Hope and passion of Marina Piperno’s cinema
It is 1961 when Marina Piperno makes her debut as a film producer with a short film entitled “16 ottobre 1943”: its impact is evident from the beginning, and this work broke through the silence that was not allowing to spread the real history of the Italian Shoah and the responsibilities related to it. This film marked the beginning of a high-level successful career, a path that explored a variety of worlds and contexts, from documentaries to fiction. Proof of that, among her numerous accolades, the Silver Ribbon she was awarded in 2011. Her autobiography, “Eppure qualcosa ho visto sotto il sole” (Yet something I saw under the sun), published by All Around, is now available in the bookshops of Italy. Written with Luigi Monardo Faccini, the book retraces a life of passion and commitment.
The two writers went through the immense family / familial photographic archives “to gather the history, the identity, the constrictions, the fortunes and the sufferance” of a peculiar tale of Jewish diaspora, a reconstruction that also reflects on the meaning of a life and a path who brought the protagonist to make specific choices that still make the difference nowadays. A quality cinema who wants to “give voice to the ones who could not speak”.
Piperno questioned / asked herself whether entering the “labyrinth” of this art was worth it or not. Her book, the result of three years of work, wants to give an answer to this and many other questions. Her words on the autobiography: «Please, read this book as if it told the story of a journey enlightened by dreams, read it as you were reading an epistolary romance addressed to unknown people, read it as a historical novel, read it as this was the final loss of utopias in a chess match after they have dominated the game, read it as the intertwine of passions that, sometimes, finally reach a safe place, read it as you desire, never losing sight of the feelings that inspired it . In these pages, you will find personal defeats and victories, you will find the tale of a country, Italy. You will find the optimism of will and the pessimism of reason, the tenacity of work. You will find the love for ‘the other’, you will find hope…’
Translated by Onda Carofiglio and revised by Annadora Zuanel, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.