Yesterday
evening, I joined the screening of Fuocoammare (Fire at Sea)
by Gianfranco Rosi at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. I had wanted
to watch this documentary ever since its release, as my own research is exactly
on the topic Rosi has decided to engage with in this multi-award winning documentary; in other words, the issue of migration on the island of
Lampedusa, where the director spent more than one year.
I
am afraid that what you are going to read here does not match the praising
reviews that have been written recently on this documentary all over the world (such as the one written by Peter Bradshaw for the Guardian two days ago).
Rosi says he made a documentary not a film...and I have a problem with that!
Here we go.
In
my research, I look for examples of
counter representations of migrants and refugees in the so-called 'crisis'
where they are NOT depicted as mere masses of nameless bodies and mysterious
victims - as we have become accustomed in treatments in the contemporary media - but where they actually take the word, tell
their story, engage with the causes of their desperate passage of the Sicilian
channel, and talk back to the European border policy that forces them to
undertake these unsafe journeys. I am afraid Fuocoammare does nothing
like this. It is, in fact, a missed chance! What Rosi tells us, through an
undoubtedly well-shot film with beautiful cinematography, does not add anything
to what we already know about the current 'crisis' through the news media. And
certainly, it does not raise awareness, as Rosi stated in the Q&A after the
screening.
The
film mainly revolves around the figure of a little boy who is depicted
according to a series of stereotypical gestures and practices that after a
while become unbearable. Samuele, this is the name of the boy, apparently
spends all his time playing with his handmade slingshot in the wildest part of
the island, where, to be honest, I have never seen kids playing, especially not
at night, but he might have been luckier than me! We learn a lot about Samuele
through long and slow scenes that you desperately and unsuccessfully try to
connect to the other main narrative of migration. He has a lazy eye that the
doctor treats with special glasses, he is very interested in listening to the
stories of fishing from his uncle and grandmother and he spends his time, when
not in school, hunting birds with his slingshot (he ends up chatting with one by whistling: probably the most surreal scene of this film!).
Now I want to reassure the reader who knows nothing about Lampedusa that kids
there have TV and play video games as well!
This
poetic and romanticised representation of the island through the story of
Samuele is alternated with scenes of rescue of migrants at sea through the military
apparatus, where what we see is not very different from what we have seen many
times on TV, while sitting comfortably in our sofas. What differs is the proximity:
we see the migrants - still as a mass - very closely, we can even hear their
voices, their singing and their desperation is so tangible that you are
compelled to cry (well I didn't cry of course, I am used to these strategies of
pity that just give you the impression that you are participating in the
suffering, albeit at distance). Despite the fact that we are all anesthetized
to these kinds of iconic images by now, the film drags you to compassion and
pity through a spectacle of suffering that breaks your heart. Luckily there is
Samuele who promptly arrives to cheer you up with some funny behaviour such as
slurping his pasta at dinner next to his uncle and grandmother, who do not
react to his bad manners. I want to reassure the reader again that even in
Lampedusa kids would be scolded if they do not show good manners, especially at
the table!
The
film relies heavily
on the spectacularisation of suffering together with the sensationalism of the
rescue operations carried out by a military apparatus that appears in all its gloriousness and majesty in order to cope with the 'massive' invasion of people
they need to rescue, while still protecting the borders from their arrival.
Military figures are of course wrapped in white hazmat suits, there is not a
corner of their body that can be 'contaminated'. Migrants in the film are named through
numbers, checked for scabies and, unfortunately for the rescuers, almost all of
them are soaked with gasoline that passes through the protective suits they are
wearing. Rosi even accesses the 'detention' centre where migrants are 'stored'
for an undetermined period in Lampedusa before being sent to other centres in
Italy. Not many people have access to this very controversial space that has
been under lots of criticism for the poor conditions in which migrants are kept. Don't worry, Rosi does not show any of these unpleasant images! Rosi's
visit to the centre only produces a beautifully shot scene of a football match
in the darkness as to suggest that despite their trauma, the migrants still
have joy and love life. What a reassurance!
Other
topical moments in this film are the scenes showing another main character,
Bartolo the doctor, who seems in charge of absolutely everyone's health on the
island: visiting migrant pregnant women, carrying out autopsies on migrant
wretched corpses and even checking Samuele's health when he goes with concerns
about his hyperventilation and anxiety. Now, again, I want to reassure the
reader that in Lampedusa there is more than one doctor!
Bartolo
is probably the figure whom Rosi confides in in order to create a link between
the humble story of the Lampedusan inhabitants and the 'tragedy' of the
migrants. Otherwise I cannot see any other ‘meaningful’ link.
Now
why am I so hard on Rosi's film? Well I think as an intellectual who decides to
engage with a pressing issue such as the Lampedusa and migration one, you
cannot limit yourself to producing a poetic and sentimental film that asks the
viewer to 'stay human'. This is NOT what we need, not anymore! We have had
enough of sentimentalism and the humanitarian approach is not helping us
understanding the real implications of this cruel and complicated story where
we are all involved. We need to dismantle the paradox of a
militarised/humanitarian travesty that has chosen Lampedusa as its ideal stage
of a made up crisis. Why are these people escaping? why are we not making their
passage safe, while at the same time spending millions in order to rescue them
from the perils of this very passage? Why not showing Lampedusa for what it is:
the centre of a border spectacle about which the inhabitants are very aware;
people who are resisting the travesty, who are concerned and reject the growing
militarisation of their land, people who are tired of the politicians and
celebrities parading on the island, inhabitants who do not want a Nobel prize
for peace. Lampedusans want instead the EU to come to terms with its responsibility
about a crisis that it has fabricated and to let the island deal with its old problems:
lack of a proper hospital and playgrounds, run-down schools, disappearance of
fishing etc.
In
his film, Rosi shows migrants’ corpses (lots!) through long shots that are
probably meant to beautify death, but how is this raising awareness? If, as a
filmmaker, you show corpses of people who cannot consent to your act of spectacularisation of
his/her suffering, then you have the duty to engage with the reasons for his/her
very suffering, rather than spending more than half of film’s running time to
show a completely unrelated story of a child and his family, whose characters
are mere caricatures that satisfy the anthropological expectation of the
audience (especially an international one) who want to look at a ‘Sicilian’
story! (I am Sicilian myself, this is probably why I felt particularly annoyed
by this insistence).
At
the Q&A after the screening I asked Rosi why he did not engage with the
paradox of the border spectacle happening on the island and after labelling my
intervention as too political and ideological, he said that with this film he did
not want to do propaganda only raise questions, and he added that if I wanted
to see a political documentary I should watch Michael Moore’s works. But Rosi,
there is no way you can make a DOCUMENTARY about Lampedusa without being
political and without engaging with uncomfortable issues, otherwise you make a
film (like Crialese did with Terraferma)
which is what Fuocoammare essentially
is!
Lampedusa
is much more that what Rosi has shown (or actually has NOT shown) in Fuocoammare. Too bad he did not
challenge the spectacle especially since so many people on the island itself do
so on a daily basis (see for instance what the local collective Askavusa does
in this regard and read their review of Rosi’s film); too bad he did not show
Lampedusa as the vibrant place it is in the name of an act of aeasthetisation
that preserves the idea of an uncontaminated beauty of a far away picturesque
island, a beauty that unfortunately is nowadays heavily endangered by the
presence of military radars that are there to, presumably, protect us from the
invaders, the same we need to feel pity about because after all…we need to stay
human!
