, alone or with her “Italian” friends Morena and Alessandro, her only friends, since she prefers not to spend her time with other Romani girls. Gioia seems well-adjusted and secure in her larger environment. The garden is the only realm where she seems to pay attention to adult advice, and where she feels completely free to accept tradition.

Why does Gioia feel comfortable in the garden? It could be argued that it is in part because unlike the city, it is a space in which her competences are inferior to those of the adults in her community, but one in which the process of enculturation is not a matter of patriarchal structure. Within the garden figure of authorities is Gioia’s grandmother and not a male figure, one who like her is marginal if for the contrasting reason that she refuses to share the way of life of the gadjikano. The representation of an idyllic space within the film reflects a quest for an identity - collective or individual - distanced from

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reality. It is “a utopian prelapsarian chronotope of the [nomadic life] that is uncontaminated by contemporary facts” (Naficy 152). The garden can be seen as a space of subjective interiority, in which memories are stored. It represents a way to take refuge from the real problem of Romani integration in Italy, which has taken a step backwards with the elections of 2018, which resulted in the political ascendency of anti-immigrant and anti-minority right-wing political parties.

The idyllic space of the garden is offered as a contrast to the restictive adopted space represented by Gioia’s apartment, which actually reflects the real life-story of

Halilovic. The filmmaker passed her early years in nomad encampments, and only later did she move with her family into social housing in the suburbs of Turin. She describes her past this way:

All’inizio ero spaesata. Nel campo ero più libera e con tutti i parenti accanto.

Trasferirsi in un condominio non è stato facile perché ero circondata da persone

sconosciute e c’erano delle regole da rispettare. Era ora però di adeguarsi

all’Italia, scappare dai pregiudizi e farsi accettare.173

While the apartment does not “figure as a central device,” it is still a representative space which “motivates or shapes the narrative in some key way” (Robertson 4). For instance, it serves to contrast Bebe’s idea of life and that of Gioia's parents and siblings. This opposition is reflected in the scene where Veronica, Gioia’s mother, is taking Bebe to the bathroom. The old lady complains about the closed space where there is “no air, no wind.” Veronica tries to ease her anxiety by telling her that they have a very powerful fan

173 “At first I was confused. In the nomad camp, I was freer and with all the relatives next to us. Moving to a condominium was not easy because I was surrounded by unknown people and there were rules to respect. But it was time to adapt to Italy, run away from prejudices and be accepted.” Cotticelli, Angela. Io rom romantica, la regista dal campo nomadi alle case popolari di Torino," Il Fatto Quotidiano, 3 Agosto, 2014. 133

which has four speeds. While nothing about their adopted space seems to appeal to Bebe,

Gioia’s mother is happy to live in a condominium. Indeed, through most of the film it is

Veronica who seems the best adjusted of all the characters and one imagines that it is she who has fillede her bedroom with the mirrors that appear to make the sapace more expansive and to magnify her as she reasons with Armando on equal terms and even suggests clever strategies to caox their daughter into more conventional behaviors. In contrast, for most of the film Goia sees and hears only the limitations of such an imprisoning space; indeed, when her father treis to introduce her to a prospective husband, she hides in the most confining space pictured in the film, the interior of her wardrobe closet. In a scene in the second half of the film where Veronica and Bebe are smoking on their flower-bedecked balcony. Bebe misconstrues her situation and tells

Veronica that since they started to live in that apartment Gioia does not seem to be as happy as she was in the nomadic camp, “tua figlia quando era più piccola era felice, era più allegra e ballava.”174 As Goia herself comes to recognize about her parents at the end, and as we sense from early on in her relationship to Bebe, the layered chronotopes of

Io rom romantica conceal as much as they reveal, and have in some instances to be dismantled (or reassembled) in order for us to understand the characters and for them to understand each other.

Always pictured as an adopted space, the apartment also reflects the larger issues connected to a Romani family itself which undergoes a transformation from a nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary one. In some way, the new space brings about a new but unstable family structure, imperfectly adopted. As it becomes evident that their cultural traditions

174 “[W]hen your daughter was younger she was happy, she was happier and she used to dance.” 134

are the only ties with the nomadic life that they had in the camp, nothing in their apartment connects them to their previous life. One could even go further and argue that the apartment chronotope reveals it an ahistorical space, one filled with the paraphernalia of assimilation and devoid of deep connection to their heritage.

The chronotope of the apartment, a confining space in which time moves all too slowly, nevertheless reveals only a few scant traces of its occupants’ ethnicity: a multiplicity of woven carpets, tinkling glass-beaded curtains, a large photorealistic print of an avenue of blossoming cherry trees through which, at one point, Goia imagines walking. Otherwise, it is filled with the expected gadgets and technologies, and seems to be easily interchangeable with a gadjo’s apartment. Yet, as I pointed out above, there are a few culturally coded behaviors by the characters, which give an “ethnic aurea” to the life in the apartment although the space per se has been neutralized by governmental decree, as it were. For example, an interesting cultural behavior which we see taking place in the apartment is a “rite of passage” explained by Gioia’s father, Armando, when

Gioia’s aunt breaks with tradition and comes to visit them. The woman, who has just given birth to a baby, arrives with her newborn, but Armando tries to prevent her from entering the apartment. According to Romani tradition a mother and her baby are considered “unclean” until forty days have elapsed since birth, and so should not reside with other people until forty days have elapsed according to Armando who tries to wash the threshold when Veronica overrules him (even after which he spits into the imaginary breeze to ward off ill luck). The characters’ behavior defines and characterizes the space around them.

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Another interesting approach to the use of space in film is offered by Amy Lynn

Corbin (2015). She analyzes cinematic feelings of foreignness and familiarity by discussing films that evoke a sense of placing the spectator “where she/he is not” (7). In

Corbin’s analysis “all cinematic spectatorship is an act of traveling to another location, and its bounded quality, its ‘distanced immersion,’ makes it most akin to tourism” (7). As the author asserts, while some films have a touristic view by positioning spectator as an outsider, others code the landscape as familiar, seeking to immerse the spectator in a

“dwelling experience” (7). Following this approach, Io rom romantica can be divided into two patterns of representation: one which locates space from the perspective of a visitor or a tourist, which one can define as folkloric, and the other which contains familiar social spaces.

The touristic/folkloric view is clearly visible in the scene where an ultra-traditional wedding of one of her relatives takes place. A static camera frames a tulip-pink limousine entering the screen from the right followed by other cars. Off-screen diegetic sound predominates in the scene. A wedding banquet takes place outdoors, reminding the viewers of the importance of open space for most Romani people. The entire scene is characterized by Balkan music and dance. Another significant cultural element is visible in a scene where Bebe performs a form of tasseography that interprets the future through lines and shapes left by residual coffee grounds. This scene is essentially built upon an ethnic or exotic code, and it positions us, using Corbin’s words, taking part in a form of “touristic spectatorship” (32). Conversely, there are familiar spaces such as the mall Gioia and Morena go fashion hunting, the pub in which she chats earnestly with Alessandro, a cafè interior and film production sets, locations familiar to

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most contemporary urban dwellers. Also, perhaps against the expectations of the

intruding audience, who might expect to find an exotic ‘dwelling experience’ (Corbin 7),

Gioia’s apartment is ultimately similar to is ultimately similar to those of her neighbors.

The filmmaker thus ultimately undermines the almost obligatory tokens of ethno-tourism

by making fun of the notions of Romani culture that even the photographers and

filmmakers portrayed in Io rom romantica seem to wish to perpetuate in their images.

Bebe, the Leaves and Oral Tradition

In a study on ethnicity in a Romani group settled in North America, Matt T. Salo

(1977) underlines that one of the problems in transmitting tradition is that it remains essentially oral, since most individuals, especially the older generation, are illiterate.175

As Jan Yoors adds that within Romani communities, “oral traditions survive only through

strong genealogical awareness; their memories do not extend beyond four, or at best five,

generations, limited to those ancestors a living person still remembers - and at his death

these ancient ones are forgotten, since no one else has known them alive” (5). Thus, it

may be possible that all ethnic traditions are inevitably biased representation as they face

a discontinuity.

Bebe, in this sense is a link to the life of “wandering gypsies” (Fonseca 4) in that she actively wishes to continue a tradition. Bebe represents the outsider. She refuses to share the values of the host society, and any relation with it. To shield herself, the woman has constructed her own safe space.

175 Salo shows a list of criteria by which the Romni define their own ethnic group and by which they contrast it with everyone else who is not-Romani (38-39). 137

The grandmother usually represents an important figure in the Romani tradition:

“[o]ld women have ... the best deal in Gypsy society” (Fonseca 80), and the grandmother usually represents an important figure. In this botanical scene, she stands erect, framed in the garden as a mythical presence, a traditional matriarch. We know that in different

Roma groups a female elder “shares external features such as the specific variety of the

Romani language, [and] a particular dress code, such as the type of headscarf or apron, length and style of skirt” (Matras 1). The way Bebe is dressed, with the traditional ankle length skirt and a diklo (scarf) which covers her head as customary in Romani culture, represents a marker, a specific assertion of her group identity.176 As a respected member of her community, Bebe is the custodian of a tradition, she is a repository of the knowledge which represents a particular cultural heritage. It is expected that Gioia should learn it from her, to preserve and transmit her identity and that of her community to fu- ture generations.

In the first chapter of The Savage Mind (1966), “The Science of the Concrete,”

Claude Lévi-Strauss rejects the notion that less technologically modern societies are incapable of scientific thought. He points out that while traditional societies lack a ready familiarity with machinery and mindsets attuned to urban environments, their modus vivendi is based on the intense observation of the “sensible world” in “sensible terms"

(16), thus showing their ability in preserve such features as a detailed botanical knowledge through generations. Bebe’s encyclopedic ethnobotanical references illustrate the importance of plants to Romani culture. But her advice is anything but a lecture on biodiversity or taxonomy. Rather, she classifies each wild species to Gioia according to

176 “Scarf worn at the neck or on the head,” in Ian Hancock, “A Glossary of Romani Terms,” p. 332. 138

its natural benefits. Bebe is here revealed as a drabarni, a female healer with magical

powers who provides traditional and natural cures for ‘Romani afflictions,’ such as

rashes, hiccups, vomiting, irritability and insomnia (Hancock 2002). As Isabel Fonseca

puts it, while men appear to possess all authority, “it is the women who possess the

darkest and most forbidding powers” (80).

Just as in Io rom romantica, in the film The Time of the Gypsies directed by Emir

Kusturica177 (1988), natural remedies like plants and leaves assume an indispensable

importance. The film is a tragic-comic drama set in a Yugoslavian Romani community. It centers on the flamboyant figure of Perhan, a young boy raised by his grandmother, who

possesses healing powers, and has the ability to move objects from a distance. A pivotal

scene in a medium close up frames Perhan, who is trying to relieve an injury to his

younger sister’s leg. The audience follows the boy who, as if he were in a magical ritual,

covers his sister’s leg with dry leaves.

As we learn from Bebe, leaves are used in many ways, for the protection and

betterment of human life.178 In fact, they are collected and used as therapeutic agents, in the treatment of some illnesses like liver diseases, for nerve pain, or to treat insomnia at one point she even notes: “questa è l’erba dei pensieri per quando pensi troppo. Se prendi

177 Award winning best director at Cannes Film Festival, 1989. The film was also nominated for a “Palme d’Or” (“Golden Palm”). 178 While describing the relation between health and diet, Hancock (2002) reports that “some foods are considered to be particularly ‘auspicious,’” (89) and beneficial to “a spiritual as well as [to a] physical wellbeing” (89). However, in his description he also reports that some other edible plants used entirely for medical purpose. “These days, knowledge of traditional herbal medicine is being lost, because commercial medication is so easily available; but while we might buy aspirin today for a headache, not so long ago our grandparents would have taken the bark from a willow tree (called the rukh rovindoj) and boiled in into an extract for the same purpose. In the same way, the leaves from a chestnut tree (kastanengo rukh) produce an extract for treating bronchitis, the vinca or periwinkle flower (djiveski luludji) a medicine for diabetes, the lily (krina) for various heart complaints, and the boiled-down petals of the rosemary plant (loliorri) make a rinse for dandruff” (89). 139

questa, poi dormi bene.”179 What may appear to the world at large as a rustic idyll, as an escape from the world, turns out to something far deeper: an initiation. Indeed, by the end of the film, we recognize that Gioia does inherit her grandmother’s magical power of transformation, albeit in the case of urban images rather than pastoral foliage.

Gioia and Laura, the Jeans and the Wedding Dress

A door is the first element that the spectator sees in the opening scene of the movie. A short prelude frames Gioia exiting the door, walking towards the camera, and standing centered in the frame in a medium close up that reveals her long black hair, long earrings and confident smile. Addressing the camera directly, she seems to impart a direct message to the viewer: “here I am …” While the soundtrack starts, Gioia exits the frame.

The animated title of the film is displayed: Io rom romantica. Gioia is the Rom(antic) girl described by the title.180 Tellingly, we discover that just as with the symmetries of doors opening and closing, these first images are transposed (and reoccur) at the ending of the film.

In an analysis of exits and entrances, Arnold Aronson analyzes the role of the

“actual, assumed, and iconic” (331) doors in which “since ancient times, the door is a barrier: a bulwark against the chaos that lurks just beyond … it is an easily transgressed border” (331). Fittingly, doors are a crucial narrative device in this film. Gioia spends most of her time on the other side of her family’s door, which represents for her a space of cultural impositions and constraints. The second time the audience encounters Gioia,

179 ”[T]his is the grass of thoughts for when you think too much. If you take this, then you will sleep well.” 180 The Italian title plays with the word “Rom” (the Italian name for ‘Gypsy’) and the adjective “romantica,” which contains the first three letters as in “Rom.” Thus Gioia is a Rom-antic girl. 140

she is hiding from her father. The wardrobe door appears to be a further escape route which makes her feel safe. 181 It is a liminal space that protects her from the practice of early marriage:

the door establishes a boundary: a demarcation between the cramped and confined

space [of interiors] … It also marks the bounds between order and chaos, between

a world of rules and a world of a logical action. To go through the door is to pass

from one state of being, or one world, to another. (Aronson 332)

Gioia’s act of hiding physically separates two world-views, the world of her dreams and that of her father's traditionalism. Hiding and escaping also evoke mixed feelings: fear and anger. In a broader sense, a door for Gioia “marks a beginning and an end; it punctuates comings and goings” (Aronson 331). In a reversal of Bachelard’s generalization in other cases, her house is anything but her corner of the world; it is not the shelter for escapes or for day-dreaming. On the contrary, it represents a place where a

Roma girl should “never ask questions [or] … wear short skirts" (Fonseca 14). Instead, outside of her father’s door, she does not behave as a Romani girl should, but walks around ‘improperly dressed,’provoking her father’s censure: “lei deve vestirsi bene … deve comportarsi come le donne Rom.”182

181 In Poetics of Space, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, discusses the dialectics of “outside and inside,” describing the wardrobe as the space where “a center of order exists that protects the entire house against uncurbed disorder. Here order reigns, or rather, this is the reign of order. Order is not merely geometrical; it can also remember the family history” (79). 182 “She must dress up well … she must behave like Romani women.” 141

In describing stereotypes Romani use as a filter to characterize the rest of the

world, non-Romani “young women are immodest in their dress and sexual behavior”

(Hancock 2002: 104). 183 By drawing attention to the difference in their choice of attire,

we gather the impression that the filmmaker is making a comparison between Gioia and

her closest friend. Morena constantly asks “come sto?” (“how do I look?”), and, in most

of the scenes, she wears mini-skirts and heavy make up, looking more mature than her age, while Gioia has always has a more casual, innocent appearance. These roles assigned to the Italian girl and to Gioia are a means of addressing the contrast between two

life-styles, as is evident in Halilovic’s propensity to pair characters, elements of

mise-en-scène and even narrative elements.

In their research on dress practices of Bosnian-Muslim refugee women living in

Vermont, Kimberly Huisman and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo argue that,

Dress practices are rooted in historical, macrostructural processes, but they are

actively maintained and encouraged socially at the micro-interactional level,

especially through the activities of code enforcers, who threaten dress deviations

with social sanctions, and through internalized mechanisms of self-discipline. (48)

Similarly, the necessity of maintaining specific patterns of behavior and appearance

seems to be a cornerstone of Romani identity. Thus, whoever disregards these norms,

breaks traditional moral structures and is perceived as an outsider. Gioia’s refusal to wear

long skirts in defiance of her father’s insistence is not only transgressive: it is also

183 Hancock describes a list of behaviors which non-Romani have such as “it is commonly believed, for example, that non-Romani men and women are insecure about what behavior is appropriate for their respective genders: should a man cry, or cook? … Non-Romanies are thought not to have respect for age, putting their aging parents into homes” (2002: 104). 142

behavior aimed to challenge his rule and authority.184 When Armando overhears a

comment made by one of his nephews about Gioia’s cute bottom (“bel culo”), even

adding that her pants show it off, he grows irate and demands that she discards her jeans

because they emphasize her physique: “non voglio vedere più pantaloni in casa mia.”185

In this sense, Gioia is accused by her father of not behaving appropriately, or as Huisman

& Hondagneu-Sotelo put it, serving as “a vehicle to maintain the collective identity of groups” (47). Within the film, as in real life, the protagonist prefers the freedom of movements offered by jeans as does the director. In an interview on Il Fatto Quotidiano

Halilovic reports that she always loved jeans, and that she always refused to wear long

Romani skirts.186 While for Gioia jeans represents freedom, Gioia’s father associates

them with a display of sexuality. “Mia figlia non può andare in giro vestita così,” he

exclaims in frustration.187 Dress matters in a Romani family, and Gioia’s lifestyle cannot

– as conservative tradition demands - “simultaneously communicate and constitute gender and ethnic identities” (Eicher and Roach-Higginser 47). As a matter of fact,

Groups define their dress standards by contrast with other groups, and in the

process, women's bodies and the ways they are dressed often come to represent

the larger community. Women are simultaneously objectified-seen as the bearers

of traditional culture and heritage-and valorized for their role in social

184 Her conduct may also show, as Huisman and Hondagneu-Sotelo put it, that changing style does not occur “in a vacuum” (51): there is a negotiation “within specific temporal and structural-historical contexts … dress practices are influenced by both [ethnic] histories of dress and every-day interactions on local and global levels” (51). 185 “I do not want to see pants anymore in my house.” 186 Interview by Angela Cotticelli, Il Fatto Quotidiano, 3 Agosto 2014, https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2014/08/03/io-rom-romantica-la-regista-dal-campo-nomadi-alle-case-po- polari-di-torino/1075477/ 187 “My daughter cannot go around dressed up in that way.” 143

reproduction. (Huisman & Hondagneu-Sotelo 47)

His daughter’s lifestyle and the inviolability of her body are of extreme importance to her father, who is responsible for arranging a ‘proper’ marriage, which in a traditional

Romani community “came so early, for many before adolescence” (Fonseca 32).

Armando always compares Gioia to her cousins as for him they are good examples of

Romani girls: “Non vedi le tue cugine? Si sono sposate, hanno dei figli e tu cosa fai?

Scrivi, scrivi, ma che ti scrivi?”188 Gioia angrily replies to her father “Io non mi sposo.”189 She fights against the social “fulcrum” of early marriage (Hancock 1997: 54).

190

In a medium close up, the camera frames Gioia opening her closet. And hurling her dresses onto the flor. Another punctum that in reality pierces through both Gioia’s world-view and her father’s at first only appears as the fringes of a white dress hanging at the back. Only a few seconds later, when Gioia stuffs the scattered skirts into a black trash bag, is it clearly visible as a bridal gown. She angrily throws the gown on the floor, only to pick it up just as quickly and hang it on the wardrobe. Try as she might to enter her new world, marriage embodies a collective experience, as is evident in all of

Halilovic’s oeuvre: it is seen as a transitional event in several close-ups in her first work,

Io, la mia famiglia Rom e Woody Allen (2009). In Io rom romantica it represents an

188 “Don’t you see your cousins? They are married, they have children and what are YOU doing? Writing, writing, but what are you writing?” 189 “I do not want to get married.” 190 “Marriage is the boundary between one’s status as a boy or girl (in Romani, chav or chef) and man or woman (Rrom or Rromni). This boundary has nothing to do with biological age; a girl who marries at age twelve becomes a Rromni or woman, because the word is synonymous with ‘wife,’ and a boy becomes a husband and a man … Marriage and parenthood are seen as healthy and part of the natural order, while single status is seen as bad. It can bring retribution (prikaza) from the guardian spirits (mule) in the form of bad luck (bibaxt) or illness (nasvalipé). (Hancock 1997: 55)

144

important step that Gioia does not want to evade, even if she is not quite willing to experience it according to the prescribed Romani code. It should not pass unnotşced that the bridal gown and the wedding as ritual are also figure prominently in Emir Kusturica’s

The Time of the Gypsies (1988). The film begins with an image of a crying bride, framed initially in medium close up and from the back. The character turns, while she wipes away her tears, she looks at her groom claiming “You destroyed my life.” In both films, the image of the women’s body “[is] both socially shaped and colonized. The politics of the body ... argues that the body itself is politically inscribed and is shaped by practices of containment and control” (Brown & Gershon 1). Gioia’s body is an essential element of negotiations, and therefore it represents a protection not only of her ethical way of life, but also that of her family as it is known that “marriage is used to form alliances” (Okely

175).

It is characteristic of Halilovic’s style that it is in this very wardrobe that Goia takes refuge when her father thinks he has a suitable boy for her. The suitor’s father who is suspicious and intolerant of deviations from traditions accuses Armando of not being able to look after his daughter and consequently anyone else, “se non sai badare a tua figlia, allora non sai badare a nessuno.”191 An interior monologue conveys Gioia’s sense of disappointment to the audience. She wants to be able to choose her spouse as those in the surrounding world are capable of doing. “Qui da noi funziona così, ad un certo punto dicono che diventi vecchia e ti cercano marito. Bello, brutto, grasso, magro, a loro non importa basta che ti sposi.”192 The voice over continues: “Ma perché nessuno capisce

191 “If you can not look after your daughter, it means that you cannot look after anyone.” 192 “Here it works like this, at some point they say that you are becoming old and they start to look for an husband. Nice, ugly, fat, thin, they do not care about it, they just want you to get married.” 145

niente? Zingara, non zingara, pantaloni, donne. Ma a qualcuno importa chi sono io veramente?”193 As presented it seems like the voice of the filmmaker herself, echoing the anxieties of a generation of younf Romani.

Gioia embodies the common dilemma that those with multicultural identities have to face. There are many hints throughout the film, which depicts the girl as the epitome of rebelliousness which stemming in part from being viewed as different by outsiders and from within her community, makes adolescence a particularly testing time for minorities.

Only her innate ability to make difficult choices lets her break “the binary relation between minority communities and majority societies - a dependency that structures projects of both assimilation and resistance” (Clifford 311). The in-betweenness which

Gioia experiences is clearly something beyond the comprehension of those of her parents’ generation.

“Diaspora” as defined by James Clifford (302) can be applied to minorities who like the Romani eke out an existence far from their places of origin. While other diasporic communities who are “dispersed peoples, once separated from homelands” (304) can preserve a memory or myth about their original homeland, the Romani community survives only as a cultural formation.194 The lack of a traditional “homeland orientation” is what distinguishes Romani diaspora from other diasporas.195 Regarding the necessity to create a different definition, Philip V. Fellman and his assocşates propose that the

193 “Why does nobody understand anything? Gypsy, non-gypsy, trousers, skirts. But does anyone care who I really am?” 194 Many insightful explanations are provided by scholars such as P. Toninato (2007) and R. Brubaker (2005), who give an interesting explanation of the evolution of the term diaspora. 195 In their analysis of Romani diaspora, Fellman et al. focus also on the question “why did the Roma not go back to India?” According to them “one hypothesis is that Romani are opportunistic in nature and tend to seek more a developed environment with richer social welfare where they can prosper in their own fashion rather than seeking a return to their ancient historical homeland” (6). 146

frequently-used “homeland orientation” (6) should be replaced by a concept unique to the

Romani. They propose the term “heartland orientation,” “which places emphasis on “a

sense of empathy and solidarity with co-ethnic members in other countries of settlement”

(6). Yet it is important to proceed cautiously at this point, as Bauman points out, the

necessity to create a category to recognize identities, can “end ... up as a roster of

exceptions” (677). As he reminds us, any such exclusive category,

legitimizes the nationalistic claims that it is the sharing of certain attributes that

“makes a nation,” that integrates a certain number of people into a spatial and

temporal unity, rather than exposing the fact that the 'commonality' itself (of land,

of language, of tradition) is always an artifact of boundary-drawing activity: always

contentious and contested. (677)

Perhaps it is more straightforward to view such films as those of Halilovic as a conscious

attempt to distinguish between questions of acculturaltion and soial justice from those

which inhere to set of national identity. Self-representation, in this sense, is as powerful a source of cultural cohesion as language or ritual. Keeping these cautionary observations in mind, in the last part of this chapter I will attempt to contrast Romani cinematic representation to the ways in which they are customarily depicted in films by those outside the community.

Another Way of Looking: Alternative Romani Cinematic Practices

As a work of art, a film can have a twofold aspect: it can transport a viewer into a particular world, it can also represent the experience of those being represented. In Io rom romantica the other is not being represented by well-or ill-intentioned outsiders.

147

In fact, the film is directed by the only Romani filmmaker known in Italy today.

In an early scene Goia accompanies Armando who takes her to meet a rather

sleezy filmmaker who owes his 400 Euros. When the director proves evasive, she

confiscates an entire shelf of his DVDs pending payment (which seems to impress him as

much as her revelation that she is Rom). We then cut to a skillfully-composed high-angle

shot through beams that frame Gioia and Alessandro at a bar, discussing his roving life

and her desire to make films. Showing a DVD to her, he claims: “Questo parla di Gitani

… è roba tua,” She answers: “Non lo conosco … sarà un altro che non capisce niente di

noi.”196 Gioia’s statement is indicative of the dialectic between film and representation.

Many native Italian filmmakers have shown interest in exploring minority groups

living in a host country as a way of focusing attention to “the troubled relationships

between the dominant ethnic group and the minority” (Iordanova, 2003:106).197 As Dina

Iordanova puts it “[r]ather than being given the chance to portray themselves, the Romani people have routinely been depicted by others” (2003:106). In her introduction to a special issue of Framework dedicated to “Cinematic Images of Romanies,” she writes that “Gypsy films have been recycling virtually the same narrative tropes for decades”

(9).198 Her main arguments focus on the approaches used by feature films, documentaries

196 “This is about Gypsies … it's your matter.” Gioia replies: “I do not know it … it will be another [film] which does not understand anything about us.” 197 There is a long list of films made by Italian auteurs: Carmen (Francesco Rosi, 1984); Allullo Drom (Tonino Zangardi 1992); Un'anima divisa in due, (Silvio Soldini, 1993); Il sogno della farfalla (Marco Bellocchio, 1994); A Ciambra, (Jonas Carpignano 2017). 198 In describing Balkan cinema and Romani films, Dina Iordanova claims that “Romanies have been appearing on the silver screen since the first days of cinema” (5, see also note 2). As Sean Homer underlines, “[t]he representations of the Roma are ubiquitous in the history of Balkan cinema. The first Balkan film distributed abroad was about the Roma, In Serbia: A Gypsy Marriage (1911), and the first entry of a Gypsy film into a major film festival also originated from the former Yugoslavia. Aleksander Petroviç’s I Even Met Happy Gypsies won the Grand Prix Spécial at Cannes Film festival in 1967 (Gociç 99). The majority of these films, however, have tended to be by non-Roma directors with the Roma as the object of representation” (183). 148

and ethnographic films in analyzing "the Romani predicament and in addressing its social

roots, diaspora, migration, and social marginality” (5-6). In her overview, Iordanova

gives us a series of “sketches,” in which she describes various cinematic representations

of the Roma (whom she, without any sign of prejudice, calls “gypsies”). For instance, in

the chapter “Sketching Genre” she asserts that a typical “gypsy” film is a melodrama,

which always evolves around interracial romance and consuming passion. As she claims,

“no other group has been so excessively exoticised” (8). In “Sketching History,” she

offers an overview of the Holocaust, and its impact on Romani communities, asserting

that too often Romani history is being told in relation to someone else.199 In “Sketching

Knowledge” she remarks on the limitations regarding our knowledge of the gypsies’

cinematic representation (11). 200

Nonetheless, Io rom romantica is not exempt from citations of those topoi

Iordanova defines as recycled, such as the “mistrust to outsiders” (Images 9) characterized as liars, the “patriarchal power structures” which seems to dominate the young protagonist’s life, or the “coerced urbanization, forced integration and imposed conversion away from semi-nomadic lifestyles” (9). Yet the film seems to differ from other films made by non-Romani filmmakers. Significantly, in Io rom romantica, the representation of nomadism as an idyllic state of mind is treated as a common fictionalized narrative topos shared by both Romani and the gadjikano.

199 She mentions some other films such as Train de vie/ Train of Life (1998) directed by Radu Mihaileanu, the Dutch documentary Settela (1994) by Cherry Duyns, and other documentaries from the 1980s and the 1990s. 200 In the past few years there has been “a significant growth in various cinematic events dedicated to the image of Romanies in film.” Iordanova reports a list of events, such as special events at the festivals in Montreal (1997) and Amiens (1997), at the Barbican in London, in Vienna, and at the Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival (all in 2000), a programme at the city museum Munich (2001), or the First Roma Film Festival Golden Wheel in Skopje, Macedonia (2002). 149

In making fun of those who exploit the nostalgia of representing the world of the

Roma in a rural and nomadic life, an attractive trope for many filmmakers of non-Romani origins, Halilovic embodies cultural self-consciousness. She recognizes that the “culture of nostalgia” (Acton & Mundy 34) has been a “[g]olden age, a culture that had its day ... that was fast disappearing” (34). In Halilovic’s film there is no magic realism as in

Kusturica’s much-admired work, no particular interest in presenting a tale spiced with picturesque legends and colorful sagas. To this extent, it is important to acknowledge that the film has “attempted to substitute traditional Gypsy plots’ excessive exoticism with rough realism” (Iordanova, Images 9). While the representation of the mythic space that I have analyzed in “Bebe in Her Eden" could be seen as a nostalgic element, it embodies a tradition that the filmmaker has no intention of demonizing. The filmmaker’s aim was to shoot the film as an example for youngsters, both Romani and gagé. In an interview, she regrets that this message was never properly understood:

Il messaggio che ho voluto dare con il film purtroppo non è arrivato, nessuno ha

capito quello che volevo dire. Ai ragazzi rom ho voluto dire di non

auto-compatirsi, non chiudersi in sé stessi e affrontare gli altri, mentre agli italiani

di vederci con un'altra prospettiva.201

Io rom romantica is thus a semi-autobiographical account of an important cultural transformation in a way of life for many a community, as well as a decisive turning point in the direction of self-realization, and the pursuit of individual dreams. Halilovic

201 “The message I wanted to give with my film unfortunately did not get to the audience, no one understood what I wanted to say. I wanted to say to the Roma young generation to not self-pity themselves, not to exclude themselves, but to face the others, while to the Italians to look at us with another perspective.” Barbara Guastella, “Io rom romantica, la strada per un sogno,” October, 10, 2014. Published on the website Centro nazionale di documentazione e analisi per l'infanzia e l'adolescenza https://www.minori.it/minori/io-rom-romantica-la-strada-per-un-sogno 150

observes the world around her with self-awareness and a multiplicity of cultural dynamics. In her film, there are no carnivalesque elements or flamboyant figures as in

Kusturica’s The Time of the Gypsies, which ambivalent perpetuates the trope of the exoticized “gypsy” is perpetuated. It seems, instead, that Halilovic’s film suggests that its world is far more complicated than any simple binarisms would convey. All the characters have virtues and flaws. Thus, the filmmaker’s interest is to portray human beings who share common behavioral patterns and biases. For instance, Gioia’s native

Italian friend Morena is not better than Gioia’s cousins are. While in a fit of jealousy

Morena accuses Gioia of acting like a “poor little gypsy,” stealing from friends, (“aveva ragione mio fratello … siete tutti uguali, bugiardi e traditori”), and is chased off by

Armando, her cousins deride her for delaying too long to be an attractive marriage partner (“ormai è vecchia, chi se la prende più”).202

Halilovic incorporates social issues concerned not only with the Romani predicament but also with the dominant attitude of considering others according to uninformed and stereotyped ideas, and “the perpetuation of the myths surrounding” them.

(Hancock 2002: 65). In a sequence, Gioia escapes home to reach the city of Rome to meet her idol, the famous American director Woody Allen. While she wonders around, the camera frames two Romani. The woman (played by the Italian actress Lorenza

Indovina) who gives her a ride delivers a tirade that encapsulates ant-Romani discourse:

“Per fortuna sono venuta io a salvarti;” she notes, looking contemptuously towards a couple of obvious Roma extraction, “gli zingari stanno dappertutto … è una invasione …

202 Morena: “My brother was right … you are all the same, liars and traitors” … Her cousins: “She is old. Who will marry her anymore?” 151

ci hanno circondato … albanesi, rumeni, Rom, zingari … non c’è più posto per gli

Italiani.”203

The rhetoric of the “zingarophobic” driver comes as no great surprise since in a

common social myth, Italians are supposed to act as saviours who protect girls from

Romani kidnappers. In her analysis of stereotypes in movies, Elena Gabor notices that,

“[t]here are a number of negative stereotypes used regarding the Gypsies, such as

kidnapping and exploiting children, deceitful behavior, begging and stealing” (289). The

use of such elements in film is a way of providing a range of cultural symbols, which are

easily understandable by diverse audiences. Hence, in general, films utilize the raw

material of social discourse to elaborate it into new forces, thus providing and reinforcing

stereotypes. The question of representation with its subsequent process of constructing

meaning is, however, the core of the problem. Thus, Halilovic’s intention to show her

reality is also a matter of representation, and consequently it turns to be a matter of

discourse (Prince 1993). In her film, she upholds a new idea of an intra-national culture,

and a faith in the art of film as a legitimate critique of political and social reality.

We can conclude, therefore, that Io rom romantica does not focus on the relationships between the Romani and the gadje, neither is it about being victims of a relentless system. Rather than being interested in showing a cohesive (dis)harmony within Romani groups, the film focuses on the internal relations within a Romani family

and the struggles of a rapidly maturing woman. Gioia's life can also be seen as a parable

of the self-made person, that of a young displaced figure who, despite her family's

incomprehension of her aspirations, is able to achieve her goal. Gioia’s two-sided

203 “Luckily, I came to save you;” “Gypsies are everywhere … it’s an invasion … they have surrounded us … Albanians, Romanians, Romanies, Gypsies#… there is no more space for Italians.” 152

experience of alienation surely represents a common feeling shared by second-generation

migrants, diasporic groups, and by people who experience all forms of ethnic

displacement.

The crucial issue is not so much whether the relation between Gioia and her

family is good or bad, or whether her life within an assimilated Italian context is possible

or not. What matters is that Gioia is able to transcend imposed social constructions of

identity and difference. Thus, through the self-representation of a Romani culture, the

film also becomes a self-reflection on the conditions of Italian culture, and a way to

reflect on the complexity of Italian society. Like her indomitable protagonist, Halilovic seems able to traverse an imaginary avenue suffused with cherry blossoms, sharing the same aspirations for a bright, fulfilling future, far from the cemented tenements lamented

with such sorrow in the final verses of Papusza’s poem.204

Beyond the Bench

The film opens with a close-up of Gioia looking into the camera, the film ends

with her unperturbed voice simply announcing that things are going well with her family.

The closing sequence, with its youthful optimism, acquires added significance since it

occurs just after she finally arrives in Cinecittà, and sees her idol, Woody Allen, entering an elegant black car. Neither her shouts of recognition nor her attempts to knock on his window elicit a response. Instead, we see his impassive profile with her momentary disappointment reflected on his car’s window. Halilovic is particularly attracted to the

204 “Everthing has gone yet / And those years of youth," Papusza quoted in Fonseca (10). 153

possibilities glass offers lenses, as with mirrors and the windows of trains, cars, and

shops, themselves figurations of narrative symmetires and reversals.

Instead of being crushed by disappointment as we fear from a moment previously,

she symbolically turns her family and her fiancé Elvis, into actors and crew of her first

film. Allen’s photographic portrait may still hang over her bed, but it represents the

moment that she belongs less with her surrogate father than with her actual family, that

fate has in fact chosen her to ease their transition into socio-technological modernity, and

that it is in so doing that she becomes the director of her own script. Her father takes

Allen’s place on the park bench filmed from the rear as in Manhattan, but now

overlooking Falchera. Somehow the fog seems to be as dense as in a wintry New York.

As the camera draws back, we recognize that it is a special effect: the technician, Bebe, is fanning the smoky fumes of a dry-leaf fire into the frame.

154

CHAPTER 3: a CREOLIZED PITZA

Fariborz Kamkari’s Pitza e datteri

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Italian Flag Apron’

EXT. VENETIAN CAMPO - DAY – ESTABLISHING SHOT

A crane shot opens the scene. Diegetic sound off screen. Male accented

voices discuss a solution to a problem. A group of people, not clearly visible,

is sitting around a table to a “Pizza e Kebab” place. A medium shot

introduces the five characters: a young Afghan imam, on his left side the

president of the Islamic community Karim, and Aziz, the owner of the

Pizza-Kebab place; to his right, Bepi, a Venetian mythomaniac converted to

Islam, and Ala, a Kurdish man with long hair. Bepi wears a commonly

adopted long robe, typical of Islamic clothing. Karim holds a misbaḥah, the

string of prayer beads. The young imam, whose name is Saladino, is

describing a method of capital punishment, stoning. The group has not

grasped its meaning yet.

A woman enters from the left holding a pizza.

CUTAWAY SHOT of a pizza. Sound of an off-screen diegetic voice in

Venetian dialect. The camera pivots to the right.

A deep-focus shot frames the imam and Karim in focus, while the

background remains out of focus. While Saladino, no longer in focus, turns

155

his face covering his eyes, Karim silently looks at the woman gesturing

something to him with her fingers gesture. CUT TO a group shot where the

owner of the kebab and pizza place jumps to his feet and yells something to

the woman, who is his wife. While Aziz shouts, the woman who is almost out

of the frame, looks at him.

CUT TO a group shot where she yells something back to him and leaves.

Back to Aziz who now silently sits again.

The conversation begins with his apology and the mention of the Italian

proverb “moglie e buoi dei paesi tuoi” (“wife and oxen from your country”).

CUT TO a two shot and a three shot, with Karim claiming that women should

be saved by them. A punctum captures the attention. The Italophile Aziz

wears an apron with an Italian flag and the word “pizza” on it. A tilt shot

frames a diary where Saladino takes notes. Back to a three shot, Saladino

explains a possible solution to a hitherto unknown problem taken from the

Quran.

The sequence ends with the Bepi understanding and exclaiming “Una lapidazione?!

Ma è fantastico!”205

The scene described is featured in Pitza e datteri (2015) directed Fariborz

Kamkari, a Kurdish-Iranian, now a naturalized Italian filmmaker. Born in a Kurdish family, the filmmaker lived in Kurdistan, on the Iraqi border to the West, during the military occupation ordered by Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini to punish the only region of

205 “A stoning?! But it's wonderful!” 156

the country that had not voted in favor of the Islamic Republic. Kamkari is “a son of the

war.” This is his first Italian feature film after leaving his country for political reasons,

having faced repeated bans of his films in Iran. Distributed by Bolero Film - Pitza e

datteri is produced by Far Out Films in association with Adriana Chiesa Enterprises,

Acek, and in collaboration with Rai Cinema.206 As reported in the opening titles, the film

was recognized as a film of cultural interest earning it a financial contribution of the

“Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Activities and Tourism.”207 The film -- with a multicultural cast including two Italian stars, Giuseppe Battiston (Bepi) and Giovanni

Martorana (Ala) -- is set in Venice, historically a crossroads between East and West and considered the ideal place for cultural exchange, integration, and even clashes of civilization.

In less than three minutes the scene ‘Italian Flag Apron’ sums up arguments about religion, identity, women, and stereotypes. The scene occurs in the first twenty minutes of the film, after the arrival of Saladino and his visit to Bepi’s house, and before the two set out to stones in the lagoon mean to Zara’s punishment by lapidation.

Pitza e datteri is a humorous comedy that deals with multicultural integration which explains the colorful cast. The film makes fun of the extremization in a religious- social context like Italy where the increasing presence of immigrants is creating new spaces for cohabitation and for social and cultural development. It is first of all a comedy, as the filmmaker confirmed in our interview: the script incorporates the light-hearted tones of the comedy while the topic remains serious:

206 Which is also the international distributor of the film. 207 "Film riconosciuto di interesse culturale realizzato con il contributo economico del Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali e del Turismo.” The film was also supported by the Venice Film & Media Fund, and sponsored by the Comune di Venezia and the Venice Film Commission. 157

Anni fa, per le storie che immaginavo, ne vedevo sempre aspetti drammatici e

così ho immaginato il cinema. Poi, forse con l'età, ho capito la possibilità di

trattare argomenti difficili in una chiave diversa. E l'ho imparato dal cinema

italiano, in particolare dalla Commedia all'italiana e da bei film come Divorzio

all'italiana di Pietro Germi.208

The movie tells a peculiar story.209A small Islamic community in Venice, composed of a

rather heterogeneous group of individuals has been dislodged from their mosque by Zara,

an attractive Turkish-French hairdresser. Zara’s ex husband, a member of the group, is

the owner of the place which was used as a mosque, but he has been arrested during a

prayer. Zara, who is stuck with the mortgage left by her husband, transforms the mosque

into a unisex beauty salon. A young and inexperienced Afghan imam, Saladino, (played by Mehdi Meskar210) is called to rescue and restores the site to a place of worship. The

imam speaks Italian well as he had been an orphan raised in an Italian military hospital in

Kabul. He tries conscientiously to adhere to the Quranic rules, but realizes that the reality

is very different from Islam’s rigid schemes. All his clumsy attempts to follow the dic- tates of the Quran fail comically, and seemingly as a result of discovering the value and impact of beauty in a person’s life. Eventually, the small community finds a new place of

worship, with the help of unlikely friends, the Jewish community.

208 “Years ago, for the stories that I was imagining, I always saw dramatic aspects of them and I imagined the cinema in the same way. Then, maybe with age, I understood the possibility of dealing with difficult subjects in a different key. And I learned this from Italian cinema, especially from the Commedia all'Italiana and from beautiful films like Divorzio all'italiana by Pietro Germi.” Kamkari, Fariborz, Skype Personal interview, Feb 20, 2017. 209 Thanks to the producer Fabrizia Falzetti, Far Out Films, who kindly sent all information about Pitza e datteri. 210 A Calabrian-Maghreb-Parisian who grew up in Treviso, in the Veneto region. 158

Characterization as a Nonverbal Strategy

The characters in the scene ‘Italian flag apron’ all display their cultural

differences characterized through their varied responses to being “here and there:” i.e.

through their experience of simultaneously being in Italy and in their country of origin.

As described by the filmmaker:

il cast multietnico e variegato è stata anche una necessità per la storia che stavo

filmando. Il termine musulmano comprende vari gruppi etnici e culture e

nazionalità che vivono in Occidente. Per me è stato importante mostrare questo

mosaico di culture.211

Their Italianness or otherness is expressed in many often ridicolous ways. “Trovare

migranti non totalmente integrati nel paese ospitante spesso crea situazioni comiche”

Kamkari remarks.212 In fact, whoever wants to apply cultures and rules from a different

society into a new one, inevitably leads to often ridiculous situations.

Bepi is the only one who is not a migrant. He is a Venetian converted to Islam

with the name Mustafà. He is a misfit who tries to find solutions through religions.

Coming from a noble family who lost everything and is fighting the banking system,

Bepi is a desperate man who tries to be accepted. His sense of attachment to Islam is very superficial and it is clearly visible through his use of typical Islamic clothing, such as a long robe and a kufi, the short and rounded cap. Bepi, aka Mustafà, represents “that

211 “The multi-ethnic and varied cast was also a necessity for the story I was filming. The Muslim label encompasses various ethnic groups and cultures and nationalities living in the West. It was important for me to show this mosaic of cultures.” Interviews conducted on Skype and by email at different times. 212 “Finding migrants not totally integrated in the host country creates humorous situations.” Kamkari, Fariborz. Skype Personal interview. Feb 20, 2017. 159

figures so prominently in [Zygmunt] Bauman’s ... works [which] is simply the most striking manifestation of the profound anxiety that typifies the behaviour, decision-making and life projects of men and women in Western society” (Bauman and

Vecchi 6).

In a conversation, Zygmunt Bauman and the Italian journalist Benedetto Vecchi

(2004) discuss the question of identity in the context of what Bauman has called “liquid modernity” (2000). Bauman's thesis explains modernity as a movement from a solid to a fluid phase in which everything is subject to transformation and consequently social forms are radically modifying the experience of human being. We can say that

Bepi/Mustafà shows identity insecurity: he is “perplexed, confused and frightened by the instability and contingency of the world [he] inhabits” (Bauman 2004: 61). For him, consequently, the Islamic community “appears to be a tempting alternative” (61). His ongoing process is more personal than cultural. He is not experiencing an adaptation process from a culture to another, but as Kamkari continues,

una persona che, respinta dalla sua città, cerca una nuova appartenenza. E la

fratellanza islamica regala un grande senso di appartenenza, e diventa un fanatico

perché vuole essere contro tutto e tutti. In questo modo trova la scusa giusta per

essere contro.213

On the other hand, while Bepi embodies the clumsy fundamentalist, the president of the

Islamic community, Karim, on the other hand, is the more refined Italianized Egyptian.

213 “He is a person who, rejected by his city, seeks a new belonging. And the Islamic brotherhood gives a great sense of belonging, and he becomes a fanatic because he wants to be against everything and everyone. In this way he finds the right excuse to be against [someone],” Arianna Finos, “Pitza e datteri”, l'Islam di pace di Kamkari: “Si può sorridere dei propri problem”, La Repubblica, 27 maggio, 2015, also in a Skype Personal interview. Feb 20, 2017. 160

He always wears a suit, but reserves an Egyptian robe to perform official functions (for instance when he invites Saladino in his house). His cultural and religious legacy has undergone a change that is visible in his moderate attitude towards the Quran. Karim is a moderate Muslim, who appears scandalized at Saladino's decision to stone Zara.

"Ma...questa è… (whispering) lapidazione!”214 While he is more attached to Western society, he nevertheless attempts to display his loyalty to Islamism, even in ridiculous way, as in the scene where Saladino declaims parables from the Quran, comparing Islam followers to gardeners,

un buon giardiniere cosa fa? Difende i suoi fiori dai cattivi insetti e li nutre con

acqua buona e fresca … Bisogna ricordare le nostre origini, le nostre tradizioni. E

se non ascoltano i vostri ordini, potete anche usare la forza … La forza del

capofamiglia è come una medicina amara. Fa male ma ti porta salute.215

These words are immediately contradicted by the following somewhat humorous scene.

Saladino enters Karim’s house. A woman with a burqa, supposedly Karim’s wife, is performing a role that shows her sense of duty towards her husband by removing his shoes avoiding eye contact. The scene highlights the ridiculous aspects and the exaggerated stereotyping of constructed ideologies in which women are subordinated to their husband. Both male and female character perform a role. While the man orders his wife to go to the kitchen and prepare food, Saladino expresses his astonishment over the

214 “But ... this is ... stoning!” 215 "What does a good gardener do? He defends his flowers from bad insects and feeds them with good and fresh water ... We must remember our origins, our traditions. And if they do not listen to your orders, you can also use force ... The strength of the head of the family is like a bitter medicine. It hurts but it brings you health.” 161

woman's duty.216 The audience, in the meantime, follows the woman, who walks in the

hallway in a very clumsy way, and bangs her head against the walls.

Aziz too-- the owner of the pizza and kebab place -- continues the stereotype with

regards to marital relationship. In the scene ‘Italian Flag Apron,’ he raises his voice or-

dering his Italian wife Cesarina to go back to the kitchen. He is never seen in Islamic

clothing. He loves his wife. At the same time, he is also expected to perform the role of

the master of the house. In the same scene, he wears the apron with the Italian flag. The

two food items he sells, represent the two most iconic Italian and Middle Eastern foods,

which in his eyes symbolize not a clash but an encounter of cultures through food. Aziz,

like Karim, is well integrated into Italian society.

The imam Saladino is less conciliatory in his views of the West: he blindfolds himself to avoid witnessing its corruption.217 His reluctance to accept Western modes

become clear in a scene soon after his arrival: he refuses to sleep on a comfortable

mattress offered by Bepi, because as “il Maestro dice sempre: ‘un letto morbido è la terra

di Satana!”218 In spite of his level of devotion to Allah, according to most of the members, Saladino is too young to solve the problems of the Islamic community.

Moreover, he does does not master Arabic too well. In the community, only Bepi considers the imam the right person to lead the group. Indeed, he literally follows all of the imam’s ideas.

Ala is a Kurdish man, who always wears a traditional dress composed of a shalwar (a long pair of baggy trousers) and a large belt or sash tied around his waist. He

216 “You are very lucky, brother.” 217 When Saladino arrives, he is blindfolded. “Per questo io chiudo sempre gli occhi, per non vedere la corruzione dell’Occidente.” 218 "The Master always says: a soft bed is the land of Satan!” 162

has no roof over his head, no family, no country, “Io sono curdo e un Curdo non può tornare può solo e sempre andare.”219 The figure of Ala mirrors the filmmaker’s life.

Kamkari, like Ala, “can only and always go.” As he states in a Skype interview, “Sono un curdo-iraniano. Non posso scappare dalla mia identità, dalla storia della mia famiglia.”

The pizza meeting starts with Saladino’s solution to reclaim the mosque and to

punish Zara. He was inspired by reading the Quran the night before, and proposes his

punishment solution as a guessing game. The imam, who does not know the

corresponding Italian for “stoning,” starts by describing the concept as “quella cosa molto

divertente” (“that very funny thing”) done in a meidan (square), and with the subject

riding a hamar (donkey). During the discussion, Aziz’s wife arrives with a “bea”220

pizza. Her comments, including the one directed at the young imam (“Ah, you are the

new one”) are made in Venetian dialect and open another discussion on how women

should be protected and saved. This prompts the beginning of a misogynist discussion

that results in the imam’s conclusion that the Prophet’s words must be honored to punish

Zara, who in his eyes represents not only an antagonist but the sinful flesh.

In the film’s narrative, parodic behaviors and performances of the multicultural

characters are the result of a process of adaptation and creolization.

219 “I am Kurdish, and a Kurd cannot return, he can only and always go.” 220 Venetian dialect for “bella,” goodlooking. 163

Pizza with Dates: A Creolized Italian-ism

L'italianità è un vestito che richiede

continuamente tagli e adattamenti.

--Igiaba Scego221

As Zygmunt Bauman remarks, there are two kinds of communities, that “of life

and fate whose members … ‘live together in an indissoluble attachment,’ and

communities that are ‘welded together solely by ideas or various principles.’” Of the two kinds, the small Islamic community in Venice reflects the second category “to which one is exposed in our variegated, polycultural world” (qtd. in Bauman and Vecchi 11).

Pitza e datteri shows that belonging and identity “are not secured by a lifelong

guarantee” (11), since they are negotiable and revocable. The identity of this post-modern subject, as Hall (1996) defines it, is neither fixed nor permanent. Identity is transformed

and reconstructed in many ways, becoming a “moveable feast” and

it is historically, not biologically, defined. The subject assumes different identities

at different times, identities which are not unified around a coherent “self.”

Within us are contradictory identities, pulling in different directions, so that our

identifications are continuously being shifted about. (598)

Aziz, Karim and Bepi embody the “post-modern subject” described by Hall, exposed to

adaptation and modification. While Aziz and Karim are adapting their lives according to

the new cultural environment, Bepi goes through much personal turmoil that disturbs his

identity and leaves him no reference point. Bepi assumes various identities adapting the

situation, not because of an awareness of a cultural change, but rather due to

221 “Italianness is a dress that continually requires cuts and adaptations,” http://incrocidicivilta.blogspot.com/2013/04/gabriella-kuruvilla-e-igiaba-scego.html 164

incompatibility with his own environment.

With reference to belonging and identity, the scene in the Venetian campo can be

analyzed in term of creolization. In considering African Americans in the novel White

Teeth by the English writer Zadie Smith, Thomas Matt underlines some aspects of the

characters creolization. He describes “creolization as an interpretative lens, or a way to

“read” cultural practices in order to increase understanding amongst various sects”

(15).222 He adds: “creolization is not merely a model for how cultures should behave, or

rebel, but a way to modify one’s view of the world; a ‘diffraction’ of closed lines of sight

into a wider, more open vision” (24). In the same way, our film characters are hybrid and

flexible, and they are reluctant to accept the new if it contradicts their own cultural

upbrimnging.

The film title, Pitza e datteri, is a verbal strategy aimed to representing two

different and opposite ideas of food culture. A similar food contrast has been described by the Algerian-Italian writer Amara Lakhous in Clash of Civilization Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio (2008). In the novel, Parviz, one of the characters, is Iranian and he hates pizza. He lives in Rome where he works as an assistant cook. According to the narrator, Amedeo, Parviz refuses to learn the secrets of Italian cooking. Like Parviz, the

characters sitting around the young imam are undergoing a creolization process they are

afraid to accept. In Lakous’s novel, Parviz really believes in keeping his memory alive

through the use of food, “Iranian cooking, with its spices and its smells, is all that’s left of

his memory” (29). Food conveys meaning, and “throughout history ... [it] has been the

primary way of initiating and maintaining social relationships” (Domzal & Kernan 5).

222 Matt’s words come from his analysis of the novel White Teeth written by the English writer Zadie Smith. Thomas Matt underlines some aspects of the characters and their creolization. 165

“Like a language, food articulates notions of inclusion and exclusion, of national pride

and xenophobia” (Bell and Valentine 168).

For Claude Levi-Strauss, food can be considered as a metaphor, and food-preparation as a language, “through which society unconsciously reveals its structure, unless – just as unconsciously – it resigns itself to using the medium to express

its contradictions” (1990: 495). For Levi-Strauss, food is a peculiar and important aspect

in reshaping and redefining identities. Following the same line of thoughts, Roland

Barthes suggests that food “signifies” and that it should be understood as “a system of communication” (1991: 107). Food is an “‘attitude,’ bound to certain usages, certain

‘protocol’” (2012: 28), it is related to certain behavior and it transmit a situation, it constitutes an information (2012). The relationship between cultural identity and food has been a particularly dense site of inquiry, so that it can be “argued that a nation’s diet maps colonialism and migration, trade and exploration, cultural exchange and boundary marking” (Sheridan 319). For Kamkari, pizza and dates have a strong ethnic connotation: they contain “a highly condensed social fact ... a marvelously plastic kind of collective

representation” with a “capacity to mobilize strong emotions” (Appadurai 494).

In the film, while pizza and dates appear only in a few scenes, their symbolism is

strongly attached to the entire narrative. Pizza and dates link to symbolic associations

with specific ethnic cultures and aspects of Western and Middle Eastern society. Ronda

L. Brulotte and Michael A. Di Giovine call foods “edible identities” and “edible

chronotopes”: “sensory space-time convergences” (2). For Mike Featherstone, in a

consumer culture, “the symbolic associations of goods may be utilised and renegotiated

to emphasise differences in lifestyles which demarcate social relationships” (Featherstone

166

8). In his Philosophy of Foods (2012), David M. Kaplan notes that food represents a metaphor, it carries pleasure, memories and desire but also alienation, “[i]t does not determine an identity, but it is a marker of identity” (18).

The pizza is framed in the meeting scene in the Venetian campo, showing also a kind of communitarian symbolism. The pizza represents pure Italianicity. The choice of pizza, instead of a specific regional specialty (such as the “baccalà mantecato alla veneziana,” whipped salted cod served on slices of bread or polenta), is driven by the intention to communicate Italianness. The “baccalà” could only convey a regional feature. This specific dish is also mentioned in a scene when Karim invites Saladino to his house. Karim’s wife, Mimina, clearly asserts that she has prepared “il baccalà mantecato,” Bepi’s favourite dish. In Consuming Geography, David Bell and Gill

Valentine (1997) attempt to ground theoretical debates about identity politics and issues of consumption through cuisine, which we are always inclined to associate with the category of national (their italic). In their analysis, the idea of food-nationalism equation is a contradiction, since the food “we think of as characterising a particular place always tell stories of movement and mixing, as ‘deconstructions’ of individual food histories”

(169).

The date appears in a scene where Bepi-Mustafà is completely alone. Arabic background music plays. Following Allah’s command in the Quran, Bebi is trying to eat the sacred fruit while breaking the fast. He is framed in a medium shot sitting at the kitchen table, staring at one at date, that he will never eat, and begs forgiveness to in

Venetian dialect “forgive me.” That is all the fanatic Bepi could eat. Bepi is fasting and

he is trying to avoid food, which is according to him “la seduzione di Satana” (“the

167

seduction of the Satan”). Consequently, according to what he says, he eats only one date

a day: “Io ormai ho chiuso, mangio solo un dattero al giorno.”223 The date is also the sign

of Bepi’s need to be part of a community. Rather than a form of interaction with the

other, the date represents for Bepi an ethnic food that can be seen as an adventure and an

“ethnic experience” (Domzal & Kernan, 1993). For Bepi, the date represents a way of

“wanting to be” more than a feeding substance, it involves a symbolic mechanism for

identity formation and affirmation. In her analysis of representations of food in popular

culture (2000), Susan Sheridan analyzes the fascination of the “food of others.” As she

puts it, “the food of Others serves a variety of purposes – practical ... commercial ... and

fantasy (new materials to dream on, desirable because they evoke the exotic/adventurous,

or because they are associated with class distinction)” (328). Humorously, what Bepi

really enjoys is the “baccalà mantecato” that Karim’s wife, a foreigner, prepares.

Pitza not Pizza

The importance of food is comparable to the importance of languages. Food like language has strong connections and both “vary according to factors such as gender, age, or situational context, or even lifestyle. There are vast differences both in the food-related behavior of different cultures and in the languages of the world” (Gerhardt et al. 3).

Language also plays an important role in this movie, set in Venice, the cultural gateway

to the Orient. The heterogeneous space that Édouard Glissant calls tout-monde has its

223 “I am done. I eat only one date a day.” The date (called tamr in Arabic) is a sacred fruit consumed during Ramadan.223 The prophet Muhammad ordered their consumption when breaking the ritual obligation of the fast. The date is considered a symbol of triumph, abundance and faith. The date palm is often cited in the Quran (19 mentions) as an example of the beneficence of Divine Providence towards humanity. 168

application also in language. The title “pitza e datteri” morevover indicates an orthographic awareness that hints at the kind of spelling errors an immigrant can make.

The pronunciation of the Italian word pizza includes an affricative sound [ts] which is approximated by spelling the word as pitza.

The language spoken in Pitza e datteri is an accented Italian language, the lingua franca used between charcters of multiple identities. Not only all émigré characters speak the national language with an accent in their pronunciation, but also the Italian characters speak the regional Venetian dialect most of the time. Even Karim’s daughter, a second-generation migrant, speaks dialect with no foreign accent. The same young imam, coming from Afghanistan speaks Italian better than Arabic. Therefore, Kamkari’s film is doubly accented: by “the displacement of the filmmaker … [his] aesthetics, politics …”

(Naficy 2006:42) and by the accented speech of the characters.

The film contains only a few short scenes spoken in a Arabic - the arrival of the imam and the praying scenes. The use of foreign dialogues in the praying scenes or the uttering of some sentences in the characters' mothertongues, which sometimes remain incomprehensible, can be seen not only as a marker of otherness, but of a new Italian reality. The fidelity to other languages in the movie is a way of respecting “the cultural

‘aura’ and the individual voices of the actors, [the] … naturalistic depiction of the characters” (Wahl 338).

In this context, therefore, the choice of using mostly the Italian language needs to be interpreted under a different aspect, and not just because the film is essentially for an

Italian audience. While the other films treated here focus primarily on a specific ethnic

group, such as the Sri-Lankan community or the Romani people, Kamkari’s film frames

169

migrants in their general complexity. As a matter of fact, the use of Italian language by

the multicultural group is a necessary vehicle of interaction.

In film, issues of self-representation arise in relation to language. As a powerful

symbol of collective identity, language operates within hierarchies of power. In analyzing

the Hollywood system, Ella Shohat and Robert Stam show how a power system tells its

own stories and those of other nations always in English, not only to Americans but also

to the others. Hollywood “came to incarnate a linguistic hubris bred of empire,

[pr]esuming to speak for others in its native idiom” (36). In contrast, Kamkari’s film

“comes to incarnate a linguistic” accented mix, without speaking for others, showing the auspicious cohabitation between “pizza and dattero.” Intentionally used, the national language shows a commonality between multicultural characters, and has the function of

creating solidarity among multiple identities. As the filmmaker claims in an interview,

the use of Italian language,

era una necessità della storia. L'etichetta di musulmani racchiude varie etnie e

varie culture e nazionalità che vivono in Occidente. Per me era importante

mostrare questo mosaico di culture. Tanto è vero che questo gruppo di musulmani

che si incontra per pregare ogni giorno, hanno solo una lingua in comune che è

l'italiano.224

The importance of language cannot be undervalued. In his article on polyglot films as

genre, Chris Wahl writes that “[e]ither the actors are cast according to their linguistic

224 “[It] was a necessity because of the narrative. The Muslim label encompasses various ethnic groups and cultures and nationalities living in the West. It was important for me to show this mosaic of cultures. So much so that this group of Muslims who meet to pray every day have only one language in common that is Italian,” Arianna Finos, "Pitza e datteri", l'Islam di pace di Kamkari: "Si può sorridere dei propri problemi,” La Repubblica, 27 maggio, 2015. 170

abilities or the linguistic logic of the film script is adapted to the abilities of the actors. In both cases the choice of the film languages and how they are spoken in the film (e.g. with heavy accents) is anchored in the narration” (335). Especially in accented cinema, “the characters’ accents are often ethnically coded ... more often than not, the actor’s ethnicity, the character’s ethnicity, and the ethnicity of the star’s persona coincide” (Naficy 24).

Kamkari’s choice of using one language, but accented, reflects an aspect of the contemporary Italian framework, where multiculturalism is not a marginal element anymore.

The approach to national identity as seen by Benedict Anderson’s notion of

“imagined communities” (44) is most compelling to define the linguistic community in

Pitza e datteri. The promotion of a codified language is a central part of building a nation state. The linguistic representation of Pitza e datteri, filtered by cultural diversity, can represent the new sound - an accented national language - in a community less imagined and more real. In fact, the concept of imagined communities is rooted on real, perceived and experienced situations. The notion of imagined community helps their members interact more effectively with each other and with the environment.

The Color of Pomegranates and Barthesian Memory

In Roland Barthes’ treatment of the “Winter Garden Photograph,” in Camera

Lucida, the punctum does not refer to a detail, but to time itself, the time past. “This new punctum, no longer of form but of intensity, is Time” (96), a pure representation, a

“lacerating emphasis of the noeme (“that-has-been”) (96). For Kamkari, a picture of a pomegranate elicited a similar effect.

171

Our discussion took a fortuite direction as the result of a picture of pomegranate

which I sent to him from Istanbul. “È un frutto magico,” he told me, “mi affascina da

morire, sembra un’opera d’arte, un gioiello ... guardo i semi uno per uno e quasi mi

spiace mangiarli ... Sai che è un frutto tipico della mia terra in Kurdistan? Il migliore

viene dalla montagna.”225 The pomegranate, like the sight and scent of Proust's

madeleine, is the trigger for nostalgia, “an emotional upheaval which is related to the working of memory” (Starobinsky 90),

Mi ricorda tanto mia nonna. Da bambino andavo a casa sua e sotto il “kursi”

mangiavo melograno. Il kursi è una struttura di legno, coperto con un grandissimo

piumino e sotto viene messo il carbone. Tutta la famiglia siede intorno ad esso

durante l’inverno con i piedi sotto la struttura e il corpo coperto con il piumino

fino al collo ...Mia nonna Alia, faceva anche il succo di melograno e cucinava

tanti cibi buono con quel succo e usava la buccia per colorare il tappeto … Con

quella foto mi hai riportato alla mia infanzia.226

The pomegranate represents a fragment of his past, “a tissue of memories” (Guneratne

168), something that strikes the filmmaker’s sense, but that also,

revives in the imagination all our former life and all the "associated" images with

which it is connected. This "memorative sign" is related to a partial presence

225 “It's a magical fruit, it fascinates me to death, it looks like a work of art, a jewel ... there I look the seeds one by one and I almost regret eating them ..Do you know that it is typical fruit of my land in Kurdistan? The best comes from the mountains and can even weigh half a kilo.” Conversation by email, Re: “Memorie” Sept. 28, 2018 226 “It reminds me my grandmother. As a child I used to go to her house and ate pomegranate under a "kursi" which is a wooden structure, under which a charcoal brazier is placed. The kursi is then covered with a very large duvet to retain the heat. During the winter, the whole family sit around the kursi putting their feet under the structure and the body covered with the duvet up to the neck …My grandmother Alia, also made pomegranate juice and cooked many good foods with that juice and used the peel to dye carpets ...That picture brought me back to my childhood.” Conversation by email “memorie,” September, 27, 2018. 172

which causes one to experience, with pleasure and pain, the imminence and the

impossibility of complete restoration of this universe which emerges fleetingly

from oblivion. (Starobinsky 93)

Both Barthes and Kamkari recognize the punctum of time in a photograph, that revives something “that had been,” and now has its place only in his memory. There is a fundamental difference however. Kamkari does not succumb to to sweetness of nostalgia, as Barthes does (“I gradually mov[ed] back in time with her, looking for the truth of the face I had loved,” 67). Instead, Kamkari does not feel melancholy for his lost time. For the filmmaker, “nostalgia is [not] a rebellion against the modern idea of time, the time of

history and progress” (Boym 452). As he claims, “non ho la nostalgia del passato anche

se sono una persona molto nostalgica (piuttosto per i colori, luci, profumi e ...) ma vengo

da un passato molto crudele ed ingiusto che mi impedisce di ricordarlo attraverso la

nostalgia.227 Nostalgia intertwines memory and loss, pain and grief. It is a word that

comes from the Greek nostos, to return home and algia, grief, pain, distress.228 “It’s a

feeling of “painful condition - thus, a painful yearning to return home” (Davis 446). For

Kamkari it is a painful condition, that comes with the acceptance of a reality that cannot

be modified, but it can be used to create stories. He specifies that he is a “son of the war.”

Thus, “scrivere è stata la mia salvezza, una terapia per liberarmi dei fantasmi che mi

227 “I do not miss the past, even though I am a very nostalgic person (but with regard to colors, lights, scents) ... I come from a very cruel and unjust past which does not allow me to remember it with nostalgia.” Conversation via email October 11, 2018 228 “Originally in reference to the Swiss and said to be peculiar to them and often fatal, whether by its own action or in combination with wounds or disease” Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/nostalgia 173

hanno perseguitato in tutta la vita. Quando vivi una realtà molto più grande di te non hai altra scelta che raccontarla.”229

Focusing on twentieth-century European exiles, Svetlana Boym considers how nostalgia operates in modern global culture. She describes nostalgia as a “yearning for a different time - the time of our childhood, the slower rhythms of our dreams” (452). For her, nostalgia is vital, a “diasporic intimacy” that turns into the works of exilic artists, becoming a sort of “homemaking in the text and artwork, as well as a strategy of survival” (456). The impossibility of returning home “is both a personal tragedy and an enabling force” (456), and so consequently “nostalgia can be a poetic creation, an individual mechanism of survival, a countercultural practice and not let others

‘prefabricate’ it for us” (456). Nostalgia and both private and public memory are essential parts in Kamkari’s life: “la memoria, quella personale mia e quella storica del mio popolo

è la base del mio lavoro.”230 In fact, “home” does not mirror Kamkari’s feeling of nostalgia for his homeland, but “home” represents the memory of an entire group of people, especially of that of “a pariah minority” like the Kurds (Rubin 2003).

The Kurd Who Never Turns Back

In the movie, the feeling of nostalgia for an imagined home is betrayed by a specific punctum, a soccer jersey, which well expresses the yearning for a land, a place.

229 “[W]riting was my salvation, a therapy to free myself from the ghosts that persecuted me throughout my life. When you experience a reality much bigger than you, you have no other choice but to tell it.” Conversation via email october 11, 2018 230 “Memory, my personal one and the one of my people are the basis of my work.” Conversation via email. October 11, 2018. 174

Kamkari is Kurdish, like Ali, the film character who “non può tornare può solo e sempre andare.”231 Ali wears a Brazilian soccer jersey that contains two important elements, a handwritten “Kurdistan” word on the back of the jersey, and a date, 1923, on the front side. Kurdistan literally means "land of the Kurds.” As a geographical-political place it does not exist on our formalized map of the world; however, it exists in the minds of people. 1923 is the date of the foundation of the Kingdom of Kurdistan, a state proclaimed following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but never formally recognized.

“Despite the frequent use of the term ‘Kurdistan,’ only in Iran and Iraq does the name have an official definition. In Iran, Kurdistan is a province, albeit one that ecompasses just one-eight of the area in Iran inhabited by Kurds” (Rubin 296).

In her article “Kurdish Cinema as a Transnational Discourse,” Suncem Koçer writes that since Kurds were dispossessed of their political rights, have created an imaginary homeland dreamed from abroad. They

have declared themselves a unified nation mostly through cultural production in

diaspora. The conditions for the imagining of a unified nationhood in diaspora

over the past few decades are a product of the augmented malleability of nation-

state boundaries, the increasing circulation of media, and the decreasing

monopoly of autonomous states over the ways in which subjectivities are

imagined. (475)

Kurdish films have obtained international visibility. The work of Kurdish artists living in a Western world “exemplifies transnational imaginations informed by the existing discourses of the nation” (Koçer 475). In his History of Iranian Cinema (2012), Naficy

231 “[He] cannot turn back, he can only and always proceed.” 175

has defined this kind of cinema “multiplex cinema,” which is determined by “the

fragmentation of nations and the displacements of people and by worldwide financial and

media convergences and digitization” (vol. 4, 233). It is a genre of films which “embed

multiplicity in production practices, stylistic features, and filming locations and they

benefit from globalized, multiplexed, and networked distribution and exhibition” (vol. 4,

233). As Naficy writes, “art-house filmmakers turned their cameras either inward to make

“refugee films” and “ethnic films” or outward to make “transnational films” or

“extraterritorial films (vol. 4, 237).

.

A Performed Semi-Humoristic Ummah232

Through a somehow misleading title, Pitza e datteri shows a fictive mixed

community embedded in an Italian context and living according to the Islamic faith. The

Venetian immigrant micro-community is a ummah, a religious community, adapted to the semi-hilarious context of the film. In his research on Islam, Frederick Mathewson Danny writes that the term ummah covers a variety of realities (1977). While there is no simple definition, he points out that “the most important is its designation of the Muslims as a community in a special sense” (26). In a multicultural and interconnected world, religion becomes a common element in sharing culture and a way to bring people together. The sacred has become a collective experience. However, the shifting from a place to another,

marks a social change and a different approach to the religion sphere. The Italian social

,is an Arabic word meaning “community” or “nation”. In the context of Islam ( ﺔﻣأ :Ummah (Arabic“ 232 the word ummah is used to mean the diaspora or “Community of the Believers” (ummat al-mu'minin), and thus the whole Muslim world.” The Oxford Dictionary reports the meaning “umma (also ummah)” as “The whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion,” The Collins Dictionary reports “ummah: the Muslim community throughout the world.” 176

and religious map has progressively changed within the last years, becoming gradually a

multi-religious space, “[r]eligions are ... subjected to the processes of hybridization,

contamination, métissage” (Zannoni 131).

The film shows how the small ummah, a mixed community, depends on shared

social assumptions. In some cases they are misrepresented (Bepi-Mustafà is the perfect

example) or performed only to show a specific marker (Aziz and his wife). Situated on the margins of his society, Bepi is a misfit who uses religion to define his identity by

sharing ideologies, rituals, emotions. By being involved in a collective belief, he tries to

avoid his insecurity that is the result of his personal dissatisfaction and frustrations. He

uses religion to find a motivation in his life. As we learn from the movie, as a child Bepi

had been abandoned by his father, who left him and his mother in a financial predicament. His father was a telemarketer on a TV home-shopping channel. After deceiving many buyers, he fled from Venice to Uruguay where he established a religious sect and became a billionaire. Bepi lives in a historical palace (set Armenian College), subject to judicial eviction. Except for the mixed religious community, he has no other friends. While his need for affection is noticeable in the intense relation he tries to establish with the Islamic group, his sense of frustration is visible in his desire to use extreme actions, such as interpreting each act of the Quran as a unique mode to find a solution to solve the community’s problem: stoning, burning, exploding, everything

extreme to punish “Satan” (as he calls the hairdresser Zara) works for him.

Saladino represents a model for Bepi. The rise of the imam as super-hero can also

be seen as a desire for masculinity. As Ninna Nyberg Sørensen writes, studying Central

American migrants, there are two possible representations of the migrant woman or man.

177

She affirms, “[t]o be a migrant superhero is in other words strongly connected to a

masculine universe” (14). The woman migrant instead represents the “anti-heroine [who] rather than a contributor to development, [is] a woman out of her domestic place”

(Sørensen 15). While Saladino represents a super-hero, Zara embodies the evil. Bepi is in love with Zara, but he refuses to admit it: “Lei ha rapito la tua anima,” Saladino says.233

In Violence and the Sacred, René Girard points out that sexual desire, like

violence “accumulates energy that sooner or later bursts forth, causing tremendous

havoc” (36-37). As the scholar points out, to avoid escalation of violence, the method

used is what he calls the “scapegoat mechanism,” where an arbitrary subject becomes the one to blame,

any community that has fallen prey to violence ... hurls itself blindly into the

search for a scapegoat. Its members instinctively seek an immediate and violent

cure for the onslaught of unbearable violence and strive desperately to convince

themselves that all their ills are the fault of a lone individual who can be easily

disposed of. (84)

Bepi’s mimetic violence is reinforced by Saladino’s vision of the Quran, and Zara embodies the scapegoat to blame for not allowing the Islamic community to have a place

to pray. Bepi-Mustafà, a converted Italian, is an ambiguous figure. This character depicts

those who have a violent interpretation of Islam and do not really need a religion in a

spiritual sense. Bepi’s adaptation and misinterpretation of the Islamic religion is not only

the result of a personal view, but also the sign of his instability. As a matter of fact, at the

end of the film, the viewer discovers that he is already worshipping a new faith.

233 After having discovered him in Zara's house, Saladino tells him: “She has stolen your soul.” 178

Bepi’s extreme attachment to cultural and religious practice is introduced through humor. This ummah is a humoristic one. As reported in a long-exchanged conversation,

the filmmaker explains that,

l'uso dell'umorismo nella narrazione era necessario per affrontare un argomento

delicato e drammatico e per portare lo spettatore a riflettere senza panico ... Un

argomento che è stato molto carico, oppresso dalla paura. Volevo dare allo

spettatore la giusta distanza per trattare l'argomento con autoironia, perché penso

che anche noi come musulmani, come comunità che vive in Occidente,

dovremmo iniziare a guardare i nostri problemi con un po 'di distacco e con un

sorriso!234

The closer formulation to define the mixed community in Pitza e datteri is the one drawn

on the work of Alberto Melucci who explores the concept of collective identity in the

light of “contemporary new social movements” (1995:42). In his article, Melucci

explains that by “collective identity” a process is intended in which there is a

“constructing action system” (44), which “involves cognitive definitions about ends,

means and the field of action” (44). He also points out the significance of the emotional

involvement of actors: passions and feelings, love and hate, faith and fear (45). The

mixed Venetian community represents a fluid concept affected by environmental and

cultural changes. The commonality between them is embodied by a constructed idea of

234 “The use of humour into the narrative was necessary to deal with a delicate and dramatic subject, and to bring the viewer to reflect without panic ... An argument that has been very charged, weighed down by fear. I wanted to give the viewer the right distance to treat the subject with self-irony, because I think that even we as Muslims, as a community that lives in the West, should start looking at our problems with a bit of detachment and with a smile!” Kamkari, Fariborz. Skype Personal interview, March 23, 2017. 179

religion, and theirs, as a community, is defined by a common vision enacted through “a

set of rituals, practices, and cultural artefacts” (Melucci 44).

Besides being humorous, the community performs its role as ummah. Ironically,

in their (performed) definition of what they are, Karim and Aziz establish what they are

not. Their actions and attitude are the result of a performance. The scene in which

Saladino visits Karim shows a woman (Karim’s wife Mimina) is an example. Both

husband and wife are performing a specific role to shouw their attachment to the Quran.

Similarly, Aziz, who in the analyzed scene wants to show to have power over his wife

Cesarina, imposing her to go back to the kitchen.235 Their use of a specific language is a

means to accomplish certain kinds of acts. (Aziz to his wife: “Tu, donna, torna subito in cucina;” Karim to his wife: “Va bene, donna, basta così. Adesso vai in cucina e porta il

pranzo quando è pronto”).236

Showing to be perfect Muslims is a performance. Their utterances impose a

command. The command causes action. In his seminal work How to do things with

Words (1962), J. L. Austin’s establishes the theory of speech acts. Austin distinguishes

different levels of speech act: locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.

Drawing upon these distinctions, we can analyze the characters’ behaviors performed in

the film according to an “illocutionary act which has a certain force in saying something”

(120) and a “perlocutionary act which is the achieving of certain effects by saying

something” (120), and we can add, by doing something.

235 “A woman belongs to the kitchen” is a gender stereotype that is still common. The representation of a woman as a keeper of traditions and values of the house, is a key point in the Italian-American literature. Read https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/26/gender.lifeandhealth 236 “You, woman, return immediately to the kitchen;” “All right, woman, that's enough. Now go to the kitchen and bring lunch when it's ready.” 180

The notion of an illocutionary act (98–102) are acts such as warning, threatening, imposing an order, asking a question, announcing an intention, expressing a wish, making a request. The illocutionary act focuses its action on the listener 's being conscious of the utterance and comprehending it in a certain way, and not on the her/his reaction to the utterance (116–117). The perlocutionary act instead depends on the listener 's reaction.

To give some examples, through a debate the speaker may convince the listener - such as the case of Saladino who interprets the Quran, and Bepi as a listener who takes each word as true. In the scenes with Azim's wife and Karim's wife, the audience witnesses an illocutionary act which in some way forces or invites a response or sequel: the command

“go back to the kitchen!” used by Aziz leads to a perlocutionary act which is Cesarina’s reaction. However, there is an aspect to analyze: while both the speakers are enacting an illocutionary act, the recipients of the verbal command (the wives) have a different reaction. Aziz's wife goes back to the kitchen complaining about her husband's reaction, using a Venetian expression "va in mona.” In a subsequent scene Aziz appears with a bruised face and a soft cervical collar around his neck: the result of a fight with his wife.

Not only does Cesarina not listen to him, but she also eventually attacks him. An opposite reaction appears to occur in the scene with Karim’s wife. The locutionary act -- “that’s enough” and "go to the kitchen!” -- produces a perlocutionary sequel with a positive ending: Karim orders to do something and Mimina obeys. The result of Karim’s imposing an order is at the end a performance, an artifice made up by him and his wife.

The audience, clearly aware of the absurdity of some actions, becomes conscious of the fictionality visible through the character itself who is performing a role within a role.

181

The performed actions the spectator has seen in Pitza e datteri represent social processes that can include an examination of the power in shaping the encounters between different subjects and cultures. In this regard, Kamkari’s work creates an attempt to translate into a film-narrative the link between subjects and identity formations, the connection between multiple spaces and experiences. The film, with its mix of cultural identities can be also seen as a key to examine some issues in the critical process of representations, and the development of an inclusive cinema culture in Italy. Therefore, as Enrica Capussotti (2009) points out, “it is in the interstices created by natives’ self-reflections and migrants’ self-representations that we can look for the narration of encounters and contaminations capable of including questions of power and access to economic, social and cultural resources” (66). Thus, the awkward friendship among different characters and the coexistence of pizza and dates can represent the new face of

Italian society.

182

CHAPTER 4: RIHANNA, LEMONS AND A BONFIRE

Jonas Carpignano’s Mediterranea and A Ciambra

Mediterranea - Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Rihanna and the Peroni Beer’

EXT. NEIGHBORHOOD – STAIRWAY – NIGHT

Low-key lighting. A medium close up of a young man (Ayiva) walking alone

opens the scene. The sound of music can be heard. The hand-held camera,

focused constantly on the back of the character, stops on a staircase that leads

to an apartment. The subject, entering a house, is being filmed by a camera

fixed in one position. CUT TO a successive shot of Ayiva in medium close-up.

INT. APARTMENT - NIGHT (Continuous).

A group of black people is seated, listening to music. A young woman with a

Keffiyeh head-scarf jumps on Ayiva, who takes her in his arms. Soon

afterwards, he starts shaking hands and hugging his friends, who are framed by

the camera in a medium close-up. The hand-held camera follows all the

movements of Ayiva interacting with his friends.

The scene is characterized in its entirety by dynamic movements. Except for a

medium wide shot used for the first scene soon after the arrival of Ayiva, the

sequence is mostly filmed in medium close-up. The hand-held camera is

constantly on Ayiva and his friends. CLOSE-UP of each face.

183

The soundtrack obeys the same dynamic, as the music quikly moves from one

song to another. Background sounds and noises become musical motifs.

Rihanna’s S&M is the soundtrack that dominates the scene.

The hand-held camera moves quickly. CLOSE-UP of Ayiva sitting on a sofà,

asking for a Peroni beer.

CUT TO a medium close up of the girl with the keffiyeh entering from the right

side. She is opening a bottle of beer with her teeth.

The sequence ends with a diminuendo. Silence falls over the group. The camera

frames two young men, in a three-quarter shot, entering the door. The whole

scene is characterized by dark lighting.

The scene described is from Jonas Carpignano’s first feature film Mediterranea

(2015) which tells the story of Ayva, a migrant worker from Burkina Faso, and his journey across vast stretches of desert and sea to find shelter on the Italian peninsula.237

It is a work that grows out of personal experience. The filmmaker bases his film on

a narrative provided by the Burkinabe Koudous Seihon, the leading actor who plays

himself. In order to experience the situation faced by Africans with a marginally legal

status, Carpignano decided to visit Seihon’s family in Burkina Faso, retracing the latter’s

migrant steps of his migration through North Africa and across the Mediterranean.238

237 Rosarno, a town near the western coast of Calabria Region, is the place where Ayiva and Abas arrive. Carpignano uses Rosarno as a specific location since in 2010 race riots erupted after two African workers were wounded. Hundreds of migrants, mostly from Africa, blamed racism and attacked residents. 238 Zax, David. “The Backstory Of ‘Mediterranea,’ A Timely Film About Migrants In Europe,” https://www.fastcompany.com/3053848/the-backstory-of-mediterranea-a-timely-film-about-migrants-in- europe 184

The story the filmmaker tells is a bleak one, awash with subtle prejudices and

deeply nested hostilities. Throughout the film the work of his hand-held camera is

mesmerizing, deeply reminiscent of the early films of the Dogme ’95 movement, but with

the intimacy of a television reality show.

The Story

Filmed between Southern Italy and the Mauritania desert, from a production

perspective Mediterranea is a transnational film. It is a result of collaboration between

the Italian production company Good Films and a network of companies from the USA,

Germany and France.239

The narration is based on the harrowing journey of two close friends Ayiva

(Koudous Seihon) and Abas (Alassane Sy) from Burkina Faso through Algeria, Libya,

and across the Mediterranean Sea, to find a new life in Italy. After their vessel overturns

in a storm, they are rescued and taken to the southern coast of the Italian Peninsula. The

arrival in Southern Italy is the end of a dream. Like hundreds of other migrants, they try

to escape the harsh state of poverty they have to face, hoping for a better life. However,

reaching of the Promised Land “Italie” does not really fulfill the dream: Ayiva has to face

racial discrimination, living in a fragile existence in desolate bidonvilles, while earning

some money from orange picking and working for a family, the Fondacaros, who in some

way welcome him. Exploitation and lurking threats will be part of the new immigrant’s

condition.

239 Mediterranea was premiered in 2015 at “La Semaine de la Critique,” a section of the Cannes Film Festival that specifically focuses on new talents. 185

‘Rihanna and the Peroni Beer’

The establishment of a new Italian populist government in Italy has been

accompanied by a rise in racist sentiment, especially against refugees and immigrants

from Africa. The growing hostility, anger and the “who’s interested in these people,

anyway?” attitude are made visible in the film Mediterranea ın more ways than one.240

Especially effective to this end is the brilliant use of the camera: the image in one scene

engenders a feeling of inquisitiveness on the part of the viewer who is given the illusion

of entering the small apartment not merely as an observer but as an intruder looking in

the private lives of micro-communities gathered in a small, and apparently safe place.

The episode of ‘Rihanna and the Peroni Beer,’ described from the arrival of Ayiva in the apartment to the moment his departure, occurs around the midpoint of the film.

This punctum seems to comprise the entire essence of Mediterranea as it highlights important themes that can be analyzed through two symbolic fragments characterized by

different sounds.241 Their relevance will become evident in the following pages.

The viewer follows Ayva entering the apartment wherechatter is interspersed with

background music. Any dialogue between characters is part of the background noise. The

space where the black community gathers allows the filmmaker to draw attention to

important details he wishes the spectator to witness. Carpignano always frames only

essential elements, avoiding shots filled with unnecessary details, that are irrelevant to the

story and divert the viewer’s attention. The hand-held camera, which is persistently on

240 “Who’s interested in these people, anyway?” is a question borrowed from the film The Conversation (F. Ford Coppola. 1974). It is asked by Stan (John Cazale) Harry’s assistant (Gene Hackman) while he is waiting inside a van packed with electronic gear. 241 Michel Chion asserts that “The naturalist conception of sound continues to infuse real experience and critical discourse so completely that it has remained unnoticed by those who have referred to it and critiqued this same transparency on the level of the image” (93). 186

Ayiva and his friends, frames each face in such a way that it reminds the viewer that the subject is an outsider, coded by others in the community as black, consigned, in a sense, to a peripheral space. The crowded apartment in which the local community of

Ghanaians, Nigerians, and Burkinabes gather seems to be a claustrophobic space. Sandra

Ponzanesi reminds us that “these zones of marginalization and exclusion, heterotopias or non-places, actually become places of semi-belonging,” (678) where it can be possible to evoke or recreate a familiar, left-behind world.

The primary tool to define the community’s limits is marked by different languages. A community is also defined “as a political, geographical, religious or social entity” (Schafer 215). In this specific case, there is a further element which is represented by musics.242 As a matter of fact, the African enclave can also be marked as an “acoustic community.”243 The scene reveals a collective identity specifically marked by soundscape. The interaction between sounds evokes the importance of the relationship between audio, visual, and cultural meaning. Adding value, claims Michael Chion, “in the case of sound-image synchronism … [means to forge] an immediate and necessary relationship between something one sees and something one hears” (5),244 and the

242 According to George Lipsitz, music can create ritual practices and new spaces, and it operates as a site for collectivity and mutuality, “[t]hrough common costumes and collective synchronized motion it transforms individuals into a community” (204). 243 The term is used by the Canadian composer of interdisciplinary works, R. Murray Schafer, who also coined the word “soundscape.” Another definition comes from the composer, Barry Truax (1984: 58), who defines the concept of “acoustic communication.” According to Truax an acoustic community “may be defined as any soundscape in which acoustic information plays a pervasive role in the lives of the inhabitants (no matter how the commonality of such people is understood). Therefore, the boundary of the community is arbitrary and may be as small as a room of people, a home or building, or as large as an urban community, a broadcast area, or any other system of electroacoustic communication. In short, it is any system within which acoustic information is exchanged.” 244 In analyzing the relation between sound and image, Chion explains how they turn into one another in the spectator's perception. This change takes place due to the "audio-visual contract", wherein, "the two perceptions mutually influence each other ... lending each other their respective properties by contamination and projection" (9). Chion asserts that sound "adds value" to the image. 187

scholar reminds us that sound in cinema is considered “primarily vococentric” (5),

meaning that it privileges voices over other sounds. Films made by punctuated

filmmakers, similar to those of accented cinema, “equally stress the oral, the vocal, and

the musical – that is, accents, intonations, voices, music, which also demarcate individual

and collective identities” (Naficy 24-25). The demarcation of a collective identity is

clearly visible in this scene, which represents also a key to understand the broader

interactions in the rest of the film.

The background music is brought to prominence both by the accompaniment of

dance and the pulsating rhythm of the music including a song by the megastar pop icon

Rihanna,245 featured indirectly as a TV program showing the singer’s music video.

Carpignano here demonstrates just how crucial the role of media is “articulating the dispersed members of the nation to the centers of symbolic power” (Morley 105).

However, while the sense of unity can be maintained or created through narrowcast and local forms of TV, which are instrumental in reinforcing cultural identities across geographic and national borders, in the case of Rihanna, the performance is being broadcast by Italian national television.246 In the Italian context, the pop-star is not

associated with a specific ethnic group, while for the African community she emphasizes

ethnicity, territoriality and even female power. Following what David Morley remarks for

245 Carpignano expresses gratitude for her collaboration in the closing credits. 246 Hamid Naficy (1993) offers a relevant argument on the topic: “Mass media typically are thought to be homogenizing agents, resulting in loss of ethnic identity and hastening of assimilation. This study, focusing particularly on liminality and the middle phase, demonstrates the power of the media to enhance and consolidate subcultural identities based on location, ethnicity, race, class, religion, politics, language, and nationality. It also shows that the relationship between mainstream culture and subcultures is fraught with ambivalence and contestation on the one hand and enrichment and assimilation on the other” (xvi). Another insightful work of the importance of vision and image comes from Ron Burnett, Cultures of Vision: Images, Media, and the Imaginary (1995), “How do communities share the knowledge of their individual members? Do video images encourage people of differing genders, class, and ethnic back- grounds to meet and discuss issues of common concern?” (279). 188

a different context, in the scene, “the television set is placed within the symbolic center of

the ... home, thus transgressing its outer boundaries, it can serve either to enhance or to

disturb viewers’ symbolic sense of community” (1999:162). Social events are turned into

mass experiences; they are links that connect the peripheral to the center. Rihanna’s

television performance now prompts a debate over her talent compared to Floby’s

This conversation, in fact, marks another specific cultural - geographical limitation.247

The African girl with the Keffiyeh head-scarf claims that Floby cannot be compared to

the pop-star Rihanna. Her identification with the American-Barbadian born singer, by approving the Afro-American locution - “Rihanna is my sister!”- expresses the necessity to bound cultural identities, black-world symbolism, and black female power. Rihanna gains trans-cultural status as a global icon belonging to the larger, more empowered

“black” community within global popular culture, her presence, therefore, elevates the

mood of the otherwise marginalized immigrants.248 As stated by Carpignano in an

interview:

Rihanna was always going to be the pop music in the film. But it was

fundamentally important for me to have pop music in the film because it’s sort of

symptomatic of the dissolving of boundaries that’s happening because of social

media. We’re making a film that’s about the combining of cultures, the creation

247 A Burkinabe artist, Floby, sings in French and Mòoré languages, and his music uses African sounds. 248 In his article "Music and Identity," Simon Frith makes two main claims, the first one is that “music is mobile,” which means it is a process and an experience. The second argument that Firth makes is that the musical process is based both on the ethnic and the aesthetic. He claims that "the issue is not how a particular piece of music or a performance reflects the people, but how it produces them, how it creates and constructs an experience - a musical experience, an aesthetic experience - that we can only make sense of by taking on both a subjective and a collective identity" (109). 189

of a new culture in southern Italy. And one of the things that’s become the

common denominator is popular culture.249

Rihanna' s music reminds us that popular culture, even if it is largely an export of

consumerist culture that flows out of technologically developed countries to the world at

large, re-situates ideas of otherness. In describing some aspect of the film, Carpignano

points out -- and I paraphrase -- that using pop music was a way to highlight the

globalized culture of our everyday.250 As he remarks, “pop stars exist in a different

space, one not necessarily tied to a patriotism. So, Rihanna is everyone’s.”251

Mimicry and Self-Directed Irony

The sense of a shared community, however, can be different even among

Africans. While the woman who speaks these lines, “Rihanna is my sister,” symbolically

allies herself with a famous American Barbadian artist, Ayiva’s best friend Abas teases

her, “but I don't think she's your sister the way Floby is my brother.”

While Rihanna -- originally from Barbados like Carpignano’s mother -- represents a powerful international symbol for black women, Floby, who is considered by Abas as far superior to Rihanna, is relatively unknown (“I don’t like Floby” - “I don’t care about him” - “Who is this guy”). In some way Abas is clarifying that she is culturally different, suggesting in her stead an African artist, Floby, whose appeal is more regional than global. With a sense of irony, he undercuts the idea of race through the idea of West

African ethnicity.

249 Farmer, Shelley. http://screenprism.com/insights/article/mediterranea-director-answers-screenprism- questions-on-political-films-and, November 23, 2015. 250 Interview by Violet Lucca: “Jonas Carpignano: One Song” https://www.guernicamag.com/one-song/ 251 Interview by Violet Lucca. 190

This kind of irony is also what characterizes the African group.252 The struggle for self-definition is in fact expressed through self-mockery and mimicry.253 Specifically, the ironic behavior used by the black girl towards Ayiva: “you look like one of those guys in the street, in the train station … look at your hair, look at your clothing,” shows that mimicry aiming to produce a blurred replica of the colonizer, performs an equivocal reaction to the other, “[i]t also challenges its authorities … and repeats rather than represents” (Kanta Kochhar-Lindgren 297-98).

This case of playful teasing not only shows “the stereotype of the stupid immigrant who is unwashed (i.e. uncivilized)” (Parati 171), but more interestingly, the

“self-mockery is offered as an expansion of the dominant view of self-presentation,” and it can function as an “‘icebreaker’ in interactions among strangers or among status equals” (Ungar 123-7). The scene is characterized by self-directed ethnic humor which functions in the way “miniatures of rebelliousness” do (Boskin and Dorinson 93). In employing this kind of irony, the black girl has “reverse[d] roles and turn[ed] the tables on their adversaries by striving for a language of self-acceptance” (97), but also, as Abas reminds her and the viewer, her mildly humorous appropriation or racial unity which

252 We can refer to Steven Rawle’s analysis of The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966), and claim that the sequence of the African community “relies strongly on their look in the mirror – a kind of Lacanian mirror-stage identification in which [a black woman] take[s] on the subjectivity of the colonizer (the colonial ‘ideal ego’) to carry out [her] plans” (76). However, whereas Rawle’s analysis is defined by a specific colonial/postcolonial lens, the Italian context should be looked at from a different perspective. Since the end of the 1980s the issue of blackness in Italy has taken a new path. The extracomunitario is the new black. The “distorted and recolored” body (Fanon 112) is a threat now. The mockery used by the girl shows a further interesting linguistic element: the sentence pronounced using Italian language, “che pussa” presents the Italian inflected verb “puzza” (stink) pronounced by the African girl as a geminate, identified by two fricatives [ss], instead of an affricate [ts] which is a stop and a fricative combination. The Italian “z” is typically an affricate, which is symbolized as [ts]. It is a single sound with a stop component and a fricative component. 253 As a matter of fact, according to Homi Bhabha, colonialism has produced various forms of counter- hegemony. Mimicry “emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge” (126), in that it rewards those who best imitate the values and manners of the dominant, colonizing class. 191

erases the huge class difference between Rihanna and immigrants leading marginal lives,

also problematizes the issue of ethnic identity. Historically, as a way of surviving

oppression in the aftermath of slavery, black humor served many functions including self

criticism: “[b]lacks, therefore, developed a gaming stance stoically laughing on the

outside to cope with their pain inside” (Boskin and Dorinson 93), a pain which is a result

of silence and subalternity.

Subalternity, Silence and Agency

Enforced by an economically exploitative patriarchal culture, subalternity,

silence, and lack of agency position the black body as an object of desire.254 This is

clearly visible in the last part of sequence analyzed, which shows the colonial fantasy of

mastery, control, domination or denial of the other. While the group of Africans is still

listening to the music and talking, the scene cuts to a medium shot of two young native

Italian men entering the room. After they summon a woman, Aisha, with a whistle, the

atmosphere changes. The woman seems to know what the two men want, and whom they want. Aisha calls Regina, who appears to be a teenager. Silence falls over the group, and the music fades as Regina submissively follows the two men. The fun is over. Regina, we

imagine, is a prostitute at the service of her bosses. Her name itself, Regina (“queen”),

serves as an antithesis of her situation. She does not embody the stereotypical exotic

figure represented in the postcolonial world, the projection of the Westerners’

254 Sonita Sarker (2016) in her analysis on subalternity and identity, interprets Gayatri Spivak’s question ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ using a different approach: "‘Can the Subaltern be Heard by Currently Hegemonic Ears?’" (823). She states that "the subalternized is rendered mute and is a ‘non-agent’ or non-subject by virtue of the fact that subjecthood and agency are defined in hegemonic terms. The subal- ternized does/can speak and enact but remains inevitably mis-recognized and thus incommensurable since the terms, at least in part, derive from invisible/normative vocabulary" (823). 192

unconscious desires. She simply represents what said calls a “male-power fantasy” (207),

a cheap body, easy to manipulate.255 As Karen Pinkus reminds us, “in certain regions,

blackness always elicits a gaze; a black body is black before it is anything else (gendered,

clothed, still or in motion, old or young, African or Western)” (134). Regina is a

subalternity figure, and subaltern is not born but made. The two men thus participate in

the prolongation of the notion of a Third World characterized by sexual excess, which

according to Edward Said is an illusion belonging to “an exclusively male province,” [in

which] “women are usually the creatures of a male power-fantasy” (207-8). Morevover,

the silence that falls over the group is also a further symptomatic element of the dialectic

between western male power and the subaltern other in general. No man in the room

takes a position. The subjugation of the silenced subjects is visible in the entire black

community. The “postcolonial others” that centers on Gayatri Spivak’s famous question

“can the subaltern speak?” is embodied not only by the subaltern woman, Regina or

Aisha, but also by all black men who silently endure the violence. Their voices are totally

muffled, there is no talking back. Here silence represents an act of submission that cannot

be remedied. Their subaltern condition forces them into silence: making speech heard

appear to be rather impossible. Paraphrasing bell hooks, in "a world governed by politics

of domination” (19), silencing the subaltern subject is an act of domination to maintain

control. Racial formation is profoundly connected to how “society is organized and

ruled,” and its implication with politics and economics has a strong impact on society.256

255 As Graham Huggan remarks in The Post-Colonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins (2001), exoticism is tied to power. While maintaining a sense of mysticism and manufacturing otherness, exoticism makes the unfamiliar familiar. 256 According to Michael Omi & Howard Winant, race still plays “a fundamental role in structuring and presenting the social world” (55). 193

As a matter of fact, society defines identity based on race, both as a medium to differentiate groups, and as an instrument to control these groups. As Peter Burke points out, the deconstruction of all entities, social classes, tribes and castes, even nation, is “a sign of the intellectual climate of our age” (1) is. The dominant culture “is always constituted by a combination of coercion and consent” (Omi & Winant 67). The dominant group, attributing subservience and intellectual immaturity to others, affirms control over them and reduces their status as active agents of social change. Through the process of designating collective identities on politically and economically disenfranchised groups, race becomes a political instrument that continues to promote exploitation.

Besides social class isssues, however, Capirgnano’s tale remains centered on friendship. As recounted by Carpignano, Mediterranea tells,

a human story about friendship. It’s not about the woes of immigration ... It’s a

celebration of a community that is willing to go on despite the odds. By showing

the lives of two people, audiences can access them as human beings. That way

they can think about the bigger context and feel compassion.257

A “human story about friendship” is also a trope visible in Carpignano’s second film A

Ciambra, which can be seen as a counterpart to, and a continuation of Mediterranea. The two works can be viewed as an intertwined piece. While each film stands on its own, the relevance of one film can be detected in the other. Carpignano's Mediterranea and A

Ciambra are conceptually interlocking movies. Both the films are set in the same area,

257 Jennings, Helen. “Mediterranea,” http://nataal.com/mediterranea/ 194

with almosts the same cast and the same non-professional actors. Compared to Mediter- ranea, in A Ciambra the role of the main character is reversed: Ayva, who is the central figure in Mediterranea, becomes a secondary character, and Pio the youngster Romani from the rural Calabria, becomes the leading character.

A Ciambra - Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Water and Lemon’

The time of the wandering Gypsies

has long passed. But I see them,

They are bright,

Strong and clear like water.

-Papusza 258

EXT. MOUNTAIN – DAWN – ESTABLISHING

An extreme long shot of a mottled gray horse opens the scene. Mountains all

around, no sounds or voices. The hand-held camera – moving backwards first,

then forwards - frames a medium shot of a man walking towards a blurry horse.

A black hat and dark blue scarf worn by the man are signs of winter time.

An extreme close-up shows a hand stroking the horse's mane, characterized by

a grey and silvery coat color.

CUT TO

ROCKY LANDSCAPE - DAWN

A deep focus shot shows the same man in the foreground cutting a lemon and

collecting water from a river. The scene is now clearly visible: the background

258 Quoted in Isabel Fonseca, Bury Me Standing. 195

shows vignettes of the daily lives of a Roma community: two women are

collecting water while three kids are running around. Fire, horses and vardos

(Romani caravans) appear in the background.

FADE-OUT

The title (A Ciambra) appears on the screen.259 The beginning of the story takes

the viewer back in time. Highlighted here is the opening scene of Carpignano’s second

feature film, A Ciambra (2017). The film tells the story of a Romani community residing

in Southern Italy through the eyes of the young protagonist Pio (starring Pio Amato who

plays a version of himself). Supported by Martin Scorsese and by The Sundance Institute

Feature Film Program (FFP), the film was selected in 2017 as the Italian nominee for the

best foreign-language Oscar. The long list of successes was followed in 2018 by the

“David di Donatello” award for best director.

The Story

The title refers to a Romani ghetto-district in Gioia Tauro, a Calabrian town in

Southern Italy where the film is set and where Pio’s family has resided since 1990.260

From the onset, the film temporal boundaries are clearly marked: the past is characterized

by nomadism, whereas contemporary time finds Romanies adjusted to the sedentary life

of a town. Now home is not represented by the vardo (caravan) encountered in the

259 Produced by Stayblack Productions, RT Features, Sikelia Productions, Rai Cinema. In Association with DCM, Haut et Court, Film i Väst e Filmgate Films con MIBACT e Aide aux Cinémas du Monde, CNC, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et du Développement International, Institut Français e LU.CA., also supported by Lucana Film Commission e Calabria Film Commission. The Executive Producer is Martin Scorsese. 260 In Italy Romani people are called “zingari” which is a derogatory term. According to the dictionary Garzanti Linguistica, the etymology comes from the Greek Bizanti atsínganoi, 'untouchable', the name of a Gypsy tribe. 196

prologue, but by standard housing facilities, most of which have been transformed into shanty towns, or are built on waste land, or as provisional settlements at the margins of large cities.

The film centers on Pio, a teen with penetrating eyes and emaciated face. He is a fast-talking, but illitterate boy, as becomes evident in a scene where he asks his niece to read a text message. Pio’s home is a hive of children, cousins and siblings.261 Family dinner discussion centers on how other subaltern subjects (which they seem to dislike) behave: drunk African residents of a nearby refugee camp are all labeled as Moroccans.

However, it is in the same migrants’ camp that Pio finds his closest friend Ayva, the

Ghananian immigrant we saw earlier in Mediterranea.

The young boy is growing up following the rules of his community, a space in which lawless survivalism is an everyday way of acting. His older brother Cosimo

(Damiano Amato), who is involved with a local micro criminal group in different felonious affairs, represents a role model for Pio. The boy trails after his brother, trying to emulate him, and even though people around him consider him just a little kid, he is a very keen and accurate observer of the way adults act.

The last sequence of the film confirms the viewers’ suspicion that the limited choices Pio has, do not bode well for his future. As a matter of fact, becoming a man, does not necessarily means becoming a good man.

261 For an excellent review of A Ciambra, see: Scott, Anthony Oliver. “In ‘A Ciambra,’ a Young Roma Boy Comes of Age,” The New York Times, Jan. 18, 2018. 197

‘Water and Lemon’

The anatomy of a scene titled ‘Water and Lemon’ focuses on the bygone era of wondering gypsies. The brief prelude (an opening flashback sequence) that last only one minute and nine seconds, contains both mythical elements of the nomadic life and real- life elements that will determine Pio’s future. It would not be inappropriate to recall, in this context Latcho Drom (1993) directed by the French-Algerian director of Romani ethnicity Tony Gatlif. The title Latcho Drom which literally means “good journey/road,” and represents “the traditional Romani farewell.”262 The film has been criticized by

Carol Silverman as a work that does not “manage to escape some fundamental problem of history’s simplistic politics, and glaring romanticism” (362). The author asserts that even the title, translated as “safe journey,” indicates “the questionable emphasis on migration and nomadism as the unifying factor among Roma" (362). Gatlif’s film follows a linear path from India to Western Europe. In the second half, a group portrait draws the viewer into the film. It is a communitarian moment in which groups of families, after a long winter settles with their horses and caravans in an open space. A long shot frames a moment in the life of Romani people. The audience is transported by the movement of the camera around ritual that involves a sort of a washing of the horses. This confluence of image in Latcho Drom (the river, horses, children at play, the caravan) might well have inspired the highlighted scene in A Ciambra, with Pio’s grandfather on a river drinking water.

The extreme long shot of the horse in the opening scene of Carpignano’s film, not only shows the mythical figure of the animal which the audience encounters in Pio’s

262 Glossary of Romani Language ftp://ftp.cirr.com/pub/SCRIBE/Stage/Romany.Txt 198

vision scene, it also suggests a common “construction of a stereotype image that always

link Romani people to horses, that “descended from a prehistoric race of horsemen who

once rode all over the Earth” (Hancock 3-4). However, while Gatlif’s film focusing

heavily on the wandering and free-spirited nature of Romani people gives Carpignano

“[an] impressionistic picture of the migrations of the gypsy peoples and musics through

time and space ... constructed as a series of musical interludes.”263 Carpignano’s A

Ciambra is a portrait of a family without myth nor history. Their representation has

nothing to do with poetry or fiction, no charming romanticism is present in the film.

Despite their dissimilarities, both A Ciambra and Latcho Drom are more similar than they

are different, and in fact both end with a similar landscape of ruins:264 in Carpignano's

film, Pio is surrounded by shanties, and in Gatlif’s, the woman is on a hillside

overlooking a desolated urban scenery.

The first shot of A Ciambra gives us a glimpse of a young man (played by

Francesco Berlingeri), which the viewer will soon discover to be the semi-mythical grandfather of the young protagonist Pio. The prelude sets up the theme: this world is not

the same anymore, and the old man, whose name is Emiliano, tells Pio: “Una volta

eravamo sempre per strada … Eravamo liberi, non dovevamo niente a nessuno.”265

The preface, which is in fact a kind of flashback of a migratory past, aims to give

a sense of legacy within a mythical time. In Bury Me Standing (1985) Isabela Fonseca,

263 Romney, Jonatham. “The incredible journey.” The Guardian, May 3, 2000 https://www.theguard- ian.com/film/2000/may/03/artsfeatures 264 In analyzing Romani representation, Nikolina Dobreva underlines that Tony Gatlif’s “Gypsy films” attempt[s] a layered, multicultural approach to Romani representation, but fail[s] to avoid earlier romanticized depictions of the ethnic group as carefree non-national musicians” (vii). We should also un- derline that even if Latcho Drom presents a picturesque portrait of Romani, the long journey from east to west is not an Eden like experience, rather everything starts to be a response to grief and exclusion. 265 “Once, we were free, always on the road. We were free, we did not owe anything to anyone.” 199

who has spent many years visiting Romani communities in Eastern Europe - provides an

overview of Romani people’s life and lore. The modern “Gypsies”as presented by

Fonseca, are a “kumpania,” a band of families in a liminal space, tired of being

marginalized and stereotyped.266 As she underlines, “the most fundamental Gypsy value

[is] ‘us against the world’ (13). The feeling of being alone is also marked by Pio’s

grandfather, for whom Pio, at the beginning of the film, is preparing a glass of water with lemon, the identical rite seen by the viewer in the prologue, by the river. The old man is

the one who reminds Pio “siamo noi contro il mondo” (“it’s us against to world”).

Anatomy of a Scene: ‘The Bonfire and the Shanty’

EXT. PIO’s NEIGHBORHOOD – DAY

The scene opens with Pio descending a hill. Blurry images show a degraded

space: clusters of garbage and weeds cover sides of external walls. The boy,

who is seen from his shoulders, is surrounded by voices of kids and adults, and

by the cracking snap sounds of a burning fire wherein two men are burning

something. Cars and trucks are everywhere.

A powerful medium shot frames all women of his family sitting together.

Silence reigns between them as they exchange looks.

266 Fonseca uses the term Gypsy (spelled with a capital initial letter). In “A Glossary of Romani Terms” Ian Hancock writes: “Common English word for person of Romani descent, derived from Renaissance English ‘gypcian, i.e., "Egyptian," it being supposed that Egypt was the country of origin of the Roma. The term is intensely disliked by some Roma, and tolerated by others. The persistence of its use in English lies in the fact that there is no single Romani equivalent which is agreed upon by all Romani groups (see RROM). The policy of most Romani organizations is to use the ethnonym (SINTI, RROMA, KAALE, etc.) and to avoid the use of all externally-created labels ("Gypsy," "Gitano," "Tigan," etc.)” (334). 200

CUT TO a medium close up of the young protagonist. Soon after, his mother

Iolanda stands up and walks toward him. A two shot first and a counter shot after, display the woman talking to him.

The hand-held camera frames Pio’s young niece, who comes from behind, smiling, and caressing his hair. Glances between mother and son persist. The silence is broken by the boy’s brother’s voice who calls him over: “Pio! Vieni qui” (“Pio! Come here!”). Moving from right to left, Pio walks towards his brother. The camera stays stationary as the character walks away. The scene is shot with a slightly blurred effect.

CUT TO a medium shot of the character, who now walks towards the camera to reach Cosimo. The background is still out of focus.

CLOSE UP of Pio who suddenly stops caught by children’s voices, and turns his head to the right.

CUTO TO a full shot of five kids surrounded by a huge cluster of garbage and a bonfire on the left side, then to a panning shot which frames a blurred image of a group of men on the opposite side while Cosimo calls back Pio. The image comes into focus.

CLOSE UP of Pio looking in his brother’s direction. There is a clear crossroad in front of him, with a barrier of shacks as a divider between two roads, and two worlds.

While the camera stays stationary framing the character from the back, Pio moves towards the group of men standing close to a shanty. The moving character stays in focus, while the background is smoothly out of focus again.

201

Background music accompanies the action. From this point on, the music

increases to a crescendo accompanying Pio's movement towards his brother.

A Ciambra ends on a blurred image of the shanty where the group takes Pio

inside.

The scene above is the ending of A Ciambra. The protagonist's initiation is complete. He has achieved independence and has grown up. The visual bildungsroman is complete. However, the road to growth is not easy. For the first time the spectator sees

Pio dropping his mask of tough boy, and revealing the tender child in him.

The hand-held camera is used not only to see through the character’s eyes, but it creates a convulsive and immediate feeling. Through Pio’s eyes the spectator is forced to view some moments of life in Ciambra, the boy’s community. The film perfectly frames contemporary tropes of real life, with extended takes a spontaneous sense of framing, and a proper amount of handheld shots. Although the hand-held camera, for most of the film, is always looking for action, never staying away from Pio, near the film’s ending it changes perspective. It stops, leaving the boy alone with his choice, waiting to catch the moment of his decision. The last scene is a frank portrayal of a child caught between two periods of life, childhood and adulthood. There is no romanticizing of the character’s choice.

Pio, the Italian Other

In A Ciambra, the young protagonist is surrounded by children and teens who are a mix of wildness and naivety. While they behave as adults, smoking and cursing, the

202

girls, act like women, shouting at him and telling him what to do. Pio’s young niece, in

the second scene instructs him to prepare breakfast for their grandfather: “Pio finiscila,

che il nonno deve fare colazione!”267

The filmmaker’s choice of a young character as a central figure, followed in his

day-by-day activities of petty crime, is important. More than his siblings and cousins, Pio

seems to be divided between the harsh reality of his community and the outside universe,

which consists of migrants coming from a faraway world: “Africa!? …Troppo

lontano.”268 These migrants however become part of Pio’s life. The boy hangs out with

Africans who live in shabby shelters, speaking a mixture of Italian, Calabrese dialect,

English, and several African languages. The Burkinabe Ayiva, who the viewer has

already encountered as a main character in Mediterranea, embodies a fraternal figure that

can rely on for moral or physical protection. Ayiva, the stranger, represents a counterpart

of Cosimo, the boy’s old brother. But Pio’s family, the Amatos, although themselves

belittled by society, are suspicious of these “negri,” black newcomers.

A comparison with two classical coming of age movies is necessary. Pio has

much more in common with the young Bruno in Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948)

than with the troubled Parisian Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows (François Truffaut,

1959). The two films, together with A Ciambra, can be defined the visual equivalent of a

bildungsroman drama, with the young protagonist navigating the unfriendly streets of his

city and dealing with the universal problems of coming of age: sexuality, and a search for identity. However, Pio’s choice between street life and petty crime is not a response, such

267 “Pio finiscila, (smettila in the subtitles) che il nonno deve fare colazione!” (Pio stop it, grandpa has to do breakfast!) 268 In Mediterranea there is a scene where Pio asks Ayiva where his daughter lives: Ayiva: “Africa,” Pio’s answer “in Africa!? ...Troppo lontano” (“Africa...That’s too far”). 203

as in The 400 Blows, to Antoine’s selflessness and detached parents. The Romani

character’s profile is that of a young boy who is mature beyond his age. He is divided

between family bonding and the quest for his own freedom. Like Bruno in Bicycle

Thieves, he is still a kid who tries to understand a world that does not seem appropriate to

him and his family. He is part of a marginalized sphere. The depiction of this urban

milieu, of the lives of people who live on the fringes of mainstream societies, is not

simply a “fictional” representation filmed by Carpignano, yet it is "shot with a verité

intimacy that physicalizes Pio’s ability to float between worlds.”269 This sense of

transition is visible until the final scene, where Pio, eager to grow up, claims his

masculinity. He is not a “ragazzino” (little boy) anymore as his brother Cosimo tells him

in various scenes: “Vai dentro, corri, tu non puoi venire con me;” “Pio, tu sei piccolo.”270

In the anatomy of a scene ‘The Bonfire and the Shanty,’ the audience is faced

with Pio’s difficult choice. Framed from the back, he is divided between the carefree

nature of childhood and the responsibility of the adults.

The full shot of five kids represents the innocence of childhood, which Pio is

leaving behind. The uncertainty the viewer reads off the young face shows a feeling of

self-doubt for what he has abandoned. As a matter of fact, the camera prioritizes Pio’s

face. Now his eyes are not scrutinizing his surroundings as he constantly did looking for opportunity. The look in his eyes betrays his weak spots and the presence of a barrier to be broken doubt over which road to take. The scene, with both the group of children at

his left, and the group of adults on the right, generates empathy by relying on the

269 Ehrlich, David http://www.indiewire.com/2017/05/a-ciambra-review-jonas-carpignano-mediterranea- cannes-2017-1201828778/ 270 “Go inside, move, you cannot come with me” “Pio, you are a little boy.” 204

character's sense of uncertainty, and on the fear of growing up. As a matter of fact, seeing the scene from this subjective point of view, makes the spectator identify with the budding adult.

Carpignano’s approach is not judgmental, nor does he put the spectator in a condition of judging. His approach prompts observation and reflection. However, the ending seems to demonstrate that the limited choices Pio’s social standing gives him, do not bode well for his future. We can notice here that Carpignano ends both his movies with blurred images. In Mediterranea, Ayva enters into his master’s house, where his daughter's party is going on, disappearing accompanied by the notes of a famous Italian

‘80s song that hints at the uncertainty of his destiny. The image is blurred to the extreme by colored moving bubbles. In A Ciambra, the same uncertainty surrounds Pio, who fades away, accompanied by the foreboding lyrics of the soundtrack: “You fade away /

Afraid our aim is out of sight.”271 Critic Leonardo De Franceschi interprets this unresolved destiny as the sign of a lost youth, pointing out that A Ciambra mirrors not only a lost world, but also a lost generation,

Rimangono lo spaccato di una generazione perduta, pur nel suo disperato

vitalismo, la quale non riesce a trovare soluzioni alternative all’accettazione di un

ruolo di marginalità che la fabbrica sociale della cittadinanza come club elitario

gli destina, e la percezione di una progettualità narrativa che non sembra aver

ancora esaurito il suo ciclo. (227)272

271 Alan Walker. “Faded.” Different World. Mer Musikk, 2015. 272 “It remains the cross-section of a lost generation, even in its desperate vitalism, which cannot find alternative solutions to the acceptance of a marginal role that the social structure of citizenship as an elite assign to it, and the perception of a narrative project that it does not seem to have exhausted his cycle yet” (227). 205

An Imagined “Italie.” Place, People and Characters on the Margins

For Jonas Carpignano, Rosarno (in Mediterranea) and Gioia Tauro, (in A

Ciambra) stand on the margins. Producer Gwyn Sannia defines A Ciambra as “its own

entity, its own world,” thus showing precisely the characterization of this reality as an interstitial part of the hegemonic world.273 De Franceschi reinforces the idea by noting

that, “[a] Carpignano va riconosciuta, una volta di più, la capacità di guardare e restituire

la dignità umana di una microcomunità marginale, lontano dalle narrazioni dominanti di

questo paese.”274 In fact, in both works, Carpignano avoids major cities or northern Italy and focuses in particular on the South. His choice is not provoking, but an honest attempt to interact with other spaces, less visible and marginal ones.

Similar to many other films that deal with the experience of migration and

journeying, Ayiva’s story and Pio’ story are in fact confined to the periphery. Such

periphery is not located in the industrial North but in the South, the Mezzogiorno which

Antonio Gramsci defines as a site of “disgregazione sociale” (“social disintegration”).

Here, hegemony does not exist between the rich and the proletarian, but among those existing at the margins of society, among the poor and less poor. In fact, although Ayiva's

journey in Mediterranea may be personal, its symbolism cannot be ignored. When he arrives in Rosarno with his friend Abas, the film also provides a framework for Southern

Italy in the 2000s. With Ayiva as its main protagonist, and Pio -- the Roma-Calabrese

273 Interview included in the Dvd Extra. 274 “In Carpignano one must recognize ... the ability to look and restore the human dignity of a marginal micro-community, far from the dominant narratives of this country,” De Franceschi, Leonardo. “A Ciam- bra.” CINEMAFRICA | Africa e diaspore nel cinema http://www.cinemafrica.org/spip.php?ar- ticle1731&var_recherche=a%20ciambra 206

boy who is the leading character in A Ciambra -- as his counterpart, Carpignano creates a milieu in which he shows the other other in the Italian framework.

As a matter of fact, in an increasingly diverse South of Italy, the viewer is faced with non-places, such as the Roma camps, the streets where immigrants linger, the unadorned rooms where they gather, the train station where they go to always return.

These places represent “the real measure of our time … never totally completed,” they

“are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations is ceaselessly rewritten” (Augé 79). In Mediterranea, non-places are the reception centers where identities are “immobilized in a time without events” (Ponzanesi 689), and these screening processes means that the immigrant “retrieves his identity only at Customs, at the tollbooth, at the check-out counter” (Augé 103). Aside from non-places, there are also empty spaces, where identities are demarcated. Empty spaces are not prohibited, but their emptiness can be experienced. For instance, the streets were the migrants walk are empty,

while in other spaces they are perceived as ghost. In general, we can claim that more than

in a physical sense, empty spaces are connected to a feeling of being a non-person, that is

nevertheless omnipresent.

The space inhabited by the African community is similar to the Roma enclave.

These two microcosms are inter-connected. They are both pushed into the margins of the

national context. In this sense, it can be said that in Mediterranea both the African’ s and the Roma’s third space exist in contrast to their opposite space, which is delimited by the fixed boundaries of the State.275 However, as Naficy (2001) reminds us, refugees and

275 Sandra Ponzanesi, in “The Non-Places of Migrant Cinema in Europe,” analyzes - in the light of Marc Augé’s theory of non-lieux - the use of non-places as a recurrent thematic and aesthetic aspect, which according to her “provides a critical commentary on migration” (676). 207

asylum seekers are forced to stay in transitional spaces, whereas Ayiva and Abas (in

Mediterranea) are living in what the scholar calls “intermediary places,” and Pio lives in

a permanent space (152). The Roma microcosm is not a nomadic space anymore, as the

viewer has seen in the prologue of A Ciambra, since they settled in Calabria many years

ago building their own houses and forming a permanent settlement.276

The scene of the African fellows in Mediterranea, ‘Rihanna and the Peroni Beer,’

is in many ways analogous to the one in A Ciambra’s “la cena” (the dinner) where the

Amato family sitting around a table embarks on a lengthy discussion about “cibo, vino e

marocchini” (food, wine and Moroccans). For some reasons, this conversation provokes

comments on identity differences. The scene is characterized by overlapping dialogues, a

sociolect not always clear even for a southern Italian audience, a sense of chaos,

screaming and laughing. The wine, which is the bone of contention, becomes in the

Amato family an element associated with the bad behavior of the Moroccans, who

according to them are always drunk: “Smettila con quella bottiglia o ti faccio fare la fine

dei Marocchini;” “Tutti ubriachi come i Marocchini;” “Presto diventerai come loro.”277

According to the Amatos, the Moroccans are also ugly and scary. One of the

women tells an anecdote where while walking she encountered one of them who was

drunk. She shouted at him: “Quanto sei brutto. Brutto Marocchino, vai via!” -- “Brutto nero, Marocchino, vai via che ho paura.278 In the dialogue, the word used is

276 At the end of the 70s, in an isolated countryside area, the municipality started to build public housing. The houses were only in part assigned to people, partly occupied before electrical and sewage services, which are still lacking, had been completed. The Amato’s family moved to Ciambra in 1990. According to Enzo Amato, Pio’s brother, not all families moved in the same time and not all were authorized to live there. Part of the complex was built by Roma people. In the past, according to him, life was better: “Era un amore qui … si viveva da signori” (It was quite a nice place here “ (Dvd extra). 277 “Stop it with that bottle or you will end up like the Moroccans;” “All drunk like Moroccans;” “Soon you’ll become like them.” 278 “You’re so ugly. Ugly Moroccan, go away;” “ugly black Moroccan, go away. I am scared of you.” 208

“marocchini” (Moroccans), while the Italian subtitle reports the term African, a way, this,

to stress and underline that a peculiar identity is being applied to an entire continent. As

underlined by Carla Ghezzi, the lexical vagueness - “indeterminatezza lessicale” such as

that of calling "Moroccan" even those who come from other parts of Africa, is the result

of ignorance: “Marocchino è una parola che non mi piace ..., è come un insulto è una

parola che per me non è umana … Ormai per l’Italiano il marocchino è un analfabeta

vestito male” (149).279 While Ghezzi mostly underlines the attitude of Italians towards the Moroccans, in A Ciambra, the Roma people are the ones who create discrimination.

On writing about issues of identity and exclusion, Judith Butler claims that all identities

indeed operate through exclusion, discursive construction, and “production of an

‘outside’” (22). In the film, not only Romani are discriminating the Moroccans, who

appear in their dialogue as a negative entity from which it is better to stay away, but the

demarcation of the Roma identity is also visible in a previous moment, where they

outline a further element of difference towards Italians. While women are preparing and

serving pasta, two of them, like a refrain, repeat the same sentence: “Noi mangiamo come

gli Italiani.”280

Carpignano’s representation of these spaces, disenfranchisement and anomie for

the Africans, petty crime and lack of education of the Roma community, demands the

spectator’s attention. Even if the shelter where Ayiva and Abas find a place to stay can be

included in the concept of empty spaces, both the African group and the Roma enclave

are spaces that Émile Durkheim defined as a space of operations for a “collective

279 “Moroccan is a word that I do not like ... it is like an insult. It is a word that to me is not human ... For an Italian the Moroccan is an illiterate badly dressed" (149). 280 “We eat like Italians.” 209

consciousness,” by which he means a set of shared ideas, values, beliefs, and knowledge that are common to social groups of society. The expression of collective consciousness seen in the African group scene informs the viewer of a sense of belonging and cultural and racial identity.

Like places, identities are also located on the margins too. Ayiva and Pio stand on a peripheral space. Another commonality found in migrant cinema is anonymity. While

Ayiva Seihon is the only full legal name the spectator hears, other names are disseminated along the entire film: Abas, Regina, Aisha, Momo, Aseta, Zeina. Except for Abas and

Ayiva, the spectator does not know any other information about other migrants: no names, no personal stories. The migrants’ lack of identity is clearly underlined by

Carpignano especially in Mediterranea, which specifically shows the status of being non-persons. As underlined by Ponzanesi in her analysis of the film Last Resort (Pawel

Pawlikowski, UK 2000), here too, the filmmaker “privileges an individual story above the mass of anonymous asylum seekers who are left in the background (no names, just faces)” (681). Migrants seem to be pierced by the same destiny, a same story. Each migrant can be represented by others.

Carpignano’s main concern however, was not to make a film about immigration, but to make a film about a persona. He is not really interested in following a specific film genre. In an interview with Cinemafrica, an on-line magazine edited by Leonardo De

Franceschi, Carpignano claims that while there are some Italian films that speak of

African immigration in Italy, and follows the genre of migrant cinema, he tried not to take these into consideration.281 The filmmaker’s is not interested in showing a specific

281 Leonardo De Franceschi, “Prima o poi tornerò qui a fare un film. Conversazione con Jonas 210

point of view of migrants as bandits. His intention is to create a rapport between everyone

who works on a film. Sinergy between film crew and the subjects of the film is truly

important to the film’s success. The reason why he is not interested in a documentary

style lies in the fact that he needs to convey connection between stories, people and life.

A feature film can embrace real stories, real events, persona and not only personaggio, without adhering to a documentary genre. Personaggio is the fictitious part

of the persona, and in Carpignano’s movies it cannot stand alone. Fiction and reality are

connected. It is not a documentary. As he reports, in a documentary you keep always that

line of “I’m observing this.” Instead, Mediterranea or A Ciambra are collective works,

representative of the real experiences, but not subservient to it.

The thing about documentaries is you go in thinking it’s going to be something

and then the documentary you come out with at the other side is completely

different because you let the story and the characters and the place take you in a

certain direction ... We do that to an extent, but on the other hand there’s also

things that I’m very interested in exploring that I don’t want to let go.282

A Realist Style

The filmmaker has the ability to combine reality and fiction without losing the

beauty of the cinematographic style. Are Mediterranea and A Ciambra films made in the

wake of Italian neorealism? In analyzing Italian neorealism, Millicent Marcus claims that

one of the strategies to achieve realism is “to strive for maximum authenticity of means

Carpignano,” Cinemafrica: Africa e Diaspore nel Cinema, 2 ottobre 2015 http://www.cinemaf- rica.org/spip.php?article1589 282 Shia, Jonathan. “Jonas Carpignano,” The Last Magazine, January 24, 2018.

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and to minimize authorial intervention” (29). In this sense, it could be said that the

approach used, shooting with non-professional actors, and in a real location, is a way to

ensure the spontaneity of the reality the filmmaker perceives in Rosarno and Gioia Tauro.

Fiction is reduced to the minimum. The Amatos are a real Romani family. Carpignano’s

style is inspired by realism. However, while realism confines montage in a minor space

because it means less fragmentation of time and space, Mediterranea and A Ciambra reveal some different cinematic choices. The extraordinary use of hand-held camera in a semi-documentary narrative style with a burst of synthetic color reminds the audience, more than Neorealism, of a cinematic technique taken in some aspects from Dogme 95, where at its heart there were rules “part-gimmick and part-sincere.”283 The purity,

freshness, simplicity and conflicted ethics promoted by the Dogme Manifesto, in

Carpignano acquires more intensity. The Italian provincial space framed by the

filmmaker is a real location with no temporal and geographical alienation. While A

Ciambra does not use elaborate special effects or technology, it is not a low-budget film.

The hand-held camera, another essential rule for the Dogme Movement, follows in A

Ciambra each character and each situation without judgment, there is no overall

goodness or overall wickedness, but there are situations in which everyone can embody

goodness and wickedness.

Carpignano is able to provide “a fresh evidence of the continued vitality of the

neorealist impulse as it tries to embed a fictional narrative in the actual world. It has the

shape of a fable and the texture of a documentary”.284 His filming the other is not a way

283 Kingsley, Patrick.“How the Dogme manifesto reinvented Denmark.” The Guardian, Sun 25 Nov 2012. 284 Scott, A. O. “In ‘A Ciambra,’ a Young Roma Boy Comes of Age.” 212

to simply observe or to describe. The camera, as the spectator, is with the other,

experiencing the same anxiety and the same fear. The stories of Pio and Ayiva are not

completely fictional, neither is their way of acting. In an interview on A Ciambra,

Carpignano states that for him it was more important to give freedom to Pio and to his

way of living “rather than telling a story from A to Z.”285

In conclusion, Mediterranea and A Ciambra represent “a vibrant multitude of creative voices and form of expressions that originate and dwell beyond and outside the commonly celebrated cultural hubs” (Iordanova et al. 3). Both the films have in common a story of marginality. Their central topic is not the misery of human beings or specifically the figure of a migrant (like in Mediterranea) as a central topic, but a way of surviving. However, it seems that surviving means always fighting against something, whether it is exploitation towards migrants (like in Mediterranea) or local Calabrian crime against petty crime of the Roma community (such in A Ciambra). Carpignano’s films are characterized by the representation of the other in a way that moves parallel to the dominant narratives of the national cinema, a “minor cinema” which cannot be excluded or avoided anymore.

Ayiva and Pio embody the other that the dominant narrative has always left in the shadows. They epitomize new multicultural identities in Italian cinema, and they are also

images of a new generation of Italians. They are in a way reflection of Jonas Carpignano

himself, a constant other:

285 “Abbiamo deciso di dare più spazio a Pio, per esempio, perché lui rappresenta un lato della vita, che per noi era importante da raccontare. Avevamo per le mani tanti episodi ricchi di sapore ma in cui non c’era narrazione. Mi sono detto, vabbè, ci permettiamo di fare questa cosa, perché vogliamo fare vedere come è la vita, piuttosto che raccontare una storia dalla A alla Z.” http://www.cinemafrica.org/spip.php?article1589 213

The “Other”! That’s exactly what it is. I very much feel American. I very much

feel Italian but there are moments when I’m with Italians and I really feel

American, or I’m with Americans and really feel Italian, or I’m with black people

and I’m the light skinned black guy, or with white people I’m definitely the black

guy. I am always “the Other” but at the same time I’m still embraced by who I

define myself as the other against.286

286 Rothe, Nina E. “Jonas Carpignano’ s Mediterranea in Cannes: The Humanity Beneath the Headlines.” The Huffington Post, May 27, 2015. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/e-nina-rothe/jonas-carpignanos-medi- ter_b_7449530.html

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CHAPTER 5: a MADONNA, a MOTHER and a PROSTITUTE

Suranga Deshapriya Katugampala’s Per un figlio287

Anatomy of a Scene:‘a Beraya288 and a Demon’

EXT. STREET - DUSK

The scene opens with a profile shot of a prematurely aged woman (Sunita).

Two men arrive on a scooter. The one seatead at the back (Obesena) carries a

drum, the other, his young assistant, is not visible yet. No dialogue is

exchanged.

INT. BUILDING - DARK LIGHT- (cont.)

A forward-tracking shot follows Sunita and Obesena entering the building.

The camera pans slightly to the right, the second man enters from the left

side. His face is still not clearly visible.

INT. APARTMENT – (cont.)

A medium shot shows the three characters inside the apartment. The spectator

now clearly sees faces of the two men drinking tea. The drum is held by the

young one, the ritual assistant. Both of them wear a red piece of clothing.

287 Per un figlio has been distributed on October 11, 2018 by Feltrinelli Real Cinema. The DVD is accompanied by a booklet. English title: For a Son; Sri Lankan title: Puthekuta. In the opening credits the title also appears with Sinhalese orthography. Awards: “Mutti il Cinema Migrante 2015; 52° Mostra Internazionale del Nuovo Cinema Pesaro Film Festival – Special Jury Mention Award; “Bimbi belli 2017” - Award “Miglior dibattito;” Annecy Film Festival 2017; premio Cicae (Confédération Internationale des Cinémas d'Art et d’ Essai). 288 This kind of two-headed drum was named “geta beraya” because of its shape - it is a barrel-shaped and the width of its centre is much wider than its two sides.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, 2 July 2018. 215

While Sunita is positioned on the right side, the two center the frame. Silence mostly characterizes the moment. Sound of a door opening. The woman turns her face. A reverse shot shows her son entering their apartment. No words between them, just glances at each other.

CUT TO a medium shot of the four seated characters. A ritual follows. A mantra in a mix of languages accompanies the next shot. A static camera frames the small room decorated with an improvised shrine, and traditional

Sri Lankan implements. The ritual assistant on the left side stands up playing the drum aloud. A doorbell rings. A pan shot follows Sunita, who opens the door.

Loud, rhythmic drumming can be heard.

Sunita’ POV looking at her neighbor, who is partially visible to the spectator.

A static camera frames her approaching. A two shot frames her and the ritual assistant. The woman gestures to demand that the volume be lowered. A pan to the left frames Obesena improvising his shamanistic role. The camera pans to the right and cranes down. Sunita and her son now occupy the center of the frame. CLOSE UP of the boy’s hands playing with his cellphone under the covers. CUT TO Sunita and one of the men walking through the claustrophobic hallway.

A static camera frames them from behind. The young man exits. Obesena enters the frame from the left side, carrying the drum and a small candle.

Follow shot and double shot soon after. They exchanged words between them.

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Within a few minutes of the film’s opening, the spectator is confronted with a

generational calamity of an immigrant family. The camera conducts the audience,

treated like intruders, into a cramped space of marginality. The constriction of

suffocating walls, the incessant noise of the neighbors knocking, and even close-

ups of Sunita’s son’s umbilical cell phone shows the simultaneous pervasiveness

and impossibility of atavism. The dynamics of displacement are visualized through

the immigrant angst that results from memory and personal history being subject to

erasure.

Per un figlio (2016) is the first feature of Suranga D. Katugampala, who came to

Italy as child when his mother left Sri Lanka, and settled in Verona.

The story is filled with biographical details recounted through a minimal use of words

and voices. Katungampala’s movie is a quintessential example of an accented film as

Naficy describes it is: “personal and unique, like fingerprints, because [it is] both

authorial and autobiographical” (Naficy 2001: 34). It remains the exemplary illustration

of the extent to which autobiographical touches seem to be unavoidable among

punctuated filmmakers: “[a]s authors of their text … their biography is ... coded in their

films” (56). It is no mere coincidence, then, that the filmmaker’s mother passed most of

her life as a caregiver to the elderly, working at all hours of the day. As in his movie, in

Katugampala’s life there were also generational and cultural conflicts. Shashini Ruwanthi

Gamage rexplains,

Katugampala’s own history as the son of Sri Lankan migrant parents living in

Verona provides an intriguing point to ponder the migration question in [Per un

figlio] … The filmmaker’s own deterritorialization and itinerancy as well as his

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insider-status within the Sri Lankan migrant community in Italy leaves a

prominent imprint within the film. And the migration question … therefore,

becomes both personal and political. (3)

The Story

The careworn Sunita (played by the well-known Sri Lankan actress Kaushalya

Fernando) lives with her teenage son (Julian Wijesekara) in the suburbs of an unnamed

northern Italian city. Nella Pozzerle plays the elderly lady who makes incessant demands

on her while bemoaning her son’s inattentiveness. Katugampala harnesses many

constituent elements of cinema to magnify how much these two apparently diverse

women have in common. Thus, the suffering they share as the result of the solitude

imposed by debilitating mother-son relationships is also the source of their mutual

attachment and affection. The old lady’ s pain is transmuted into the terrors of

abandonment: “Sunita, non lasciarmi sola ... Sunita, Sunita, Sunita.”

Sunita spends most of her time working, returning home only to prepare meals for

her son, which often consist of re-heated leftovers dished out in silence. The film seems

to deny him a name, perhaps to indicate the universality of the experience of immigrant

sons, or perhaps to reveal his maladjustment to any milieu. He shares most of his time

with a group of Italian delinquents and abandoned children, akin to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s

“ragazzi di vita,” who for him represent a cultural norm. Angry, dissatisfied, and

displaced, he seeks meaning in conformity to his companions’ lifestyles, and so for him the apartment he shares with his mother is suffocating. The only place where the boy can

(re)discover his identity is in exterior spaces, roaming tenements and abandoned houses

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where he hangs out with his age-mates, eventually finding solace with a nurturing, corpulent prostitute in a shady grove. Early on, observing his son’s behavior and being persuaded that he is bewitched, Sunita can think of nothing else than organizing a traditional rite of exorcism.

The film ends on an apparent note of reconciliation between mother and son, but offering no solution to their mutual dilemmas and leaving many questions open. It is precisely that kind of ending that “leaves us with an ambiguous or missing plot resolution” (Preis 18). No firm future is delineated for these characters whose marginality defines them.

‘A Beraya and a Demon’

The exorcism scene seems to capture the essence of the film. It expresses the desire to release the tension of a disfunctional relationship between generations. The silence between the there-mother and the here-son characterizes their daily routine.

Having grown up in Italy, the boy undergoes an “ongoing process of cultural hybridization” (Canclini xxviii) that Sunita refuses to acknowledge. Sunita’s entrapment in her own originary culture and feeling of belonging to a different culture, is visible through many actions. Hher feeling of not-belonging to her host country is also visible through her reactions to her son's behavior. However, Per un figlio does not merely focus only on a relationship between a mother and a son. The film indeed stages the ambivalences of immigrant generational conflict between past and present on the one hand, belonging and displacement on the other. This experience of ambivalence is exacerbated by the migration experience that here conditiones the mother-son

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relationship, an odd bond that is not only generational but also cultural. While the boy speaks Italian with a local accent and he always answers his mother’s multilingual questions in Italian, Sunita speaks Sinhala at home and Sinhalese-accented Italian with a accent to outsiders.

The scene “A Beraya and a Demon” focuses exactly on the possibility of treating the festering wounds left by geo-cultural displacement. The improvised hybrid ritual appears to be one of the key elements of the film. As the filmmaker remarks, “il rito del film è un rito completamente inventato. Si ispira naturalmente ai riti propiziatori dello Sri

Lanka.”289 His intention was to re-create a new rite: “mi sono lasciato andare nella creazione di un mio rito, che mi piace definire deformato,”290 It is inspired by a fast- disappearing syncretic Buddhist-Hindu ritual: “il dio che c'è sull'altare è Skanda, noto tra gli Srilankesi come Kataragama, che è anche una città sacra che si trova nel sud-est dello

Sri Lanka. Secondo una leggenda la città è abitata da un molto potente, che aiuta gli uomini a trovare la retta via.”291

In a previous sequence, the woman reaches Obesena, who officiates in the capacity of a priest, and who works in a tavern. The dialogue between them is in the

289 “The ritual ... is completely invented. It is of course inspired by the propitiatory rituals of Sri Lanka,” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, July 2, 2018. Rite among Sinhalese-Buddhists. As reported by Gananath Obeyesekere (1977), notes that the Kataragama’s cult “rose into prominence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a result of south Indian immigration and became a major cult in the Kandyan Kingdom. Skanda was also the god of war, and he had a crucial role to play during this period of conflict with Western powers,” (377). 290 “I let myself go in creating my own ritual, which I like to define as deformed,” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, July 2, 2018. 291 “The god on the altar is Skanda, known among the Sinhalese as Kataragama, which is also a sacred city in southeastern Sri Lanka. According to a legend, the city is inhabited by a very powerful god who helps people finding the right path.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, July 2, 2018. For some Buddhists Skanda is a guardian figure who protects the Buddha. Conforming Gananath Obeyesekere's hypothesis, Hilde Link (1997) reaffirms that the association between Skanda and Kataragama dates back only a few centuries.

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Sinhala language. Sunita, who is concerned that the ritual is not effective in Italy, asks

questions regarding the right approach to ensure its efficacy. “Per i demoni ovunque è uguale. Dove c' è Dio ci sono anche i demoni,” claims Obesena in an attempt to convince her that the only solution to return to a healthy state is to brake the gaze of the demon.292

The man’s words and Sunita’s fears also indicate that deities and demons are seen in the same way. The man is responsible not only for reciting a mantra to call forth demons and ghosts, but also for officiating and for managing the prescribed offerings, because the ritual will only have its effect on the condition that the proper sacrifice is made. Obesena takes advantage of Sunita’s fear. Does the remuneration mean money? Or as Sunita observes at its conclusion: "forse avevi in mente qualcos'altro.”293 The spectator is left

out, and the answer to this awkward situation is not explicitly stated. However, what

seems to be clear is that the ritual is a phenomenon generated by the translation of

cultural forms into a series of actions, adapted to a different context. In his studies on

pre-technological societies, Émile Durkheim points out that rites are the basic category of

religious phenomena and represent “particular modes of action” (34), which contains

sacredness that is performed through gestures and formulas. These can only be uttered by

designated individuals. In general, rituals are a form of communal interaction. Therefore,

the resulting collective experience gives the participants a profound feeling of connection

with each other. This connection transforms the way in which they feel about themselves

and their world (Durkheim 34-9). Perhaps, then, the reason the ritual in Per un figlio

remains ineffectual is that the participants do not constitute a community of the faithful.

292 “For demons, everywhere is the same. Where there is God there are also demons.” 293 After the ritual, Sunita tells Obesena: “Maybe you had something else in mind.” 221

Even if authenticity seems a questionable concept for all the participants involved,

the uncanny nature of the ritual places the spectator in the situation of the cultural other.

The methods of the ritual are lacking from the start. Not every element is the right one.

The two men wear a red piece of cloth around their hips, whish appears an element of

religious improvisation, as Katugampala seems to confirm: “il colore rosso ... è quello dei

sacerdoti induisti. Siamo rimasti fedeli a quello originale.”294 Despite the filmmaker’s

aspiration to loyalty to original practices, the scene manifests a lack of organization. The

ritual is subjected to limits imposed by the adaptation, “[i]n un contesto lontano da quello

prettamente SriLankese, questi riti, nel momento in cui si manifestano subiscono

inevitabilmente dei cambiamenti.”295 In Ceylon/Sri Lanka the beraya has traditionally been used for celebrations and elaborate choreographed spectacles. There are, moreover, many kinds of drums used on different occasions. The Sinhalese name “geta beraya” was

actually given to this two-headed drum because of its barrel-like shape, the center having a greater diameter than the symmetrical sides. The filmmaker explains that,

in Sri Lanka un rito del genere viene fatto all'aperto, con un tamburo specifico

(chiamati beraya). Ne esistono varie tipologie, come ad esempio quelli per le

benedizioni, quelli per le maledizioni, e così via ... Il tamburo deve essere suonato

ad altissimo volume e per lungo tempo. I sacerdoti cantano a voce alta per

rivolgersi con forza al malocchio; cacciare un malocchio richiede insistenza e

perseveranza da parte dei sacerdoti. In un contesto lontano da quello prettamente

SriLankese, questi riti, subiscono inevitabilmente dei cambiamenti. Qui è fatto

294 “Red is the color used by the Hindu sacerdotes. We remained faithful to the original one.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, July 2, 2018. 295 “In a context, far from the strictly Sri Lankan one, these rituals inevitably undergo changes when they take place.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, 2 July 2018. 222

dentro un appartamento piccolo, il tamburo non è quello giusto. Inoltre durante il

rito bisogna fare attenzione a non disturbare i vicini e così via.”296

The babel of languages with variation and adaptation is also visible in the ritual. As

explained by Katugampala, “la lingua usata nel rito è una combinazione di Singalese con

frammenti presi da altre lingue.”297 The sense of adaptation and its consequences are

visible through the ritual, through the needs to adapt habits and customs in a host country.

Displacement brings along adaptation. The sense of a shared failure to adjust to new

surroundings is a common thread in this sequence. This is also visible through the way

the apartment is framed. For instance, the interior and the flat lighting create a state of

claustrophobia, a sense of anxiety and perhaps suffocation, closely tied to a feeling of not

belonging. When, for instance, Sunita’s son enters to find the two “priests” drinking tea:

Sunita’s profile is enveloped in shadow and left on the margin, while the male

tea-drinkers are centered in the frame. This contrast may be indicative of the the female

character’s greater feelings of marginalization and anxiety. The imbalance is so

pronounced that the male characters assume the symbolic role of fathers who can thus

help her reestablish a proper mother-son relationship. The imbalanced frame can therefore create a sense of anxiety or uneasiness on the part of the woman, her retreat into the shadow indicating the degree to which she is entrapped in her a presumed religious and linguistic certitude. While she is deeply attached to her past, her son has been set

296 “In Sri Lanka, a ritual of this kind is done outdoors with a specific drum called beraya. There are various types of beraya, such as those for blessings, those for curses, and so on ... The drum must be played at high volume and for a long time. The priests sing loudly to forcibly address the evil eye - hunting an evil eye requires insistence and perseverance. In a context, far from the strictly Sri Lankan one, these rituals inevitably undergo changes. Here [in the film] it is done inside a small apartment. The drum is not the right one. Also during the ritual one has to be careful not to disturb the neighbors and so on. “Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, 2 July 2018. 297 “The language used in the ritual is Sinhala mixed with some fragments taken from other languages.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. Text Message to Suranga Katugampala, February 4, 2019. 223

adrift from that ancestral culture, which he adamantly refuses to acknowledge. Therefore,

she persistently forces her son to return back to something that he has never experienced.

This persistence is understandable. Like other first-generation immigrants, Sunita’s sense

of involuntary exile is essential to the self-affirmation of her identity in an unfamiliar

world. Although what they experience seems to be distinct, both mother and son are the

result of what involuntary immigration can often produce: a sense of alienation,

displacement and anger.

Another interesting compositional feature arrests the film’s spectator. The scene

that leads into the fake ritual appears, in contrast to its quick montage, to be as still as a

formal group portrait – the characters retain their relative positions for quite a long time

in the confines of the small living-room. The shot reminds the viewer Bordwell’s

definition of a “planimetric style” of cinematography.298 However, in this case it

constitutes more than a connotation of a posed photograph, it carries the connotation of a

painting in which there is a unity of a classic composition.299 Bordwell draws on the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin who observes that compositional “unity” is achieved by “a harmony of free parts [or] by a union of parts in a single theme, or by the subordination, to one unconditioned dominant, of all other elements” (157). The composition technique, in the ritual, conveys its specific meaning especially if one considers the well-lit left side as framed by the camera as subordinate to the dim right side.

298 The term, which is often used by film critic David Bordwell, was adopted from the word of the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin. 299 In the film, many interesting frames remind the viewer of the style of a posed photograph: i.e. (00:27:30). Sunita is positioned on the right, while a painting of a Madonna with Child (copy of a painting by the Venetian Carlo Crivelli) centers the frame. The scheme resembles that of a photograph.

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Light and color also define the shot. The man who pretends to be a priest and

Sunita’s son are swathed in glimmering white sheets, while the other characters on the opposite side, including Sunita, are darker. The schema can suggest the opposition of two different worlds and ways of thinking. On one hand, Obesena and Sunita believe that using a ritual is a way of keeping their culture safe, without acknowledging that any culture inevitably undergoes the transformation brought on by migratory rites of passage, or, as the filmmaker claims, “una cultura nel passaggio con la migrazione non si trasforma semplicemente ma si deforma, avendo come conseguenza una sorta di metamorfosi, o una sorta di grottesco, che è una forma che mi intriga molto.”300 The young boy is absorbed by his own process of self-discovery and his transition to adulthood more than by any ancestral longing. Sunita sees the uncertainty of a new world, new identities, and new experiences as something frightening, while her son needs to discover a new world.

The sequence, as the film in general, is characterized not only by a juxtaposition of different kinds of claustrophobic living spaces, but also specifically by a juxtaposition of differing states of mind. This is also visible in the moment where the sound of a doorbell interrupts the ritual, because as the audience discovers, the loud sound of the drum disturbs the neighbors. A subjective shot from outside the apartment shows the neighbor's door being closed. The action by Sunita’s neighbor shows more than the lack of communication between them, the complete absence and sign of normal neighborhood relations.

300 “A culture that with migration not simply transform itself but it deforms, having as a result a sort of metamorphosis, or a sort of grotesque, which is a form that really intrigues me.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: rito usato nel film.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, July 2, 2018. 225

This scene appears to illustrate at once a double exclusionary principle, a refusal to accept the presence of the other by natives and an equally staunch refusal to acculturate to new conditions on the part fo the immigrant]. As a matter of fact, there is also a clear statement Sunita makes when she finds her son loitering with local street kids: “Don’t you have Sri-Lankan friends? How many times have I told you not to join these guys?”301 Crucially, the language she uses is Sinhala a cultural reversion to a language less familiar to her son.

The clash of generations is particularly deeply felt among Sri Lankan immigrants because the cause of immigration was to a large extent the result of a fifty-year Civil

War, one that made nostalgic and idyllic visions of the past de rigeur among expatriates.

Just as he lacks a father, Sunita’s son lacks a fatherland, as is true of many of his generation. This generational and cultural gap is well perceived by the Sri Lankan filmmaker Ashoka Handagama during an interview with Katugampala: the parent-child relationship “lacks mutual understanding. There is a cultural chasm … The parents still have their roots here [in Sri Lanka] and even if they live in Italy, they only do so with their bodies. Their minds are still over here, rooted in their culture.”302

Another technical characteristic that Katungampala efficiently uses in Per un figlio is the absence of sound. Long and noticeable periods of silence become very expressive. Silence means “incomunicabilità” (the lack of communication) and a universal refuge, a tactic that serves as its central metaphor for cultural misunderstanding and sense of uprooting.

301 Here are the subtitles: “Ma non hai amici srilankesi? Quante volte ti ho detto di non frequentare questi ragazzi?” 302 The filmmaker’s entire interview is part of the DVD’s content released with a booklet. After the debut of Per un figlio in Sri Lanka, Handagama was interviewed by Katugampala. 226

In a complex study of the notion of silence, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Chana

Teeger argue that silence can be analyzed in two ways and not only “as the antithesis of speech” (1104). As suggested by them, overt silences refer to a literal absence of speech and narrative, while covert silence is “covered and veiled by much mnemonic talk and representation” (1104). The scholars point out that in such kind of silence what is missing is the content. However, in Sunita and her son, silence is manifested in the literal absence of speech which regards their inability to express their feeling. The result is that “silence is never a neutral emptiness” (Chion 57). In Per un figlio it overlaps with the incomunicabilità (my italic). The filmic construction of the “neutral emptiness” built around Sunita and her son, comprises a vision of laceration and internal suffering: “words are spares, and the camera is left to do the ‘talking’” (Iordanova 2002:1).

Silence appears to be a topical element especially in the claustrophobic space of

Sunita’s apartment.

The Apartment: a Claustrophobic Chronotope

The spaces in which specific subjects live reflects in many aspects their displaced identity. Naficy points out that “closed and phobic structures ... take the form in the accented films of closed mise-en-scène and filming style and a receding structure of feelings” (191). Sunita’s daily life is confined to imprisoning spaces: between her claustrophobic apartment and the elderly woman's house, where she spends most of her days and nights. There are also third kind of spaces, such as transportation vehicles that cross boundaries (Naficy 155). In the film, the road is a “thirdspace chronotope” (155) used by the woman as a passage between the two houses, and her moped is the moving

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“chronotope” which grants her scant breathing space. The film uses her journeys as insert shots, transitions as she speeds back and forth from one space to another. This insistence on her shuttling to and fro expresses her directionlessness, she is caught between claustrophobic spaces.

The mood of constriction sets the prevalent tone of the entire movie. Sunita’s apartment is characterized by a sense of claustrophobia. The viewer never sees windows or rooms large enough to sleep or to eat. In one scene, a carabiniere, and a social worker arrive in her house. After another late-night return of the boy, and following a quarrel between mother and son, Sunita does not let the boy enter the apartment, forcing him to sleep on the stairs. One of the neighbors, who has witnessed the quarrel, calls the carabinieri and reports the episode. The woman is being questioned about her life and her job. Since the apartment contains a single, narrow bed, the social worker asks Sunita where she sleeps. This restrictive space where mother and son live is outlined by parameters of confinement through the slow movements of the camera that never actually offers to establish the space of Sunita’s apartment. Even on her moped, Sunita seems to wear a helmet that encloses her head. Through this technique, the spectator’s vision is aligned with the constricted gaze and the experience of the immigrant woman.

In describing some general features of accented films that treat exile and diaspora,

Naficy argues that space can often seem confining, the hostile settings “intensified by dark lighting scheme that limits sight, by barriers in the shot that impede vision, by tight shot compositions, immobile framing, and a stationary camera” (191). Space represents not only a metaphor of survival, but also creates a radical division between identities. For

Sunita enclosed spaces symbolize a way of surviving: the old lady’s apartment gives

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sustenance, while her own small apartment secures her child’s future. In stark contrast to

Sunita, her son is constantly outside playing and hanging around with his Italian friends, despite his mother’s disapproval. One of their refuges, is in fact, an abandoned building on the outskirts of town, with large rooms and few standing walls.

Gaston Bachelard analyzes the meaning of space in terms of phenomenological interrogation. The house, in particular, has both unity and complexity. It is made out of memories and experiences. Its different parts arouse different sensations and yet it brings up a unitary, intimate experience of living. However, he claims, “it is not a question of describing houses, or enumerating their picturesque features and analyzing for which reasons they are comfortable” (4), space, like a soul, is the “abode” (xxxvii) of human consciousness. “Not only our memories, but the things we have forgotten are ‘housed’.

Our soul is an abode. And by remembering "houses" and "rooms," we learn to "abide" within ourselves” (xxxvii). The French philosopher considers the house the most intimate of spaces, a way to understand the soul and that keeps the daydreamer alive. As he claims: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer … allows one to dream in peace” (6). However, Sunita’s apartment, he would note, is not “a dollhouse or an enchanted cottage.”303 It has nothing to do with dream and soul, but serves only as a protective shell for her son.

Conversely, the originator of humanistic geography, Yi-Fu Tuan, claims that space should not be considered as a single entity, but it should be approached as an interaction between human body and its environment, “body implicates space; space coexists with the sentient body” (215). Sunita’s apartment and her refusal to personalize

303 John R. Stilgoe Foreword, The Poetics of Space ix. 229

it, signifies social stratification, that of the lowly migrant worker who feels no sense of belonging to Italy. Her necessary return to that forbidding space is for the self-sacrificial purpose of feeding and tending to her son. There is no space for her, only one single bed where her son sleeps. The space surrounding Sunita seems not to be “in accordance with the schema of [her] body” (Tuan 38): she sleeps on a white plastic chair in a tiny space.

The viewer barely sees her kitchen, parts of a living room, the shuttered corners of windows. There is only one space that can be transformed to fit her body, the space where the ritual of cultural identity is performed. As stated by Tuan, a “geometrical space is cultural space, a sophisticated human construct” (215). The sacred space re-invented or re-created according to a new reality, foregrounds another stratum in Tuan's model, the necessity for humans to interact with others in a space that can be defined as experiential space.

Perhaps, even more pertinently, in The Apartment Complex. Urban Living and

Global Screen Cultures (2018), Pamela Robertson Wojcik examines a range of films in terms of the apartment plot, across different national and transnational production contexts. In exploring the space of the apartment as more than a simple setting, but also as a temporality which structures the events, Wojcik claims that “there is a contradiction between the sense of dwelling - that characters are identified by and with a place of residence - and the sense that one’s place is constantly changing, which relates to the sense of transience in the apartment plot” (4).304 It is precisely a sense of the apartment as a place of growth that seems beyond the purview of Sunita or her son. The characters

304 The author writes “the temporality of the apartment may relate to the character’s being young or single, but, more specifically, in terms of plot, the temporality of the narrative is usually shaped by the temporality of the apartment: beginnings or endings marked by characters moving in or out” (3). 230

in Katugampala's film are identified through other spaces, which in the case of Sunita's son are more open spaces. The space where she lives is dark, claustrophobic, and represents the metaphor of solitude faced by immigrants.

The Solitude of the Immigrant: a State of Mind?

Per un figlio opens with a political statement taht labels the film since the beginning. In the opening credits, an informative note, a preface, explains historical events that the audience might be unfamiliar with, “A causa di 30 anni di guerra civile in

Sri Lanka, un’economia povera e una politica corrotta, molte donne e uomini hanno lasciato i figli a casa per emigrare. Li hanno incontrati solo dopo molti anni.”305 With these bits of historical and political information, the film informs the audience of the all too common wages of civil war that led to a multi-generational diaspora.

In her analysis of migration in Katugampala’s film, Gamage takes into account an article written by Quintus Perera and published by The Financial Times in 2017,

Large numbers migrated to Italy from coastal areas in Sri Lanka, such as

Negambo, Puttalam, and Wennapuwa, many entering Italy as illegal migrants and

then going on to obtain valid visas. Experienced fishermen, naval routes, human

traffickers, illegal job agents had provided passage to Italy for people in the

coastal areas (Perera 2017). Wennappuwa, once a fishing village in Sri Lanka’s

west-coast, has today transformed into a middle-class suburban town containing

305 “Due to 30 years of civil war in Sri Lanka, a poor economy and a corrupt policy, many women and men have left their children at home to emigrate. They only joined them after many years.” https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/sri-lankan-conflict 231

palatial residences with booming land prices, as a result of remittances from Italy,

earning the colloquial name of ‘Little Italy’ (3).306

While in general diasporic communities of significant size seek safety in numbers,307

Sunita has no profound relations with other members of her ethnic group. Some scholars would even call her independence a reduction to a “banal transnationalism”’ (Aksoy and

Robins 95).308 She is attached to her (lost) past in a way that is more personal than communitarian. As stated by Shashini Gamage, Sunita can be positioned in the category of “banal nomadism,” adopting the term coined by Myria Georgiou in her work on some

Arab communities in Europe,309 Gamage assignes Sunita’s place in the spaces of the movie:

her associations with her home country culture did not seem to provide an

essential identity for her, as a Sri Lankan in an Italian society, [she is] rather a

nomadic, cosmopolitan identity. In the film, we do not see Sunita engaging with

306 In the 70s, Italy began to be a destination of choice for Sri Lankan immigrants, in particular asylum seekers and workers serving diplomats, Italian entrepreneurs returning from the Indian subcontinent area and Italian families. The “Ministero del Lavoro e delle Politiche Sociali” in an annual report, reveals that “gli Srilankesi rappresentano la dodicesima comunità per numero di presenze tra i cittadini non comunitari. Al primo gennaio 2017, i migranti di origine srilankese regolarmente soggiornanti in Italia risultano 105.032, pari al 2,8% circa del totale dei cittadini non comunitari.” As the report apprises, the Sri Lankan community is characterized by a strong presence in Northern Italy. As a matter of fact, they reside mainly in the rich and industrial Northern cities of Milan, and Verona. A study conducted by “Italia Lavoro” on the Sri-Lankan diaspora in Italian society, shows that there are some key patterns of the social structure of that community. A further explorative study by Ranjith Henayaka-Lochbihler and Miriam Lambusta, reports that the Sri Lankan community is also well-organized, with a network of support groups. However, while politics play not a central role, “members of the Diaspora community are aware of political developments back home and open for a dialogue for the establishment of a Diaspora network on a national basis” (16). 307 “By living amongst his own people, the emigrant could derive from his group of companions the strength he needed to resist the temptations and debilitating effects of urban life” (Sayad 35). With The Suffering of the Immigrant the sociologist Abdelmalek Sayad takes into account Algerian migration to France. However, his analysis has also been essential to understanding migration as social fact. 308 Asu Aksoy and Kevin Robins have conducted a research amongst the Turkish-speaking populations in London, "in order to see how it is that ordinary Turkish people are relating to the new transnational media" (2). 309 “Between strategic nostalgia and banal nomadism: explorations of transnational subjectivity among Arab audiences,” International Journal of Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 23-39. 232

her home country culture for intense symbolic contestation of Italianness, in the

sense that she does not seem to be using her Sri-Lankanness to counter the Italian

culture in which she lives and her son grows up. We do not see her participating

in the collective diasporic activities of Sri Lankans in her town. (7)

There is one depiction of the ethnic community in the movie that demands attention, a

Sri-Lankan community is celebrating an event. Not by chance, the audience sees the

event through Sunita’s son’s eyes. The camera frames the boy wading through clusters of

dancing Sri Lankans, as if baffled by the tiny apparently meaningless microcosm. The space through which he walks exudes a feeling of melancholy as the audience can perceive where he and his mother feel like uninvited guests.

The camera frames people dancing and singing. Music, dance and clothes are

marked by ethnic identifiers, and it shows a “collective lie.”310 Abdelmalek Sayad claims

that the Sri-Lankan immigrant “[b]y living amongst his own people ... could derive from

his group of companions the strength he needed to resist the temptations and debilitating

effects of urban life” (35). However, Sunita does not undergo the effects of urban life

since there is no relation between her and the Italian countrymen. Her only concern is the

reconstruction of a lost past, one that seems in her case entirely fictive.

Writing about the myth of a unified Europe, Anthony D. Smith argues that

“identities are forged out of shared experiences, memories and myths, in relation to those

of other collective identities. They are in fact often forged through the opposition to the

identities of significant others, as the history of paired conflict so often demonstrates”

(75). Sunita need not voluntarily choose isolation since identity-construction and alterity

310 I am quoting Abdelmalek Sayad who in The Suffering of the Migrant titles a chapter “The Original Sin and the Collective Lie.” 233

go hand in hand. In “The Dialectics of Displacement and Emplacement,” Naficy refers not only to a physical space but also to the ability of displaced people to forge connections with their new environments (152). While Sunita has built her own physical entity around memory and belonging, her son’s identity is built upon a new culture, the

one Sunita rejects. “Migration is a transition with little or no prescribed rituals” and often

migrants are left “to deal with the painful act of migration with only their private rituals”

(Carlos E. Sluzki 4). Sunita thus seeks a solution in a pre-migratory ritual whose

provenance antedates the Sri Lankan diaspora. Her son seeks relief in the arms of a

prostitute who is clearly envisioned as a substitute mother figure. There are specific and

personal actions whereby both the woman and her son try to relieve their lack of deep

connections.

Another space is particularly telling for the son’s identity construction: the ruined

building. The refusal of his mother’s identity and culture is visible in a scene where the

boy, together with two urban teenage gangs, hangs around. The camera frames a

wandering space constituted by ruins and desolation. The ruins, however, are distinct

from a classic cinematic romanticization, and are more akin to a Pasolinian imaginary

landscape, a non-place that emphasizes solitude and offers the transient occupant the

illusion of being part of something that cannot be found outside. In fact, it is a symbol of discovering and perdition, where the youngsters shatter bottles with stones and consort

with prostitutes.

In one particular scene four boys form a rhombus face off in an outburst of ethnic

hostility. In irritation Sunita’s son takes part in the abuse of one his Sri-Lankan friends by slapping him, metaphorically implying that he slaps his own mirror image in the vein of

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“the other that looks like me is dangerous, since he reminds me of who I am.” The slap

moves the story into a dark zone of impropriety, from the act of violence against the self in a manner reminiscent of Julia Kristeva’s theory of abjection. Kristeva’s work analyzes

“the abject” not only as something that contradicts the social order, but also as the negative counterpart to the ego. Sunita’s son slaps a counterpart, the violent rejection of a component of self thereby constituted as the ‘that which is not me.’ Kristeva analyzes the constant collision and tension between the the ego and its negation in the abject. For her pure abjection “preserves what existed in the archaism of pre-objectal relationship, in the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to be” (10). Fear is the triggering element for the self-negating slap. His sudden outburst of aggression “appears to us as a rejoinder to the original deprivation felt from the time of the mirage known as ‘primary narcissism;’ it merely takes revenge on [those] initial frustrations” (Kristeva 39). The revolt against himself, hence his mother/land, takes the form of hostility to the other who is his own reflection.

It seems noteworthy that for Naficy identities and manifestation of self-othering are also described in accented films as a characteristic stylistic element. Naficy underlines that identities are often constructed “by inscribing characters who are partial, double, or split, or who perform their identities” (272) using similar strategies of alienation. A symbolic reading of Sunita’s son’s namelessness is that he can represent the split personalities of second-generation immigrants.

Read another way, the slapping scene might be seen as the mirroring of a mirroring. It shows not only Sunita’s son's doppelgänger, but also Katugampala’s doppelgänger. The anonymous boy, like Sunita’s son, can be seen as the other side of the

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filmmaker’s identity as a Veronese Sri Lankan other who receives a symbolic slap from

both cultures. While Per un figlio shows the difficult relationship, in the migrant context

as in the relation between mother and son, the spectator can also find a political meaning

beneath the film of the relation between motherland and an alientated childhood. Notably,

the relation between mother, motherland, and son is visible through some insightful

elements, such as the metaphor of the act of nurturing.

The Eye of the Breast:311 Mother - Motherland - Prostitute

In Per un figlio the representation of a mother with child is a powerful metaphor.

An image of a woman and child is introduced in different moments and trough diverse

depictions. Specifically, three fragments are worthly of analysis. The first one, visible in the first part of the film, is a print of a Madonna and child hung in the old lady’s bedroom; the second shows a young mother nursing her infant appears at the Sri-Lankan party; and third, the pivotal compelling scene in the woods, shows where Sunita’s son meeting with a prostitute endimg up draped over her knees as if he is lifeless, her pendulous breasts suspended over him.

The first representation of the mother-son relationship is the religious image. The

Madonna with child, a reproduction of the Renaissance version by the Renaissance

Venetian artist Carlo Crivelli,312 arrests the viewer’s attention as a punctum leaping from

the frame, thereby suggesting a new dimension, a new vision. The sacred representation

that hangs over the old lady’s bed illustrates a common way of displaying typical

311 In Malay dialects, the nipple is called mata sui, literally “the eye of the breast.” Mary Y. Ayers makes this claim in the Mother-Infant Attachment and Psychoanalysis: The Eyes of Shame. Routledge, 2003. 312 Venice 1430 /1435 – Ascoli 1475/1515; “Madonna col Bambino” c.1482-83 tempera and gold on wood panel, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo. 236

devotional images in Italian bedrooms. The iconic image shows the significance of the relationship between humans and the sacred, and implies guidance, protection, and

comfort in times of emotional distress.

In a study on feminine godheads, the scholar Kimberly Van Esveld Adams,

argues that the "Madonna is an empowering and life transforming symbol” (42), despite

the connection of the image to religious tradition that at times discriminated against

women and that has drawn the wrath of feminists, theologians, and biblical scholars.313

Instead, in Katugampala’s film, the image of the Madonna and her child, can be

analyzed as a symbol of suffering and protection, but also as a one of nurturance and mourning. The image reveals itself unexpectedly, piercingly, throughout the film. Both the caregiver and the old lady suffer from indifference and a lack of mutual communication. Nevertheless, while the Madonna could be a spiritual remedy for the old lady, Sunita, has a different faith. In fact, at the beginning of the film there is a scene in which she lights a candle to a small statue of Buddha, which also represents “a potent synecdoche for house, home, or even homeland, feeding the memories and narratives of placement and displacement” (Naficy 169). For Katugampala, however, the interesting point is not specifically the religious tropes the objects summon, but the intrinsic connection between body and identity they suggest.

313 In her work, the scholar analyzes the study of many feminist - theologians and biblical scholars - such as Mary Daly, Elizabeth Johnson, and Marina Warner - who “link the Marian tradition almost exclusively to the misogynistic practices and oppressive politics of the patriarchal Church and Catholic societies; a frequent conclusion is that the Madonna is an "unredeemable" symbol for women” (42). On the same account Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, who “read the Madonna as only a distorted and limited patriarchal ideal for women.” Frequently she is associated with the Angel of the House as a symbol of female self-effacement, subordination, and entrapment” (VanEsveld Adams 42).

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The second scene takes place at the festive gathering of Sri Lankans. Sunita’s son

remains apart. A Sri-Lankan young woman holding an infant attracts his attention. He

follows her, insistently looking at the woman who is breastfeeding her child. The scene

seems to mirror the boy’s life. By contrast, it can reveal his mother's inability to produce nutriment for him, which can be seen as a metaphor of identity. The young mother the audience encounters at the Sri-Lankan party could possibly represent a “guarantor of

purity of progeny and authenticator of historical continuity. In the mother - in her body is

vested the totality - of an identity” (Lakshmi 73). However, Sunita is not seen by her son as “the authenticator of historical continuity” (73), since he rejects his mother’s

imposition of a primordial culture.

The third scene frames Sunita’s son in the woods together with one of the

prostitutes, with the camera placing them head-on and centered in the frame. In contrast

to the devotional image of Crivelli, this seems a profane version of Michelangelo’s Pietà.

The scene takes place a few minutes before the end of the movie, and we are led to

imagine this is supposed to raise compassion. The near silence is broken by the twittering

of birds. The woman is partly dressed, one of her breasts still uncovered. The boy’s head

is tilted in the manner of the dead Christ, and his face is not visible to the viewer, but

both figures are briefly frozen in a tableau vivant. As Gerda Lerner puts it, “[w]omen by

their nurturant function sustain daily life and the continuity of the species” and perhaps it

is this recognition of a nurturing, quasi-maternal figure that leads to at least a temporary

“truce” with his real mother whose solitary burden has been her “nurturant function” (4).

The discovering of a new body, and at the same time the fear to touch it, can be

associated with the boy’s assumed identity.

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The prostitute represents his mother’s counterpart. She embodies the new

dwelling place. Sunita can epitomize the metaphor of her motherland who gives identity,

while the prostitute incarnates the boy’s new identity, and the new motherland of his

adult life. In his hopeless escaping from his mother, the boy is actually looking for her.

His desire of comprehending who he is drives him in the other directions. His quest has

the purpose of bringing him back to her, to his primordial element, his identity. However,

his return may be possible only after rediscovering a new identity.

Film Production. Between Interstitial and National

In the introduction of the booklet that accompanies the DVD of this film,

Goffredo Fofi underlines that the film,

segna una data importante nella storia del cinema italiano, e oso dire, del cinema

singalese per una ragione molto semplice: è il primo lungometraggio a soggetto

realizzato da un figlio di immigrati provenienti da un paese peraltro molto lontano

e molto diverso dal nostro per storia tradizioni costumi ... che è bensì cresciuto in

Italia e degli italiani ha assunto modelli di ragionamento e comportamento,

confrontandoli con quelli della sua cultura di origine, ora mescolandoli ora

adattandoli ora confutandoli. (2)314

Can Katugampala’ s work be analyzed in the light of Naficy’s concept of interstitialtiy,

where films made by transnational and immigrant filmmakers are “created astride and in

314 “It marks an important date in the history of Italian cinema, and I dare say, of Sinhalese cinema for a very simple reason: it is the first feature-length film made by a child of immigrants coming from a country very far and very different from our history traditions costumes ... that has grown up in Italy and Italians have taken models of reasoning and behavior, comparing them with those of its culture of origin, now mixing them now adapting them now confuting them. (2) 239

the interstices of social formations” (4)? Given that Naficy was looking backward as well

as forward as a film historian might, perhaps we should also keep in mind that “[i]n the

context of globalization and the realities of the post-cold war world, the relationship between center and periphery is no longer necessarily a straightforward, hierarchical one, where a center seeks to subsume its margins” (Iordanova et al. 6-7). Katugampala’s work perhaps reflects exactly this new process, a liquidity in which the center and periphery of modernity is no longer well defined.

It is not unexpected, then, that in a conversation with the producer and distributor of the film, Antonio Augugliaro,315 Katugampala claims that,

Lo si può definire un prodotto che viaggia parallelamente al cinema nazionale

classico. Infatti è uscito nelle sale cinematografiche accanto ai film del circuito

cinema, il circuito ufficiale del cinema in Italia. In qualche caso è anche stato

smontato un film commerciale per mettere il nostro per via della grande affluenza

di pubblico. In più con l'uscita in dvd, il film sarà nelle librerie accanto ad altri

film nazionali classici.316

Per un figlio turns out to be an intersti-national product that lives and travels in a national film context. “Located between national, transnational and global modes of production, distribution and reception” this film relies “on its present-day sociopolitical and cultural

315 The production is the Gina Films. Augugliaro is also the distributor of Per un Figlio, which is co-produced with Gianluca Arcopinto, in collaboration with the “Cineteca di Bologna.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: domande.” Received from Antonio Augugliaro, 2 June 2018. 316 “The film can be defined a product that travels parallel to classic national cinema. In fact, it was released in a normal cinema circuit. In some cases, a commercial film was also pulled out to show our own because of the large number of visitors. In addition, with the release of the DVD, the film will be in bookstores alongside other canonical national films.(Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: domande.” Received by Antonio Augugliaro, June 2, 2018). The production is the Gina Films. Augugliaro is also the distributor of Per un Figlio, which is co-produced with Gianluca Arcopinto, in collaboration with the “Cineteca di Bologna.”

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influences” (Ponzanesi, Berger 111). Regarding the effort to distribute a product like Per un figlio, the producer admits the economic strain for a small budget production and distribution to keep on the terms of distribution deals, financing, subsidies, and the disadvantage they are still facing to cover some costs. It shows that small and independent productions are constantly dealing with low budgeting, which in this case leads to creativity in finding other solutions to produce and distribute a low-film budget.

In fact, the hegemonic system, as a sort of contradiction, has in some way allowed spaces for independent transnational films. As a matter of fact, regarding the general information of the distribution, Augugliaro reports,

La distribuzione nelle sale cinematografiche è cominciata ad aprile 2017 con una

serie di attività promozionali che hanno visto coinvolte anche le comunità

srilankesi in Italia e l'attivazione di alcuni canali mediatici in Sri-Lanka. Abbiamo

anche effettuato, durante la prima settimana di uscita del film, un tour

promozionale in cui io e Suranga siamo andati nelle principali città italiane a

presentare il film. Oggi il film viene ancora richiesto per proiezioni nelle arene

estive, associazioni, scuole e centri culturali. sia in Italia che all'estero. Inoltre il

film uscirà in cofanetto (dvd + libretto) edito da Feltrinelli nella collana Real

Cinema.317

During the composition of this work, Per un figlio won a prize at the 2018 “Gallio Film

Festival,” with the Best Actress prize going to Kaushalya Fernando, one of Sri Lanka's

317 “The distribution of the film began in April 2017 with promotional activities that also involved the Sri Lankan communities in Italy, and the activation of some media channels in Sri-Lanka. During the first week of the film's release, we also carried out a promotional tour in which Suranga and I went to the main Italian cities to present the film. Per un figlio is still requested for screenings in summer arenas, associations, schools and cultural centers both in Italy and abroad. In addition, the film has been released in a box set (DVD + booklet) published by Feltrinelli (Collana Real Cinema).” 241

better-known actresses. In a video-interview she tells the reason why she decided to take

part in the film: “the character and the subject really grabbed my attention ... I was struck

by this kid’s enthusiasm.”318 What gave also professional credibility to the project was

the participation of Channa Deshapriya, a very well-known Sri-Lankan cinematographer.

Kaushalya Fernando explains that, the process of the film was a way to interact with each other, “the shooting process … became ours, communal property.”319 The process of

production became an occasion of integration and self-reliance. She claims, “Suranga and his Italian and Sri Lankan friends did everything.”320

In the video interview, the actress underlines the issue of migration as a

large-scale movement that takes place in every single corner of the world, and the film

analyzes this process in a very simple and delicate way,

Uprooting yourself from your culture to establish yourself in a new one often

leads to solitude. And in this solitude work can become your only anchor. Your

only hope to cling on. To this you add a language barrier, relationship barrier.

Basically, the situation is very complex. In the meantime, the kids grow or join

their parents in Italy. And they have to face equally complicated situations, too.

At school, issues arising from skin color, a new language, a new culture, a new

life.321

As Fernando underlines, Per un figlio is a result of the collective mode of production

celebrated by Naficy, who draws on the tenets of Third Cinema. What is increasingly

318 The actress’s entire interview is part of the DVD’s content released with a booklet. 319 DVD’s content 320 DVD’s content 321 DVD’s content 242

evident, however, is the crucial aspect of interstitial and collective modes of concern

financing, since these marginal filmmakers usually invest in their own films, raise funds

on their own, and endure immense budgetary constraints, as has become true even for

mainstream Italian filmmakers. Hence, more than being interstitial, it seems “un prodotto

che viaggia parallelamente al cinema nazionale classico.”322

This is mainly the divergence between Italian filmmakers and Italian punctuated

filmmakers: the key point of this kind of cinema resides in assuming what in Hayden

White’s words, as quoted by Naficy, remains the “burden of representation” (64).

Katugampala, the Son

How does Katugampala make sense of his concept of being simultaneously here

and there? In an interview with an Italian magazine he explains how he perceives his two

worlds, Sri-Lanka and Italy: “vado in Sri Lanka per pensare e torno in Italia per

raccontare.”323 Two states of being which are visible in all of Katugampala’s work. The confusion of identity characteristic of becomes in some way a sort of illness, a state of

mind that besets displaced people. As a matter of fact, Katugampala’s main interest is to

address similarities between generations, but also the ideological conflicts between

disparate cultural formations. As Fofi remarks,

Per un figlio è la storia delle incomprensioni tra una madre immigrata in Italia …

che sente ancora fortemente un modo di intendere l’esistenza che appartiene alla

sua cultura di origine, e un figlio che è cresciuto tra noi e che è, di fatto, ormai

322 “A product that travel parallel to classic national cinema.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: domande.” Received by Antonio Augugliaro, June, 2 2018. 323 “I go to Sri-Lanka to think, I come back to Italy to tell stories.” 243

italiano a tutti gli effetti. Un ragazzo come tanti, del tutto simile agli adolescenti

italiani suoi coetanei, non sempre aperti, positivi, propositivi. (2-4)324

The filmmaker’s interest centers on observing closely the displacement and the seclusion of human beings, such as comparing the parallel trajectories of two women (Sunita and the old lady) who inflict pain and suffering on each other. Through them, the filmmaker shows the allegory of human displacement. Katugampala’s films, as many works made by punctuated filmmakers, “embody and imagine the home ... in certain privileged chronotopes that link the inherited space-time of the homeland to the constructed space- time of exile and diaspora” (Naficy 2001: 152). Though a mother and son who have a small apartment, they live in two different time-spaces which constantly collide. Without clearly showing it, the film examines not only cultural but also political issues.

Katugampala includes this very topical trope in his work. In two specific moments of pure anger, the boy accuses his mother not only of being incapable of understanding proper Italian (“ma non sai parlare neanche Italiano”) but of lacking the capacity to undersand any utterance (“guarda pure, tanto non capisci niente”).325 About

Sunita’s detachment from the language and the culture of the host country, Naficy point that “marginalized people … use the stratagems of concealment and doubling in subversive ways to critique the dominant culture and to empower themselves creatively”

(274).

324 “Per un figlio is the story of the misunderstanding between a mother immigrated to Italy ... who still feels strongly a way of understanding the existence that belongs to her culture of origin, and a boy who grew up among us and who is, in fact, now Italian in all respects. A boy like many others, very similar to his Italian teenager peers, not always open, positive, proactive” (2-4). 325 “[Y]ou don’t even speak Italian;” “look at it, even though you don't understand anything.” 244

To draw out the point he wishes to make, the filmmaker who has “experienced the illness of migration” (my italics), has his own stratagem “to empower [himself] creatively” (Naficy 274), by using film to turn his personal experience into a universal

one. Katugampala prefers to make the universality of his intent to use less to tell more.

Indeed, he regards himself a minimalist:

Volevo fare un film minimalista il più semplice e vicino possibile alla realtà. Era

dicembre 2014. Ero a Negombo, nello Sri Lanka ... Abbiamo avuto l'urgenza di

raccontare una storia, di dire “eccoci qui,” “la nostra storia è anche la tua storia,

una storia alla quale tutti noi possiamo riferirci.” Il nostro obiettivo era quello di

raccontare una storia di qualsiasi altra provincia nel nord Italia. Non volevo

scrivere nessun dialogo preciso. Tutto è stato improvvisato durante le riprese,

adottato dagli attori per adattarsi a ciò che sentivano in quel momento. Le parole

alla fine sono state scelte da loro.326

The duty of films, as he claims, is to create a bridge between stories and history, and

thereby to lead to a social and anthropological analysis of the new Italian society. This is

why it’s necessary to attach importance to such interstitial products.

Il mio desiderio è quello di creare qualcosa come è successo altrove, come in

Francia, dove le seconde generazioni hanno dato vita ad un cinema nuovo... e così

326 “I wanted a minimalist film as simple and close as possible to reality. It was December of 2014. I was in Negombo, Sri Lanka. … We had the urgent need to tell a story, to tell 'here we are', 'our story is also your story, a story we all can relate to'. Our goal was to tell a story of any other province in northern italy. I didn't want to write any specific dialogues. Everything was improvised during the shooting, adopted by actors to suit what they were feeling at that time. The words in the end were chosen by them.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: Biografia e note di cinema.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, July 02, 2018. 245

magari anche qui da noi, fra dieci anni saremo più esperti e anche forse più pronti

per creare un cinema nuovo, una nuova corrente.327

Per un figlio provides an opportunity to observe these theoretical aspects from a closer

perspective, and peculiarly within a Sinhalese diasporic context in the Italian framework.

The Sri Lankan Italian filmmaker observes the dynamics of a migrant family life from a

deep perspective, using the camera to accurately reflect on the lives of Sinhalese people.

Katugampala knows how to tell a marginal story, in the way a certain Asian cinema does,

mirroring great masters such as the Bengali director Satyajit Ray.328 In our last

conversation, Katugampala, this son of the new Italy, claims that,

Credo che in fin dei conti, attraverso i miei personaggi passi una vera e propria

lotta alla cittadinanza. Si tratta di una lotta silenziosa, di una minoranza, spesso

contradittoria, piena di sfumature. Non sono schierati solo questioni legate al

paese accogliente, ma anche a quelle del paese d'origine. Per esempio, la

questione della madre lingua … Amo il cinema perché trovo che sia lo strumento

artistico che più possa dare dignità a queste storie, alle miriade di sfumature che

come essere umani viviamo in questa contorta società.329

327 “My desire is to create something as it would happen elsewhere, see for example in France, where the second generation gave birth to a new cinema ... and so maybe even here, in ten years we will be more experienced and maybe even more ready to create a new cinema, a new wave.” Iadevaia, Vincenza. “Re: Biografia e note di cinema.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, July 02, 2018. 328 Fofi writes. “Katugampala sa raccontare con modi che traggono origine da una cultura cinematografica non solo occidentale, ma dai “tempi” di un certo cinema asiatico, anche se poco conosciuto e diffuso da noi, da maestri come Satyaiit Ray o dal vivaio del cinema filippino,” (2). 329 “I think that ultimately, through my characters a real struggle becomes apparent, that of citizenship. It is a silent struggle, that of a minority, often contradictory, full of nuances. There are not only issues related to the host country, but also to those of the country of origin. For example, the question of the mother tongue … I love cinema because I find it, the most artistic instrument that can give dignity to these stories, to the myriad of nuances that as human beings we live in this twisted society. “Re: Frase note di cinema.” Received by Suranga D. Katugampala, March 06, 2019. 246

CLOSING REMARKS

Just as I began, with the tumult that took me from my home and brought me to another, a journey that inspired this work and reminded me of Auerbach’s own long journey, my conclusion takes place in a world that remains divided, and seething with conflicts whether it is Venezuela’s troubled borders, Donald Trump’s projected wall, or

Brexit.

The films I treat in this dissertation, illustrate above all, the degree to which

Italianness is cultural rather than territorial; a sense of being and belonging rather than a geographical demarcation of sorts. True enough, some of them express what has recently been termed “migrant anxiety,” title of the book written by Áine O'Healy: Migrant

Anxiety. Italian Cinema in a Transnational Frame (2019), but the subject of this work trains attention on homelessness rather than on issues immigrant faces, and, indeed, only includes Carpignano’s approach in its purview.

For my own part, too, I have decided to not treat recent documentary films created by directors who have dealt with issues of Italianness, but one example in this instance I hope might serve for many and rounds out the scope and nature of this study is the feature-length documentary Fisherman’s Conversations (2014) by Chiara Bove Makiedo.

The locality it treats is not strictly-speaking Italian since it details the lives of fishermen on the Dalmatian island of Hvar, but it links two cinematic traditions: the Italian

Neorealism of Luchino Visconti’s La Terra Trema and the history of documentary filmmaking itself.

247

In the latter case, the striking parallels to Robert J. Flaherty’s example, preserving

vanishing traditional culture (even to the extent of reengineering original practices) and

choosing remote settings, notably an island which depended on fishing. Like Makiedo, all

the filmmakers in these chapters contrast eroding, even vanished ways of life with present

realities, and each filmmaker appears to pay homage to documentary traditions in the

manner of Neorealist filmmakers who were themselves influenced by Flaherty.

Bove Makiedo may represent the new Italian cinema that occurs outside Italy in

that her work quite deliberately shifts across countries and times. Of Italian, Serbian, and

Croatian descent, she studied filmmaking at the Film School in Prague and at the

University of Arts in London. Fisherman’s Conversations can be seen as a work “that

links people [and] institutions across nations” (Ezra and Rowden 1). Makiedo’s subject,

like her name, amply illustrates that all multiculturalisms are as historically particular as

they are socially contingent. Her feature-length documentary takes yet another approach to represent the struggle between a vanishing past and an uncertain future, between tradition and the lures of innovation. Its form is that of an imaginary dialogue between the filmmaker and her Croatian grandfather Sergije Makiedo, who spent part of his life in the Dalmatian island of Hvar. The documentary has been described in this way:

The film was motivated by a desire to connect with her Grandfather she never

met; a formidable character and former partisan turned Navy captain, turned

judge, turned Yugoslav ambassador for the United Nations. But most of all turned

fisherman of Hvar. It opens with Chiara looking through photographs of the

family from decades before, inciting her to embark upon a journey to get to know

248

the fishermen of Hvar as a means of getting to know her Grandfather and to create

a piece which immortalizes the fishermen’s routines and lifestyle forever.330

Her choice is apt to her generation also, since she does not regard the petite histoire she relates as the outcome of a fragmentation of the Grand Récit of history, as once imagined by Michel de Certeau, but rather as a form of resistance to the relentless juggernaut of a continuing Grand Récit. In this, the chronotope she evokes is a place where time appears to have stood still (like a centuries’ old hamam, or a still unenclosed wild garden).

Machiedo’s film, like those I have treated in my chapters, also constitutes an experiment in genre, in that it seeks not to tell the story of a community through a series of long interviews, but by the close observation of the daily lives of individuals -- albeit ones chosen for specific reasons. In so doing her films gains aesthetic force by recapitulating documentary cinema’s tradition of chronicling vanishing ways of life -- even at the risk of anachronism. Just as Kamkari cites the Italian social comedies of the

1950s, Carpignano reflects the tenets of Dogme ’95, Halilovich refers to Woody Allen, and Özpetek to blend myth and memory with historical grandeur in the way Pasolini and

Bertolucci once did, Makiedo questions the premises of the genre she adopts in order to motivate her narrative. Her story stands for a larger story, the disappearance of micro- communities and individual traditions in the rising tides of globalization and universalized consumer culture. In this sense, the film of Visconti and Flaherty foretells her film, as do the films and filmmaking traditions alluded to or cited by each of the directors I have treated, all of whom choose genres and films that combine Italian

330Press kit kindly received from Chiara Bove Makiedo, who also gave me her personal information. 249

filmmaking practices with international ones. Strikingly, they also treat their models as

precursors of their own work.

Here, too, it is Auerbach who provides a model in that we could describe this

cinematic relationship in terms of “figuration,” in which he provides a particularly telling example of the exegetical hermeneutics of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In explaining the power of the figural interpretation of history, Auerbach implies “that every occurrence, in all its everyday reality, is simultaneously a part in a world- historical context through which each part is related to every other, and thus is likewise to be regarded as being of all times or above all time” (156). In his view, there is an intrinsic and inevitable connection between the old and the new. The relation of one tradition is connected to another because the present world gains meaning from the past: within this doctrine of representation, Adam’s wounds in the creation of Eve foreshadow those of Christ in the birth of a community of believers. So, too, the forms of representation found in the films

I have considered, while remarkable for their variety, illustrate some constant features.

Each tells the story of someone who has to make a strange and sometimes hostile place, into a home. The protagonists are all characters marked by their past. They have to come to terms with new customs, new neighbors and a uniformculture where they stick out like sore thumbs. Their only choice is to puncture discourses of dominance, domination, and mere assimilations, letting some new air in, and at the same time carving a small corner where they can be themselves. Safiye’s story is one of “translation,” not the story of a woman cocooned in a palace, but of the cruelty of history itself, which begins, in Marx’s formulation, as tragedy, but repeats as farce. Gioia’s tale is not about the Torinese

Romani, but about cultural adaptation as the newest turn in the lungo drom. Ayva’s

250

descent into darkness mirrors the lives of other displaced people who seekhuman dignity

against improbable odds. The little rascal of A Ciambra, and his day-by-day petty

thievery, stands for a multitude of other street kids born into marginality in the new

Europe, and finally the nameless adolescent in Per un figlio reflects the fate of an entire

post-immigrant generation lost between incommunicable anxieties and thwarted

aspirations of belonging.

This practice, the use of figuration, albeit not in an Auerbachian sense, in which

the local and the particular become a way of addressing the larger concerns of the present

moment of time, gives the films made by directors with punctuated identities the force of

moral authority. They call unequivocally for a more universal compassion and mutual

understanding between communities and the micro-communites they host, between societies and the many individuals who dwell within them.

For this reason, the existence of these new forms of identities has brought to the attention the necessity of exploring a new path in the so-called Italian cinema, whose porosity cannot be avoided. Thus, we have to face the thorny prospect of having to reformulate both the applicability and the fluctuating parameters of concepts such as im/migrant cinema, accented cinema, transnational cinema, transcultural cinema, postcolonial cinema and many other such descriptions that indicate hybridity. With this always in view, my aim has been to establish a new critical terminology that describes an artistic phenomenon with few precedents in Italian culture, and to document the characteristics of contemporary filmmakers, whom I define as having “punctuated identity” since they cannot be easily defined under the categories established by previous critical vocabularies. Accordingly, I have sought to identify a corpus of films and

251

filmmakers with themes and biographical elements at once highly representative and completely different from each other.

Given the potentiality of an overly diffuse argument by virtue of its inclusivity, I have sought to ground my research with a description of the socio-political and cultural

changes that led to the current situation in Italy that permitted and perhaps necessitated

cinema made by punctuated filmmakers. To that end, my critical analysis of recent Italian

cinema legislation, with its repercussions on multiculturalism and pluralism serves a

thematic function. But, naturally, no work such as this can appear out of thin air, and

throughout I have striven to make comprehensive use of the pioneering work of Naficy,

incorporating his multivalent theory of accented cinema into its foundations.

Consequently, I introduced the use of the Barthesian term “punctum” and its multiple

dimensions in order to develop the idea of “punctuated identities” to refer at once to the

individuals who have produced these films as well as in a temporal context, as a marker

of this phase of Italian cinema, which is so multifarious as to resist definition. Each

director’s vision unfolds differently on screen; each presents a stylistic approach that

would be mocked by such notions as immigrant or migrant cinema. Perhaps, I suggest,

they represent a new cultural norm rather than an exception, a coherent counter-model rather than an inchoate articulation of socio-cultural discontent. These, after all, are filmmakers who have contributed to two generations of Italian cinema, and whose presence is increasingly being felt at the highest levels of Italian film production.

It is heartening to think that Italian cinema has just entered a new phase in which

diversity is already making a move from the margin to the center. It is, of course, the secret aims of a work such as this not only to help promote positive change, but also to

252

alert mainstream producers of the need to adopt more inclusive attitudes so that we may

see an incipient trend flourish in the years to come. What I have hoped to do is also akin

to a work of detection, of finding films that have barely achieved distribution, of

conversations with directors, of inquiries into long forgotten sources as well as recent

ones.

Hopefully the conclusion of my work may well be the very beginning of another

tale. Paraphrasing the famous apples in Ferzan Özpetek’s Harem Suare, I would offer now my three apples to the reader. Three apples that could symbolically feed this new cinema: three apples fell from the sky. One for the punctuated filmmaker, another for the narrator of their stories, and the third for the Italian spectator and citizen who might someday appreciate the importance of this new cinema.

253

FILMOGRAPHY

Ferzan Özpetek

2017 Napoli velata 2017 Rosso Istanbul (original title Istanbul Kırmızısı) 2014 Allacciate le cinture 2012 Magnifica presenza 2010 Mine vaganti 2008 Un giorno perfetto 2007 Saturno contro 2005 Cuore sacro 2003 La finestra di fronte 2001 Le fate ignoranti 1999 Harem Suaré 1997 Il bagno turco

Laura Halilovic

2014 Io, rom romantica 2009 Io, la mia famiglia rom e Woody Allen 2007 Illusione (short)

Fariborz Kamkari

2016 Acqua e zucchero: Carlo di Palma i colori della vita (documentary) 2016 Posso Entrare? (short) 2015 Pitza e datteri 2010 I fiori di Kirkuk 2006 The Forbidden Chapter 2002 Black Tape (original title: Ravayate Makhdush)

Jonas Carpignano

2017 A Ciambra 2015 Mediterranea 2012 A Chjàna (short)

Suranga D. Katugampala

2017 Delivery - La consegna (short)

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2016 Per un figlio 2014 My Mother’s money (short) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOWs29rO65I

2013 Kunatu – Tempeste (web series) http://katugampala.com/kunatu/

Chiara Bove Machiedo

2014 Fishermen's Conversations (documentary) 2011 I sette vizi della capitale (documentary short)

255

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Harem Suare. Directed by Ferzan Özpetek, performances by Marie Gillain, Alex Descas,

Serra Yılmaz, Lucia Bosé, Valeria Golino, Medusa Film, 1999.

Black Tape. The Video Tape Fariborz Kamkari Found in the Garbage. Directed by

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Cinequest, 2002.

The Forbidden Chapter. Directed by Fariborz Kamkari. Performances by Faramarz

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Time of the Gypsies. Directed by Emir Kusturica, performances by Davor Dujmović,

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Io rom romantica. Directed by Laura Halilovic, performances by Claudia Ruza Djordje-

vic, Marco Bocci and Lorenza Indovina, Wildside & Rai Cinema, 2014.

Pitza e datteri. Directed by Fariborz Kamkari, performances by Mehdi Meskar, Giuseppe

Battiston, Maud Buquet, Hassani Shapi, CG Entertainment, 2015.

Mediterranea. Directed by Jonas Carpignano, performances by Koudous Seihon,

Alassane Sy and Pio Amato, Sundance Selects, 2015.

A Ciambra. Directed by Jonas Carpignano, performances by Pio Amato, Koudous

Seihon, Iolanda Amato, Damiano Amato, Eagle Pictures, 2017.

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Per un figlio. Directed by Suranga D. Katugampala, performances by Kaushalaya

Fernando, Nella Pozzerle, Julian Wijesekara, 2017. Access on Vimeo obtained by the

distributor and producer Antonio Augugliaro.

Digital File

Jean-Léon Gérôme. Moorish Bath (1870). Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

288