Reviving the cine-roman format.Our Territory
Mathieu Volpe, 2019, Belgium/Italy
genre: essay
My first response at the start of Our Territory, a short film about migrant workers in Puglia, Italy, was to see the still imagery as a short cut. The film comprises mostly still black and white photographs of the migrants and their shanty town – with some B&W super 8 movie footage of the shanty houses thrown in. Still photography moreover had the danger of not letting the workers speak.
But it was clear as the film progressed that Volpe’s photographs have a candid intimacy, which is the result of many weeks living in the town, getting to know them. With his voiceover, they work as an ethnography, describing the people pictured and explaining to some extent their perspective.
In short, a cine-roman format that could be limited, is also potentially effective at humanizing subjects often constrained by the social problem discourse of documentary. (Compare, for instance, the muteness of the migrants in Fire at Sea, who can only suffer and die). It’s a film that I want to watch again.