1893. The Report

1893. The report reconstructs a human story never told before on big screen. I wanted to break a 120 years old silence and no doubt, upstream, there is my need to investigate the history of Sicily, my land, to overthrow many clichés, first of all that of Sicily and Sicilian as always subdued. The investigation of Adolfo Rossi, the document at the base of my work, tells of a movement spread throughout the island, united and organized against slavery in latifundia and the mafia control in the feuds and municipalities. The first organized popular movement of united Italy, thirty years from the Expedition of the Thousand. Very inconvenient for the Kingdom of Italy, it will be so throughout the twentieth century until today, given the tenacity with which it continues to be erased from Italian history.
When by chance I found and read the investigation of Adolfo Rossi, published in Milan in 1894 under the title "The unrest in Sicily. Report on the Fasci dei lavoratori", I was amazed for two reasons, the first: I did not know anything about the events that are described, the second: the language and narrative style. Rossi is a journalist who cannot be silenced by the power; he goes against government information which called for an end of the Fasci "conspirators" and "bandits". He goes to Sicily and gives voice to the peasants, men and women, the sulfur miners, the laborers, the carusi (children miners), he collects and reports their reasons, he urges barons and landowners, commissioners, governors and delegates of public security, priests and bishops too.
The research phase has taken me a long time, there was the need to frame the context in which the Fasci moved. I scrutinized the Europe of that time, at the end of a century oppressed by the international economic crisis, linked to the nascent capitalism and new markets, with poverty and unemployment, the first popular consciousness of the exploitation of labor, political and parliamentary scandals in the Kingdom of Italy ...
I was literally thrown into a forgotten reality, of which no one talks today, while it would be useful to study to reflect on many Italian and European contemporary issues.
I can say that it was the film which came to meet me. The report by Rossi became the narrator; the camera has remade his journey by mule on the spectacular trazzere (paths) along the center of the island, between villages of stone. Unknown and majestic landscapes mix with the documents, animated illustrations, songs, literary texts, postcards, letters, photos ... the looks of peasant women and men curved on the harsh land, ragged children in the darkness of hovels they call home, the voices of stunted and emaciated children in the bottom of the wells of sulfur mines, hungry, hard lives, miserable beyond belief, slaves of a social system based on the domain of few ... There is pain and fatigue, no compassion, no fable. Thus their faith in the Fasci, assemblies, marches, strikes...
Essential is the second report, which in the film runs parallel to that of Rossi, read by an actress, which retraces the time of the Fasci and wonders about the consequences of their removal for Sicily and the Italian XX century. This journey becomes internal and questions us, scattering certainties to those who want to listen, yesterday, today, the memory, the action.