A-Infos (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #463 - INTERVIEW WITH NELLA CONDORELLI (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Vanni il Siciliano concludes a series of three documentary films. 
Philosophically speaking, the first, 1893: The Investigation, represents 
the positive aspect-that of the social alternative and utopia embodied 
by the Fasci dei Lavoratori movement; the second, La storia vergognosa, 
represents the negative-inherent in the tragedy of emigration that 
ensues after the shattering of that dream; and the third, Vanni il 
Siciliano, represents the synthesis, where, on the one hand, hope for 
change resurfaces, revitalized by the idea of autonomist, expressed in a 
libertarian and social sense; and, on the other, the disillusionment of 
those who, in the aftermath of the Second World War, witnessed the 
reformation of a society they didn't recognize. Do you agree with this 
tripartite division?

Nella - I'm making this point now that you're mentioning it, because I 
didn't begin with this trilogy structure in mind, and therefore chose 
stories that would somehow highlight it. The stories that make up the 
trilogy were within me, and they emerged unthinkingly, unconsciously, 
spontaneously, linked by a common thread that revealed itself to me as I 
worked on the subjects. The subject of the first film I shot, 1893. The 
Investigation, tells the story of the Fasci dei Lavoratori movement, 
which historiography considers one of the most important in Europe, and 
a fundamental watershed for Sicily: it faced the future, a future free 
from all chains and oppression, because its demands undermined the 
centuries-old foundations of social organization in Sicily, where a 
handful of families controlled three-quarters of the territory and 
wielded an absolute power that permeated the entire society and 
influenced its development. That movement had the future before it, the 
past on its shoulders, but it was "chained" to that past, and with it 
the whole of Sicily, by another Sicilian, Francesco Crispi. Upon 
becoming Prime Minister, he took it upon himself to reaffirm the status 
quo and reject the new social demands that for the first time saw the 
most outcast class, the peasants, emerge on the historical stage. The 
past confirmed itself as a present of exploitation and marginalization 
for millions of Sicilians, the fate of the island in the century to come.

Will emigration be one of the consequences of this "blocked" situation?

Nella - The common thread I was telling you about is precisely this. 
Starting with the Fasci dei Lavoratori, I became curious about what 
happened afterward, and thanks to historical and literary research, I 
discovered that many fascenti, returning from prison after the amnesty, 
returned to the fields, and, having seen that nothing had completely 
changed, decided to leave. I find them on the other side of the ocean. 
Emblematic in this sense is the figure of Maddalena, one of the female 
protagonists of the film The Shameful Story, a character I didn't 
"invent." She is, in fact, the sixteen-year-old standard-bearer of the 
Fascio delle Lavoratrici (Festival of Workers) of Piana degli Albanesi 
(then Piana dei Greci), and is part of the group of women Adolfo Rossi 
interviewed for his Inchiesta (Inquiry), the basis of my first 
documentary film. Delving deeper into the story of women who emigrated 
alone, I discovered that Maddalena, after being released from prison, 
continuing to lead social protests in Piana, and single-handedly 
founding the headquarters of the town's Revolutionary Socialist Party, 
while persecuted by delegates from the Kingdom, decided to leave with 
the great emigration of 1907. She died in Sacramento, after becoming a 
seamstress, her dream. I think working on a historical documentary 
entails a great responsibility, and having to combine fantasy with 
historical sources. I explored countless sources: police reports, 
hundreds of letters from emigrants, accounts of their lives, working 
conditions, and so on. A story becomes a fable if it's not included, if 
it has no roots, if it doesn't describe the political context of the 
time in which it developed, if it's not placed within a comprehensive 
historical context. Factual stories devoid of historical context are 
ultimately all the same; they don't allow for a critical approach, the 
ability to establish connections, and the ability to rediscover the 
signs and consequences of that past in the present. In my account of the 
Great Emigration of the early 20th century, I tried to keep track of 
those departures, their primary motivation, and understand what they 
left behind-a history of slavery and oppression-and what they found on 
the other side: so much marginalization and exploitation, certainly, but 
also opportunities for redemption denied in their homeland.

What is the common thread that links Vanni Rosa to the previous stories?

Nella - I discovered the common thread with Rosa after accidentally 
encountering her. When I met him, what struck me about him was his 
connection to the anarchist movement because, while working on Storia 
shamegnosa, and also on 1893: The Investigation, I was operating within 
a well-defined political space in which Rosa also operated. In short, I 
was intrigued by anarchism in Sicily, and by Sicilian anti-fascism. I 
then realized that the history I had begun with, the one that with the 
Fasci dei lavoratori (Workers' Fasci) was nourished by inspiration and 
aspirations for autonomy, ended at the end of the Second World War. At 
the birth of the Republic, autonomy was being stripped from Sicily, in 
the sense that Vanni Rosa gave to that word, which is not its current 
meaning, but is very much intrinsic to politics and the development of 
the anarchist idea. This further stimulated me, because it revealed a 
major flaw in the political reconstruction of the second half of the 
twentieth century, with many distortions of what actually happened. And 
at a certain point, I started looking at the starry sky and realized 
that my film also reflected the years of my militant youth, feminism and 
the '77 movement, Franco Piperno with his latest studies on the 
constellations, and their fascination. Vanni is someone who symbolically 
gazes at the stars, moving freely yet together, autonomously in an 
endless and borderless space. In my film, revisiting it, it's as if I 
somehow wanted to pay homage to a political movement with ancient roots, 
rooted in the fight against inequality, and therefore anarchy not as a 
vague concept of freedom but rooted in the ability of every human being 
to self-manage and "be themselves." So it seemed right to conclude the 
trilogy not so much with the character of Vanni Rosa, but with what 
Vanni Rosa and the Sicilian libertarian and anti-fascist generation 
represented.

And yet, at a certain point, defeat resurfaces: why didn't you want to 
follow Rosa into South American exile?

Nella - I didn't want to follow him into South American exile precisely 
because I was more interested in expressing a broader dimension, a 
collective history, which begins in 1893 and ends in 1945. I suspend 
judgment, I suspend conclusions both about him and about that entire 
period. If you then look at these years of ours, and I look at these 
years of mine, I don't actually find a conclusion; there isn't a defeat 
but a movement of history that encompasses many things. And it can also 
contain within itself the seed of a new beginning, which may be 
different in form, because the times are different, but which is the 
same in substance. And so the word autonomy, the word equality, all the 
words of this story take on a broader meaning.

Your films are ensemble pieces in that they contain multiple cinematic 
registers. In Vanni the Sicilian, however, the choral dimension-and this 
is paradoxical given the fact that it is a biographical work-pervades 
the entire film. There is the involvement of many people from Pozzallo 
on set. Is there an attempt to go beyond the documentary film?

Nella: In all three documentaries of the trilogy, I begin with the 
involvement of the locals. I consider it indispensable, because that is 
where the primary roots of the story I tell lie. And by roots, I also 
mean forgetfulness, oblivion, "ignorance" of the facts. And I'm pleased 
that there is an exchange between me and those who live in those 
territories, who are also protagonists of films that concern them 
firsthand. Pozzallo, the set of Vanni the Sicilian, seemed to me like a 
small, very inward-looking community. Looking out from its beaches at 
the open sea, even during location scouting, I was reminded of the finis 
terrae, in the sense that all of Italy and all of Europe lie behind it. 
A fact from which there is no escape. So, a community that has always 
lived on a border/non-border, crisscrossed by departures and returns as 
physical and symbolic overcomings. I'm particularly drawn to the 
exploration of borders/non-borders, geographical and symbolic, personal 
and collective, and in Vanni the Sicilian this has taken on an even 
broader dimension, a stronger impact than before. It wasn't easy at all, 
I must say this honestly; it was very difficult. But I found the support 
and friendship of many, among them Silvana Boccadifuoco, an extremely 
talented assistant set designer, and Salvatore Russino, a fisherman but 
also a naive painter, creating watercolors in which he searches for the 
soul of his country.

We've noticed that in this latest film you've chosen to emphasize 
personal yet political themes: the protagonist's relationship with his 
mother, his nostalgia for his homeland, the humanitarianism that 
permeates Vanni Rosa's actions and thoughts. Is there a particular way 
of being behind the camera here?

Nella - The figure of the mother, in the film about Vanni Rosa, is 
certainly linked to my personal/political background, because Vanni 
Rosa's mother has a son, and the mother-son relationship is always 
central to feminism, looking at differences. But in the other films too, 
there's a lot of my experience, even if it always emerges subtly. For 
example, there's a lot of my experience in Storia vergognosa, because I 
am the daughter and granddaughter of emigrants, but it's never front and 
center because I feel like I'd be doing a disservice to that collective 
dimension that I consider fundamental, because the story I tell is made 
by many, by the many, and not by the ones alone. Even in 1893. 
L'Inchiesta, there's a lot of me. I found myself in Adolfo Rossi, in a 
sort of small transference between this journalist behind the pen, who 
steps back and gives the floor to the real protagonists of the events, 
and in the end makes his observations by distinguishing between fact and 
opinion, and I try to do the same thing behind the camera. A different 
story concerns the female figures in the Trilogy, from Vanni Rosa's 
mother to Provvidenza Rumore, the peasant woman who witnessed Lorenzo 
Panepinto's murder, to Norina, the Venetian emigrant teacher based on 
the character of Diletta d'Andrea, a famous anarchist militant, to 
Maddalena... With them, I explored all the themes of women's 
emancipation and liberation. They are strong women, who have taken 
charge of their lives, yet they have been erased from history because 
it's more convenient to convey the image of a weak and victimized woman, 
dominated, lacking a comprehensive political consciousness.

At the end of this conversation, I ask you if the reason I didn't want 
to emphasize Rosa's highly original concept of autonomy is because 
today, politically, it could be misunderstood.

In - There is no doubt that there could be misunderstanding, but more 
than the fear of misunderstanding - because in the end, if you research 
the content, you have the material necessary to reach a clear synthesis 
- I was held back by the fact that that was not the main theme of the 
film but, in my vision as author and director, to close the cinematic 
arc of the "Sicilian Resistance" that leads from 1893 to 1945.

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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