Multimedia Migrant Diaries (Diari Multimediali Migranti – www.dimmidistoriemigranti.it) is a life story contest taking place on a yearly basis to collect and disseminate self- narration stories by individuals with migratory experience or background. Until now, the contest has been based on stories of migrants who either live or have lived in Italy. The contest has been originally promoted in Italy and since 2012 it has contributed to raise public awareness and involvement of issues such as peace and intercultural dialogue. Over the years, the DIMMI Diary Contest received more than 500 written and oral testimonies now preserved and available in the National Diary Archive in Pieve Santo Stefano.
In 2024, DIMMI aims at reaching a new international dimension and the initiative expands to other Mediterranean contexts with “DiMMi International – ITHACA Diary Contest,” in its first edition, developed in collaboration with the European research project ITHACA – Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency: Entangled Narratives Across Europe and the Mediterranean Region (www.ithacahorizon.eu), funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 program.
The diary contest allows to collect and preserve a plural cultural heritage in danger of being lost. Additionally, it contributes to contrast stereotypes surrounding the themes of migrations and migrants, and hate speech through the direct narration of women and men with their personal or family experiences.
Who can participate?
Any person with a personal or family migratory background living in the Mediterranean region who is willing to share his/her own life experience.
How?
Participants are invited to share their autobiographical accounts whether written, video/audio recorded or drawn. The written contributions can be delivered in either Arabic, French, English, Greek and Italian; in case participants wish to use any other preferred language, they should also provide a translation in English.
The contributions have to be sent to the addresses below within April 30, 2025. The stories are expected to reflect the personal life experience of the author and help foster a new narrative of migration seen through the migrants’ own eyes and their multiple points of view. This narrative mainly aims at deconstructing the mainstream discourse of the migratory phenomenon. The selection process will also focus on the contributions’ capacity to convey the full range of diversity which characterizes contemporary migrations.
The authors will be introduced to the public during the contest ceremony which will be held during the Pieve Santo Stefano Award on September 13-15, 2024.
The selected stories will be published in a collective volume. Furthermore, all the stories received will be collected at the National Diary Archive of Pieve Santo Stefano.
Paola Monzini was a brilliant and passionate researcher, who chose to devote herself to the study and understanding of complex and uncomfortable phenomena, and she did it with great rigor and at the same time with profound humanity and participation. Unfortunately, she passed away prematurely, but her example, her passion and her way of understanding research have continued to inspire people who have known her.
From this inspiration was born in 2022 the Prize in memory of Paola Monzini, established thanks to the will of those who loved Paola and worked with her, with the aim of transmitting her passion and her rigor to other young researchers in the field of human, historical, political and social sciences.
The award provides for the awarding of two cash contributions each year for a Master’s degree thesis and for a PhD thesis. It is financed through fundraising actions promoted by the Archive of Migrant Memories.
At this link a video that tells Paola Monzini, her research and the prize in her memory.
The prize provides for the annual awarding of two cash grants for a Master’s thesis and a Doctoral thesis that delve into themes such as human trafficking, sex work, and other forms of exploitation of migrants in both legal and illegal economies, forms of violence and denial of rights against migrant and refugee women, forced migrations, and the journeys of migrants across the Mediterranean.
In particular, studies and research in the fields of humanities, history, politics, and social sciences will be appreciated, focusing on the study of migratory phenomena and policies regarding mobility and citizenship from a perspective that prioritizes gender studies and intersectional approaches. This can be achieved through the use of qualitative research methods, such as narrative approaches, biographical analysis, attention to the individual stories of the protagonists involved in the investigated phenomena, or with the assistance of audio-visual tools.
Scientific Committee Paola Monzini Prize:
Monica Massari (Università di Milano), Coordinator,
Paula Adam (Agència de Qualitat i Avaluació Sanitàries de Catalunya),
Teresa Albano (OSCE),
Luca Ciabarri (Escapes-Università di Milano),
Rino Coluccello (Coventry University),
Nando dalla Chiesa (Università di Milano),
Gianluca Gatta (AMM – Archivio delle memorie migranti),
Ombretta Ingrasci (Università di Milano),
Giovanni Melillo (Direzione Nazionale Antimafia e Anti-terrorismo-DNAA),
Petra Mezzetti (Fondazione Empatia Milano-FEM),
Letizia Paoli (University of Leuven),
Ferruccio Pastore (Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerche sull’Immigrazione-FIERI),
Vincenzo Ruggiero (Middlesex University),
Emilio Santoro (Università di Firenze),
Giulio Sapelli (Università di Milano),
Rocco Sciarrone (Università di Torino),
Cristina Talens (University of Hull).
Young professional and non-professional film-makers of any nationality, aged between 18 and 35, can compete for the Prize through a public call for applications: just submit the project of a short film, with a maximum duration of 15 minutes, which includes the use, even partial, of the film material of the Aamod Foundation, the partner archives or other archives. Among the projects received, a jury composed of five important personalities of Italian cinema chooses nine finalists, whose authors have the opportunity to participate in a training and development course conducted by established professionals. This course includes 48 hours of training and, for each project, 12 hours of individual tutoring in the presence and 12 hours of individual remote tutoring. At the end, there will be a pitch with the Jury, in which the finalist authors present the development dossier and the teaser of their project. The Jury then selects three winning projects from among the finalists who, in addition to freely using the film material of Aamod and the partner archives, receive free support services for the production of the short films and the sum of 2,000 euros for each project.
For documentary short film projects there are no thematic, genre, format or fruition constraints: on the contrary, the initiative intends to stimulate and reward originality, experimentation, even the “betrayal” or the remixing of genres, in particular in the reuse of archive cinema. It is no coincidence that it is named after Cesare Zavattini (writer, screenwriter, director, journalist, painter, cultural animator), one of the fathers of Italian neorealism, but also a tireless supporter of cinema as a free, multifaceted, creative, irreverent instrument of knowledge of reality in The Prize avails itself of a Committee of Guarantors, chaired by Arturo Zavattini and made up of representatives of all the institutions that contribute to its realization. It is promoted by the Audiovisual Archive Foundation of the Labor and Democratic Movement (Aamod) as part of the UnArchive project (IT “command”, which can be translated as “extract from an archive”), with which it intends to experiment with paths of maximum openness to knowledge, and the reuse of film heritage, through the adoption of open licenses and the enhancement of the opportunities offered by the Web.
“Why support cinema by migrant filmmakers? Think of the “stereophonic” reading skills shown by their filmmaking. With their double vision (coming from one culture and moving towards another) they are able to see and filter reality in a completely new way. Think how they can help Italian cinema get over its current crisis”.
Gian Luca Farinelli, Director of Cineteca di Bologna
13th edition Deadline: 10 July 2023.
The prize is addressed to foreign and Italian authors from Asia, Africa, eastern Europe, the Balcans, the Middle East, Central and South Americans who have lived in Italy for at least 12 months. The prize is the only Italian venture of this kind for migrant and/or foreign filmmakers resident in Italy, created to support art and inclusion in the field of cinema. The prize will select a film project presented by a migrant or foreign origin author and awards 18.000 euros to support production of the film, which must be completed no later than 31.12.2024.
For foreign filmmakers or Italian filmmakers of migrant origin living in Italy it is almost impossible to find funding for their work. Cultural policies encouraging film production (on the lines of the Arts Council in the UK) and direct investments by television channels (such as Channel 4, Artè and ZDF) are lacking, and with few exceptions there is virtually no support for cinema from the global South.
The Mutti Prize for foreign and Italian filmmakers of migrant origin was created in 2008 by Officina Cinema Sud-Est in collaboration with the Bologna Cineteca with the double aim of promoting new forms of self-representation through films and documentaries and of stimulating the development of more inclusive cultural policies. The Mutti prize is promoted by Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Associazione Amici di Giana, Archivio delle memorie migranti, e Fondazione Pianoterra ONLUS
In 2009 the Prize received support from the Amici di Giana, an association created after the premature death of Gianandrea Mutti to honour his passionate interest in filmmaking. Since 2012 it has benefitted from collaboration with the Archive of Migrant Memories and is now called the Mutti-Amm Prize. In 2017 the Pianoterra Foundation joined the other partners.
2023 – 15ª ed: CHILDREN UNDER THE SUN di Jalal AlBess (Italy, documentary) e MANIFESTA INFONDATEZZA di Mario Estrada (Italy, fiction)
2022 – 14ª ed: XING LONG di Xin Alessandro Zheng (Italy, fiction)
2021 – 13ª ed: QUERCIA, BANIANO E IO di Valeria Weerasinghe (Italia, animation) e NOSTOI: DIARIO DI UN RITORNO di Carole Oulato e Anne-Marie Ange Sibi (Italy, fiction) (prize for creativity)
2020 (12th ed.): Nel blu by Mounir Derbal (Italy, 2021, fiction) and Through my lens by Ariam Tekle (Italy – Eritrea, 2021, documentary) (prize for creativity).
2019 (11th ed.): Sono a casa by Maaria Sayed and I figli di Caino by Keti Stamo.
2018 (10th ed.): La voliera by Bagya D. Lankapura (Italy, 2019, fiction).
2017 (9th ed.): L’interprete by Hleb Papou (Italy, 2017, fiction).
2016 (8th ed.): Casa sulla nuvola by Soheila Javaheri (Italy, 2017, docu-fiction).
2015 (7th ed.): ex aequo Per un figlio by Suranga Deshapriya Katugampala (Italy, 2016, fiction) and Le ali velate by Nadia Kibout (Italy, 2016, fiction).
2014 (6th ed.): Cittadini del nulla by Razi Mohebi (Italy, 2015, fiction) and I soldi di mia madre (Katada Ayiti) by Suranga Deshapriya Katugampala (Italy-Sri Lanka, 2015, fiction) (prize for creativity)
2013 (5th ed.): Devil comes to Koko by Alfie Nze (Italy-Nigeria, 2015, docu-fiction) and Arcipelaghi di Martin Errichiello (Italy, 2012, documentary) (prize for creativity).
2010 (3rd ed.): Il debito del mare by Adil Tanani (Italy, 2012, fiction).
2009 (2nd ed.): 18 jus solis by Fred Kudjo Kuwornu (Italy, 2011, documentary).
2008 (1st ed.): ex-aequo Ti ricordi di Adil? by Mohamed Zineddaine (Marocco-Italy, 2008, fiction) and Life in the city by Abdoulaye Gaye (Italy, 2009, docu-fiction).
The Horizon 2020 – ITHACA. Interconnecting Histories and Archives for Migrant Agency: Entangled Narratives Across Europe and the Mediterranean Region project aims to analyze narratives of migrants both in the past and the present, starting from the 15th century until today and create a rigorous historical framework based on them. The project’s idea is based on the creation of the ITHACA Platform, which will digitalize all narratives, documents and archives collected from the partnership and generally will create an interactive space of collection and dissemination of migration narratives. The narratives focused on the past will be based on migrations related to religious causes, humanitarian crises, political reasons, decolonization processes, environmental and climate causes. The narratives related to the present, will be focused on “irregular” migration in Europe and the socio-economic contexts of origin. ITHACA research action will define and develop concrete actions concerning migration, moving away from an emergency logic and basing the choices of practitioners and policy makers. The project will be carried out between January 2021 and March 2025.
Its basic philosophy
Through research action, and participatory, artistic, and training activities, the ITHACA project deepens the various forms of migration narratives, considering migrants as agents of social change, retracing causes, transformations, and effects of migration narratives, and highlighting silenced expressions. These actions intend to raise awareness, to inform the public debate, and to disseminate thoughtful recommendations for present and future policies of relief, empowerment, inclusion, and participation.
The partnership
The ITHACA project is carried out by a group of 12 partners, including universities, NGOs, and association:
– Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia (co-ordinator) (Italy);
– Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (France);
– United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (Switzerland);
– Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNSR (France);
– Università di Milano (Italy);
– Institute of Entrepreneurship Development (Greece);
– Archivio delle Memorie Migranti (Italy);
– Association ARCS Tunisie (Tunisie);
– Institute of Geography named H A Aliyev National Academy of Science of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijan);
– Université Al Akhawayn D’Ifrane (Morocco).
The AMM’s role in the project
The Archive of migrant memories is in charge of coordinating the work package concerning the collection of narratives of present migration, with particular attention to the creation of listening context and to the adoption of participatory methods in producing and sharing self-narrations in the various countries involved: Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Cameroon, Senegal, Jordan, the Netherlands.
Besides this coordinating task, AMM will be directly involved in fieldwork activities in Italy and Tunisia (in collaboration with Arcs Tunisie).
Lastly, AMM will coordinate the organization of the ITHACA Diary Contest, in collaboration with the (Italian) National Diary Archive based in Pieve Santo Stefano (Arezzo, Tuscany) (DiMMi project).
This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program under Grant Agreement n° 101004539.
The Mutti Prize is aimed at Italian and foreign authors from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Middle East, Central and South America, and who have been living in Italy for at least 12 months.The Prize is the only Italian initiative aimed at migrant and / or foreign-born directors residing in Italy born to support art and inclusion in the cinematographic field. The competition selects annually a film project presented by a migrant author and /or of foreign origin to which will be awarded a prize of 18,000 (eighteen thousand) euros destined for its actual realization not later than 31.12.2020. The Prize as well as from the Archive of migrant memories is promoted byFondazione Cineteca di Bologna, Associazione Amici di Giana e Fondazione Pianoterra ONLUS.
Read the history of the Mutti Prize and the the winners of previous editions.
Download the documents to participate in the 2020 announcement:
The theoretical intuition that gave the title to the research is that the condition of immigrants is crossed by a series of reversals (lexical, semantic and social) that it is necessary to be able to think together to account for the complexity of the migratory experience. The spaces where these reversals have been investigated are the places of life, work and care: in a word of well-being understood in the broadest sense of the term, and of that desire for “normality” that affects many immigrant families, struggling with incessant transformations and, sometimes, real reversals.
The project
The project “The reverse side of migration. A comparative analysis on protection and right to health “was born with the aim of analyzing the stability of the migration phenomenon as a structural process within Italian society. The immigration of citizens from third countries is now also a “population migration” in our country, which acquires increasing social visibility year after year and inevitably triggers new ways of relating between the immigrant and the institutions responsible for reception, care and integration into the local socio-cultural fabric.
The Migrant Memories Network Collection (FRMM) hosted at the Istituto Centrale per i Beni Sonori e Audiovisivi (Central Institute for Sound and Audiovisual Heritage) in Rome contains audiovisual material on transnational memory and mobility in Italy. The collection originates in the Agreement signed in 2012 between the Archive of migrant memories, Circolo Gianni Bosio, the University of Naples “L’Orientale” and the Central Institute for Sound and Audiovisual Heritage. In 2021 the Agreement was renegotiated between AMM, Circolo Gianni Bosio, the Global Humanities degree course at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, the National Diary Archive of Pieve S. Stefano (DiMMi project) and the Central Institute for Sound and Audiovisual Heritage.
The main objective of FRMM is the conservation of the documentary heritage produced by people who inhabit and cross over intercultural contexts and the creation of a network of different subjects involved in recording social and cultural interactions currently at work in Italy. The collection pays specific attention to the conservation of audio and video documents created by people coming from different historical, cultural, social, and linguistic migration experiences, on the increase in the country. This means giving priority to modes of listening, research and documentation that share the same interactive and participatory methods employed in archiving and circulating the results obtained.
The collection comprises memoirs, narratives, music, writing, sound and video testimonies – produced by foreign communities in Italy and particularly migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers – which become part of the national heritage and can be accessed by the public once they are included in the Network and in ICBSA’s conservation and valorization system.
Objectives
– collect memoirs, music, testimonies and oral and audiovisual narratives in order to reconstruct experiences of transnational mobility and integration regarding people of migrant origin in Italy and to increase and disseminate information and awareness about the complex processes of co-existence and intercultural interaction in this country;
– produce educational audio-visual documents on practices of reception and inclusion for foreign migrants, refugees and asylum seekers intended for circulation in schools, gathering places, diasporic communities and meeting places;
– link today’s experience of migration to that of European and Italian emigration in the past, underlining the difficulties and suffering it induces but also its positive effects in producing a more variegated and flexible development of the human condition;
– acknowledge memories of the experience of otherness in Italy as a valid documentary source, giving official and professional recognition to a process that hitherto has mainly involved members of civil society. Support from universities and national archives will help to achieve the standards enabling the preservation, archiving and use of the material collected by the different partners.
Working methods
1) Members of the Network are free to decide whether or not to deposit original material or copies in order to ensure the best available mode of preservation. Ownership is retained by the depositors.
2) The material enters the public domain once it has become part of the Network and the ICBSA FRMM Collection. The methods used for managing and incorporating individual materials are decided on case by case.
3) Cataloguing follows the system adopted by ICBSA, in line with the support used for the storage of the original material. ICBSA will provide an index card model to be filled in as each source is created; methods will be found to ensure communication between individual databases and the ICBSA database.
4) Digitisation of material to be deposited will either be carried out by ICBSA directly, or by individual partners of the Network, with specialized support from the Institute.
5) ICBSA, in agreement with the partners of the Network, will make available its centralized structure and central and peripheral services of access and consultation in order to guarantee complete visibility to the Network’s material on parallel lines to that provided by the partners independently, thereby ensuring variegated, multidirectional forms of access to the material.
“Diari Multimediali Migranti” (Multimedial Diaries by Migrants) is an Italian life story prize designed to collect and give publicity to stories by people from foreign countries who either live or have lived in Italy or the Republic of San Marino. The award has a double objective. As well as collecting and preserving a cultural heritage in danger of being lost, it aims at contrasting anti-migration stereotypes through the stories of people with a personal experience of migration.
Launched in 2014, DiMMi has produced four editions of the prize. From the beginning, the project was supported by the Region of Tuscany with the aim of raising citizens’ awareness and promoting their involvement in issues such as peace, memory and intercultural dialogue. It has resulted in the creation of a special collection of migrants’ diaries housed in the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale (National Diary Archive) of Pieve Santo Stefano.
The DiMMi migrant stories project
In 2018-2019, following a proposal by Un Ponte Per… and with the support of 47 associations, reception centres and local authorities, the Diari Multimediali Migranti was transformed into a national project, DiMMi di Storie Migranti, financed by the Agenzia Italiana per la Cooperazione allo Sviluppo(AICS) (Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development). Its main objective was to develop a new narrative where the approach to issues of migration is based on the migrants’ point of view.
The project acts on three levels. It is designed to address and train a large number of participants; to collect and preserve migrants’ stories; to set up a promotional campaign to valorize the stories and enable them to reach a wider audience.
AMM and the DiMMi project
AMM has participated in the DiMMi project from the start, cooperating in the collection of testimonies and life stories and making available its own experience of collecting, producing and preserving audio and video self-narratives. Within the context of the DiMMi di storie migranti project the Archive’s activities include:
– a series of workshops with the title “Oltre i muri: autonarrazioni da dentro e da fuori” (“Beyond the walls: self-narratives from inside and outside” in schools and centres in Rome (Liceo Ripetta/Pinturicchio; Scuola d’italiano Asinitas; Centro MSNA CivicoZero), Ariccia (Liceo Joyce) and Naples (Maestri di Strada; LESS reception centre at S. Maria Vertecoeli);
– talks and workshops on migration issues for university students at the Università di Roma “La Sapienza” and the Università di Napoli “L’Orientale”;
– the production of “Oltre i muri- Beyond the walls ”(AMM, 2019), an animation freely inspired by AMM’s self-narrative workshops and made under commission by the Uruguayan artist Juan Pablo Etcheverry;
– coordinating, together with the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale (National Diaries Archive), the publication of collections of DiMMi stories with the Terre di Mezzo publishing house (Parole oltre le frontiere, 2018; Se il mare finisce, 2019, Il confine tra noi, 2020; Basta un vento lieve, 2021);
– publishing stories in dual-language, parallel text editions, in collaboration with the PartecipAzione (Intersos/Unhcr) project, by Joy Ehikihoya (Certi sogni possono non avverarsi mai, Terre di Mezzo 2019), Dominique Boa (Sogni spezzati, Terre di Mezzo 2019), e Mohamed Reza Hosseini (La vita mi ha insegnato a versare lacrime, forthcoming), Lilith (Le femmine e i cani non possono entrare, Terre di Mezzo 2023) and the anthologiesCome Alberi in cammino (2022) e Il diritto di salvarsi (2023).
The Diaries Collection
The fondo DiMMi-Diari Multimediali Migranti was set up as part of the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale at Pieve Santo Stefano. Devoted to the preservation of a cultural heritage that would otherwise be lost, to date it has collected around 330 testimonies nationwide. The collection will enable historians to reconstruct the development of a multicultural society in Italy, allowing the public to use these testimonies to activate intercultural dialogue, something that is becoming more and more crucial.
The 2022 DiMMi Prize (7th edition)
Submissions are once again invited for the DiMMi. Multimedial autobiographical texts and testimonies may be sent to DiMMi 2024 contest by 31 March 2024.
Winners will be announced during the 38th edition of the Saverio Tutino Pieve Prize in September 2020. Prize winning stories will be published by Terre di Mezzo. Whether or not they are awarded a prize, all the stories sent in will be stored in the Diaries collection of the Pieve Santo Stefano Diaries Archive (Archivio Diaristico Nazionale di Pieve Santo Stefano) in the province of Arezzo.
What you can submit:
– a story in writing
– a video
– an audio file
– photographs
– drawings
– e-mails and postcards
– or a narrative including more than one of the above. For example, you could write a story and illustrate it with drawings, or record your experience for us in an audio file and send us photographs as well. It’s up to you how you use your tools, what’s important is that the story is your own, told in the first person, without changing or correcting anything: we want to hear it from you! If you prefer to tell it in another language, remember to include an Italian translation when you send it to us.
On Friday 16 September 2022, readers meet the finalists of the 7th edition of the DiMMi contest In 2022 the DiMMi – Diari Multimediali Migranti project turns 10. The Pieve 2022 Award, as is now customary, hosts the awarding event of the annual DiMMi award dedicated to unpublished autobiographical testimonies of people of foreign origin or origin who live or have lived in Italy or in the Republic of San Marino. The 52 testimonies collected in the context of the seventh edition of the competition amaze again for the richness and heterogeneity of origins, life experiences, languages, cultures and methods of expression.
– Friday 17 September 2021 presentation of the book “Basta un vento lieve, storie migranti (A light wind is enough, migrant stories)”, fourth volume of the DiMMi Diari Multimediali Migranti series, contains the fourteen stories awarded and selected by the reading commissions among the over sixty sent for the DiMMi 2020 competition. Meetingwith Antonio Damasco, Paule Roberta Yao and Alessandro Triulzi, Michele Colucci intervenes, Gaia Colombo coordinates.
– Friday 5 February 2021 at 16.30 on the Facebook pages of Roma Multietnica and Biblioteche di Roma, presentation of the book “Il confine tra noi“, 2020. Migrant stories of the Dimmi competition, Migrant Multimedia Diaries, national competition for the collection and dissemination of testimoniesautobiographies of people of foreign origin or provenance.
– Tuesday, April 28 at 4pm: presentation of the book “Parole oltre le frontiere – Dieci storie migranti (Words beyond the borders – Ten migrant stories)” (Terre di Mezzo, 2018), anthology of the ten finalist tales of the DiMMi – Diari Multimediali Migranti (Multimedia Diaries for Migrants) 2017 competition. Speakers: Alessandro Triulzi (Archivio Memorie Migranti), Gaia Colombo (Amref) and, among the authors of the volume, Dominique Boa, Elona Aliko, Hassan Osman Ahmed, moderates Michele Colucci (Institute of Mediterranean Studies – CNR).
– Tuesday 5 May at 4pm: second appointment with the presentations of Dimmi’s books, Diari Multimediali Migranti. Presentation of the book “If the sea ends. Migrant multimedia tales” (Terre di Mezzo, 2019), anthology of the finalists of the DiMMi – Diari Multimediali Migranti (Multimedia Diaries by Migrants) 2018 competition. Speakers: Massimiliano Bruni (Archivio dei diari), Alessandro Triulzi (AMM – Archivio memorie migranti), Gaia Colombo (Amref), and the finalists of the 2018 Competition: Clementine Pacmogda, Bakary Jobe, Fernanda Gonzalez, moderates Stefano Gallo (Institute of Mediterranean Studies – CNR).
A documentary by Aluk Amiri, Hamed Dera, Hevi Dilara, Zakaria Mohamed Ali, Dagmawi Yimer, 2012 (60′).
Five shorts written, shot and directed by young immigrants to Italy. A mosaic of stories providing an inside approach to the migrant condition, together with a composite portrait of Italy and its reception system as perceived by the new arrivals.
Benvenuti in Italia (Welcome to Italy) is a documentary in five episodes, shot by ten hands, produced by the Archive of Migrant Memories and supported by the lettera27 and Open Society foundations in collaboration with the Italian language school Asinitas and the Circolo Gianni Bosio (a centre specializing in popular culture). The authors of the film come from a wide variety of countries and were selected regardless of their having any experience in the audiovisual field. Many had never held a video camera before. After a period of training they chose to set their stories within the different contexts of their arrival in Italy.
Aluk Amiri, a young Afghan who came to Italy when he was 15, tells of the tribulations of his alter ego Nasir, on the day of his 18th birthday, in a flat provided by the Municipality of Venice for political refugees. Zakaria Mohamed Ali, forced to leave Mogadishu after the assassination of his teacher of journalism and other colleagues, gives voice to a young footballer’s dreams of glory. Dadir, a soccer champion in his own country, has to travel from Milan to Rome without a railway ticket in order to play with the “Somali national team of Rome”.
In her episode, Hevi Dilara, a Kurdish refugee, tells of the disorientation of a young family that has just disembarked and is now in a first reception centre in Herculaneum.
The episode filmed by Hamed Dera, from Burkina Faso, shows the activities and guests of “Chez Margherita”, a boarding house that had become a landmark for the Burkinabé community in Naples, shortly before it closed.
The Ethiopian refugee filmmaker, Dagmawi Yimer, presents Mohamed Ba, the Senegalese actor and cultural mediator, while he describes how a stranger suddenly knifed him at a bus stop on a beautiful sunny day.
Participants in the project attended a training course on documentary filming, conducted by Renaud Personnaz from the Ateliers Varan, producing six brief documentaries on the subject of work:
