The\u00a0film producer Marina\u00a0Piperno, 89, and Luigi Morando Faccini, 84, are partners both in cinema and in life. They have no children.\u00a0\u201cOur legacy is our movies, they are our past, our present, and our future,\u201d says Marina,\u00a0a leading figure among Italian female film producers. Together with her husband, also a film director, Marina is busy packing boxes and crates filled with film materials. Inside are over 200 films and documentaries produced both individually and jointly, many books,\u00a0interviews,\u00a0and a vast documentation on their artistic and sentimental partnership.\u00a0
\nThis valuable archive will soon leave Rome for Bologna, where it will become part of the prestigious local film archive one of the most important in Europe. The Piperno\u2013Faccini collection represents not only their personal contributions but also a piece of 20th-century history, including Jewish history.
\nPiperno,\u00a0who as a child survived the Nazi-Fascist persecutions, began her career in 1961 with the short film\u00a016\u00a0ottobre\u00a01943 (October 16, 1943), based on the\u00a0book by Giacomo Debenedetti, a vivid account of the Nazi-fascist roundup on that date, which led to the deportation of over a thousand Roman Jews to Auschwitz.\u00a0This work broke the silence surrounding the raid on the Roman ghetto and marked the beginning of a career that would bring fulfillment to both Piperno and Faccini. In 2011, Piperno\u2019s work was celebrated with a Silver Ribbon award at the Venice Film Festival.\u00a0
\nFrom stories of guerrillas in Venezuela and Guinea to explorations of the Jewish diaspora, from westerns to commercials, the couple\u2019s cinematic journey has been diverse and adventurous. \u201cWe\u2019re free spirits,\u201d says Faccini, who is also the author of the recently republished book Rudolf Jacobs, l\u2019uomo che nacque morendo (Rudolf Jacobs, the Man Who Was Born Dying), which tells the story of a Nazi navy officer who joined the Resistance.
\nOn November 22, Piperno received a new award in Genoa, named after the pioneering\u00a0film producer Stefano Pittaluga (1887 \u2013 1932). Among Piperno\u2019s notable works are Le\u00a0valigie\u00a0della\u00a0storia (The suitcases of history) based on her personal life and memoirs and Diaspora:\u00a0ogni fine \u00e8 un\u00a0inizio (Diaspora: every end is a beginning), an inspiring journey she and Faccini undertook between Italy, the USA and Israel. \u201cIt dates back to 2014, but I think it hasn\u2019t lost its\u00a0relevance,\u201d\u00a0explained Piperno. In that film, she interviewed relatives residing in the city and in the kibbutz, drawing attention\u00a0to\u00a0the many ways\u00a0people can be and feel Israeli.
\nOne of the productions\u00a0leaving for Bologna there is Terra\u00a0Promessa\u00a0(Promised Land, 2020), by Daniele Tommaso. The\u00a0film\u00a0recounts how La Spezia, Liguria, became a departure point for Holocaust survivors embarking on journeys of hope to the shores of Palestine, heading toward the emerging State of Israel. <\/p>\n