NCJCF 15 (2) pp.

191–207 Intellect Limited 2017

New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film

Volume 15 Number 2
© 2017 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/ncin.15.2.191_1

Ilaria Serra
Florida Atlantic University

Cinema of compassion:
Andrea Segre and Emmanuel
Levinas

Abstract Keywords
This article discusses filmmaker and sociologist Andrea Segre’s film productions, immigration
documentaries and fiction films by applying the theoretical filter of Emmanuel Italy
Levinas’s Other-centred philosophy. Segre’s filmmaking may exemplify an Italian documentary
‘cinema of compassion’ that responds to and reflects on the cultural shock of seeing philosophy
the mass approach of the Other – the immigrant. This cinema reflects the unset- Other
tling uneasiness of the encounter, while orienting it towards the necessary effect of Mediterranean
compassion. Segre was not trained as a filmmaker – a professional in ‘seeing’ the
Other – but as a sociologist – a professional in ‘feeling’ and ‘listening to’ the Other.
French, Lithuanian-born Jew, Emmanuel Levinas, proposed a philosophy that centres
on the ‘constitutive Other’. This concept can convincingly apply to Segre’s films (and
much documentary filmmaking) for four main reasons. First, Segre’s movies place
the Other at the centre (in the documentary films) or stress it as a dialectic term, a
co-protagonist/antagonist (in the fiction films). Second, his movies reject, at the same
time as they invite, the identification of Same–Other by respecting the otherness of
the Other. Third, they elicit or enact the sentiment of compassion. Finally, these films
leave the ‘infinite’ weight of responsibility on the viewers.

191
Ilaria Serra

1. The arrival of In the past few years, thousands of migrants and refugees have fled from war
undocumented
immigrants in Italy
and poverty, and crossed the Mediterranean Sea or the mountain borders at
in the first trimester great risk, often perishing on the journey.1 Europe looks on in shock: its migra-
of 2015 reached tion policies struggle to give structure to this new reality, while thoughts and
150,000, according
to International feelings reel in their effort to keep pace. Italy, in particular, a country at the fore-
Organization for front of the receiving lines, seems divided between fear of the Other, astonish-
Migrations (IOM), ment at a perceived invasion, generous assistance and the temptation to close
while more than 2000
people died at sea in its borders. In this article, I argue that recent Italian cinema provides one way in
the first six months which the nation tries to cope with this emergency in a symbolical manner. In
of 2015. In 2014, the
total number of dead
particular, I will analyse the recent film production by Italian film director and
immigrants was 3279 sociologist, Andrea Segre.2 My hypothesis is that his documentaries and fiction
(IOM site: http://www. films can play a role in rekindling the sentiment of compassion for the Other
italy.iom.int/index.
php?language=ita, as the foreigner and the different. Why compassion? This is a much-needed
accessed 29 October virtue in today’s times of crisis, when it is necessary to accept a smaller world
2015). The Syrian and to increase the sensitivity to its pain. At the same time, recent studies have
refugee crisis is
worsening as I write. shown that compassion – in the etymological sense of cum-patior, suffering
together, feeling each other’s pain – is dissipating in our society of isolated lives
2. The intersection of
documentary and and widespread consumption of indirect experiences, video games and social
fiction was tackled networks.3 Philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–95) cogently reflected on
in this journal by
Nilgun Bayraktar’s
compassion when Europe was emerging from the atrocities of the past century
analysis of the essay and devised his influential Other-centred philosophy. In this article, I attempt
film Sudeuropa: to draw together these three different but related topics: the urgent matter of
‘Heterotopic
intersections migration, Levinas’s philosophical provocations and Andrea Segre’s cinema.
of tourism and
undocumented
migration in Southern Italian cinema and the Other
Europe: The video essay
Sudeuropa (2005–2007)’ As a receiving country, Italy has been forced to reflect on the unsettling meet-
(Bayraktar 2012).
Segre’s documentaries
ing of different populations of citizens, refugees and immigrants. Italian film
are also the topic has approached the topic by producing several movies and documentaries
of an academic that deal with migration.4 They are part of a larger worldwide production that
article in English:
‘Narratives of change, has prompted film critic T. J. Demos to coin a new visual category, ‘the migrant
images for change: image’, which entails a strong ethnical dimension.5 I would point out two
Contemporary social recent Italian films that directly address the symbolic and sentimental conun-
documentaries in Italy’
by Michela Ardizzoni, drum that Italians face when dealing with immigrants, one that is divided
in The Journal of between fear and identification. In these films, the Other resurfaces (literally)
Italian Cinema & Media
Studies (2013).
or is revealed as even closer than we expect, as part of ourselves. They illus-
trate the resurgence of the repressed, the other within us. Homi Bhabha
3. Emma Seppala and
other psychologists see
called this the ‘unhomely’ element – a fusion of Freudian unheimlich and Julia
compassion waning Kristeva’s concept of the other within, the stranger in ourselves.6 (This concept
at an alarming rate finds a perfect illustration in an uncanny scene of a recent movie by Emanuele
in modern Western
(particularly American) Crialese, Terraferma (2011), in which dozens of outstretched arms emerge from
society due to reduced the sea, in a dream-like but all too real sequence.)
household size and The aptly titled movie Io, l’altro (I, the Other) was released in 2006.
geographical and
emotional disconnect. Filmmaker Mohsen Melliti, himself a political refugee from Tunisia for two
They conclude: decades, was stateless at the time of the film’s release. The screenplay starkly
‘The cultivation of
compassion appears
describes the internal battles fought when fear and ignorance combine to
to be an important blur the line between right and wrong. The setting is reduced to the essen-
intervention that can tial: a small boat adrift in the sea. The agens are two fishermen torn apart
help increase social
connection’ (Seppala by suspicion and distrust: the bare minimum to heighten the tension of the
et al. 2013: 430). The human tragedy. The spectator is shaken by a problematic identification as he
compassion instinct or she realizes the ambiguity of his or her own position and the agony of
is further desensitized
choosing between trust and doubt. The Other and the I are counterposed, only

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 Cinema of compassion

to realize, at the end, that they are just the same. The title poses an ambiguous in a younger
generation shaped
comma between them. They are different, and yet they need and reflect each by the widespread
other, in a way that effectively recalls the basic tenets of Levinas’s philosophy: use of video games,
the inevitable responsibility to which the Other summons the Same (self) – according to a recent
psychological study
not through identification but through opposition. (Engelhardt et al.
The second movie that highlights the relationship between Same and 2011). This article, in
Other through film language is Giuseppe Tornatore’s La sconosciuta (The particular, addresses
their question, ‘Can a
Unknown Woman), also produced in 2006. This thriller uncovers the violent desensitized brain be
past of a Ukrainian immigrant woman and reveals one of the silent tragedies resensitized to respond
to violence and
hidden in Italian cities (in this case, Trieste, a border city). In the strikingly suffering with alarm
symbolic opening images, a row of naked women wearing rubber masks are and compassion, not
offered for scrutiny: bodies deprived of their identity and used for exploitation. indifference?’.
From the very onset, the spectator is framed in an awkward, uncomfortable 4. Among recent Italian
situation that will not relent throughout the movie. These elements – the mask publications on
migrant cinema,
and the face, together with the use of chiaroscuro, which cuts the figures into see Angela Bianca
light and shadow, and the inclusion of Janus’ double face on a stone foun- Saponari’s Il corpo
tain – are signals of duality that run throughout the film. Doubleness feeds esiliato: Cinema
italiano della
the tension of this film noir that problematizes xenophobia and compas- migrazione (2012),
sion, giving vent to the nation’s anxieties. These two movies, among many which points to the
paradox of Italy as
others that deal with immigration, are extremely useful to point exactly to the a promise land that
topic of this article. Both Io, l’altro and La sconosciuta place the spectator in an forgot its recent
unpleasant position between identification with, and opposition to, the Other, migratory past, and
Rosa Cincinelli’s I
between fear and compassion. migranti nel cinema
italiano (2009), which
includes a reading of
Emmanuel Levinas’ Other Segre’s Come un uomo
sulla terra.
Having himself survived five years in a prison camp under Nazi rule, the
5. In his timely study, T.
Lithuanian-born and naturalized French Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel J. Demos considers
Levinas, is one of the most influential voices of the past ‘century of nameless how visual artists have
represented mobility
sufferings’ (Levinas 1988: 159). Levinas proposed a philosophy that has at its today as statelessness,
centre not the self (the Same), but the Other who places limits on the ‘self’, the migration and refugee
‘constitutive Other’. His thinking refused the assimilation of all that is Other – impermanence in
what he calls the
the external world and other people – into the Same of oneself, the ‘hegemony ‘migrant images’.
of the Same’ (1996: 12). Instead, it invites the audience to embrace each and According to him,
every entity not only in its existence as relating to the self, but in its freedom, ‘socially concerned and
politically active artists
respected as separate and different. Levinas suggests that the Other – as the have taken up the
recognition of one’s own limitations – plays a fundamental role in the founda- ambition of intervening
in the world, and have
tion, even the constitution, of the Same. In simple words: I recognize myself done so by reengaging
in the moment I recognize the Other as apart from me. If I did not recognize and reinventing
the Other as distinct from myself, I would be a prisoner of my own hegemonic the documentary
mode’ (2013: xvii).
perspective.7 Furthermore, this recognition has the powerful effect of calling His comparative and
the Self to responsibility: I cannot hide from my involvement in the destiny of interdisciplinary
the Other and my obligation to this Other is never complete or fulfilled but survey brings to ethical
considerations on the
always ongoing (‘infinite’). I argue that these concepts can be convincingly crucial importance
applied to a reading of Segre’s films (and much documentary filmmaking for of such works of art
in the promotion
that matter) for four reasons. First, these movies offer thoughtful reflections of political equality
on the Italian Other, either as the centre of the narration (in the documentary and social justice,
films) or as a second dialectic term, a co-protagonist/antagonist (in the fiction and in the creation
of a responsible
films). Second, his movies reject, at the same time as they invite, the identifi- consciousness.
cation between Same–Other by respecting the otherness of the Other. Third,
6. Àine O’Healy applies
they elicit or enact the sentiment of compassion. Finally, these films leave the Bhabha’s concept to Io,
‘infinite’ weight of responsibility on the viewers. l’altro and to Emanuele

www.intellectbooks.com   193
Ilaria Serra

Crialese’s Terraferma Philosophers may cringe at this stretching of Levinasian ideas outside
(Dry Land, 2011): ‘These
pointedly “unhomely”
the philosophical realm to discuss a different medium, filmmaking, especially
moments evoke accounting for Levinas’s own disinterest in film language. As Sarah Cooper
symbolically both the pointed out, even when Levinas uses film examples, he always subordinates
repression of colonial
memory and its refusal film to philosophy.8 Nevertheless, Levinasian thought has been applied to
to stay entirely buried’ film in several ways.9 In 2010, Sam Girgus wrote Levinas and the Cinéma of
(2014: 301). Redemption: Time, Ethics and the Feminine, in which he considers films such
7. The difference of the as The Searchers, L’avventura and La dolce vita, movies that include a quest
Other is crucial to the ‘for a redeeming ethical experience that centers on the priority of the other’
creation of a free Self.
Without a relationship (2010: 5).10 His definition of a ‘cinema of redemption’ nicely parallels my treat-
with the Other, the ment of cinema of compassion: ‘Cinema of redemption [is] a multinational
Self would be limited
by its aloneness: ‘This
body of films that enacts the struggle to achieve ethical transcendence by
hegemony ultimately subordinating the self to the greater responsibility for the other, primarily as
alienates the Same: the delineated in Levinas’s ethical philosophy’ (2010: 5). In sum, as Libby Saxton
freedom which is set up
in the Same discovers elegantly stated, it seems that ‘if Levinas had little to say about cinema, […]
itself imprisoned by cinema, at least, has something to say about Levinas’ (2007: 2). In particu-
the Same. Freedom lar, this article will attempt to provide an answer to Saxton’s question when
therefore seeks itself
in the relation to the musing: ‘What kinds of viewing relations might preserve the proximity and
wholly other’ (Levinas separation proper to what Levinas calls “a relation irreducible to the subject-
1996: 12, original
emphasis).
object relation: the revelation of the other”?’ (2007: 6). This question may be
answered by a type of a type of cinema that highlights the complex combi-
8. Cooper underlines the
mistrust that Levinas
nation of alterity (other races, other people, other ethnicities) and sameness
showed for images: (compassion through the narrative unvealing of suffering) without simplifying
his ‘philosophy bears a it and is represented, I would argue in this case, by the cinema of Andrea Segre.
challenging relation to
questions of vision and
the phenomenological
world of appearance, Andrea Segre’s Other
tending towards
the anti-ocular Andrea Segre’s career is interestingly divided between his preparation in
and revealing an sociology (he holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Bologna and
iconoclastic approach
to images’ (2007: i).
teaches this subject) and his films. In a way, his interest for the immigrant
Other started in his youth, coinciding with the moment when the first African
9. Brian K. Bergen-
Aurand used
immigrants started to walk Italian streets, in the 1980s. In those years, for the
Levinasian thought first time, Italians saw an increase in the number of arrivals and came face to
to consider Italian face with the third world. In Levinasian terms, Italians started to face, on a
director Michelangelo
Antonioni, in a 2006 larger scale, the world beyond their familiar territory, the ‘infinity’ beyond the
article, and in 2007 ‘totality’ of their piazzas and the medieval walls of their cities.11 As a young
Sarah Cooper edited boy, Segre was curious and driven to start a relationship with the newcomers.
an entire issue of
Film-Philosophy ‘When we lived in Padua, at Arcella, I not only would open the door to the
Journal dedicated to African salesmen but would also run after them, invite them in, ask them
‘The occluded relation:
Levinas and cinema’.
about themselves and ask them to eat with us. I was twelve and fascinated by
Furthermore, Cooper’s their stories’.12 He thus remembers the cultural adjustment that faced him and
2006 book Selfless his closed society at the arrival of foreigners:
Cinema and Michael
Renov’s The Subject of
Documentary (2004) I grew up in a monocultural society of Padua. At that time, my most exotic
both attempted a classmate came from Treviso or Bologna. The foreign was unknown. I
Levinasian approach
to the documentary remember quite well the field trip organized by the most courageous
genre. professor in my school. She brought us to the center of Padua, where we
10. See also the article by talked to the ‘vu cumprà’ [wanna-buy] as we called them, the immigrants
Sam Girgus (2007) and from Senegal who roamed the city selling cheap stuff. She showed us
Kate Nash (2011).
that she could even hold out her hand to them and squeeze theirs. ‘It
11. Levinas affirms that, was not that terrible,’ she told us afterwards. I still have the journal entry
‘the identity of the
I comes to it from
from that field trip.13

194   New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film

 Cinema of compassion

Segre was not educated as a filmmaker, but learned film technique while its egoism, whose
insular sufficiency
working in the field and still relies on the help of experienced technicians is accomplished by
(especially the renowned director of photography, Luca Bigazzi). With a group enjoyment, and to
of fellow students, he started using cinema as a tool to describe reality, by which the face teaches
the infinity from which
organizing small local festivals of documentary filmmaking, titled ‘toniCorti’. this insular sufficiency
Segre’s career in the ‘cinema of reality’ stemmed from his own commitment is separated’ (1969: 216).
to social issues. Cinema as art for art’s sake never interested him.�14 We are 12. Interview with the
reminded of Levinas’s stark warning that art should never avoid social respon- author, 7 April 2014,
sibility: ‘There is something wicked and egoist and cowardly in artistic enjoy- Boca Raton, Florida.

ment. There are times when one can be ashamed of it, as of feasting during 13. Interview with the
a plague’ (1989b: 142). The responsibility of art imbues Andrea Segre’s work. author, 7 April 2014,
Boca Raton, Florida.
Segre’s filmography includes twenty short and feature-length documen-
taries, mainly produced through the Association ZaLab that he founded. They 14. Segre remembers: ‘At
the exam of Cinema
all focus on the theme of otherness, migration and cultural differences, and are History, Professor
geared to explore specific social problems in the hope of producing change.�15 Antonio Costa saw my
indifference towards
Segre’s last medium-length documentaries deal with the current topic of the subject. I really
refugees who cross the Mediterranean. Come un uomo sulla terra (Like a Man did not care. Little did
On Earth) (Segre and Ymer, 2008) tells the story of Ethiopian refugees now we know that cinema
would become such
living in Rome; Il sangue verde (Green Blood) (Segre, 2010) listens to the immi- a great part of my
grants who took part in the riots of Rosarno, Calabria; Mare chiuso (Closed Sea) commitment to reality’.
(Segre and Liberti, 2012) deals with migrants who were intercepted at sea and In this distrust for
cinema as a detached
sent to refugee camps; and the most recent, Come il peso dell’acqua (Like the art, we can hear an
Weight of Water) (Segre, 2014), gives voice to three women who survived the echo of ‘Reality and its
shadow’, the debated
Mediterranean crossing. Segre also directed two fiction films, both touching on article that Levinas
his favourite theme, the encounter between different cultures: Io sono Li (Shun published in 1948 in
Li and the Poet) (Segre, 2011) and La prima neve (First Snowfall) (Segre, 2013). Les Temps Modernes.
Levinas criticized
Here the fictional treatment springs forth from real-life stories of in-between- art as escape from
ness and integration. Both movies narrate stories from the fringes, and choose reality: ‘Art essentially
marginal settings in the provincial Italian north-east as their background: the disengaged, constitutes
in a world of initiative
aquatic city of Chioggia and the mountain range of Belluno. and responsibility a
This article takes into consideration the latter six films and interprets dimension of evasion’
(1989b: 141); it is
them through the lens of Levinas’s philosophy based on the encounter (prox- ‘irresponsibility that
imity and separation) between the Same and the Other. These movies are charms as lightness
especially effective in spinning stories of intercultural discovery and in exuding and grace’ (1989b: 141).
a deep sense of compassion. Compassion has been recently studied as an inde- 15. Segre reconstructed
pendent emotion, differentiated from distress, sadness or love.�16 It is something the extermination of
the Gypsy populations
more than empathy (identification) – and closer to commitment (responsibility). in Lo sterminio dei
It is ‘the feeling that arises in witnessing another’s suffering and that popoli zingari (The
motivates a subsequent desire to help’, therefore one step ahead ‘from empathy, Extermination of the
Roma, 1998), and the
which refers to the vicarious experience of another’s emotions’ (Goetz et al. fall of the Berlin wall
2010: 351, original emphasis). These movies play with these concepts as they in Berlino ’89–‘99 – Il
Muro nella testa (Berlin
bring the spectator closer and closer to the Other – the African, Chinese or ’89-’99 – The Wall in
Serbian protagonist – on a path from empathy to compassion to responsibility. our Head, 1999). He
explored contemporary
Albania in Ka Drita?
(Lights?, 2001) and A
The era of artifice and cinema of reality metà – storie tra Italia
Before analysing Segre’s films it is useful to locate his work in the contempo- e Albania (Half Way,
Stories between Italy
rary Italian landscape, where society, politics and new film trends give fresh and Albania, 2001). He
relevance to the Levinasian concepts of the Self and the Other. Simplifying, gathered stories from
Tunisia (Kerchaou, 2006;
we could affirm that Segre’s work stems from a time of conflict between the 1 kg di internet, 2005),
call of the Other – brought by waves of immigration – and the hegemony of from Senegal (Dio era
the Self – triumphant in the Berlusconi era. un musicista [God Was

www.intellectbooks.com   195
Ilaria Serra

a Musician] 2004) and Italy has recently emerged from two decades dominated by Prime Minister
from Greece (Indebito,
2013). He explored a
Silvio Berlusconi’s overpowering personality. While in office, Berlusconi was
thorny socio-economic the owner of a media empire and remained entangled in business scandals
situation in Rome’s and conflicts of interest. The four Berlusconi governments (1994–96, 2001–
housing projects
(Magari le cose 06 and 2008–11) coincided with the conversion of Italy into a consumerist
cambiano [Maybe and entertainment-oriented culture. Most of all, by controlling the television
Things Change], 2009) media (both family-owned private television networks and the state-owned
and in the industrial
Italian north-east in television), Berlusconi seemed to influence the way Italians viewed the world,
Dalle tre alle tre – Il holding the lens of public vision.�17 Controlling the television media is of huge
Nord-Est e il Mare
(From Three to Three –
importance in a country where the TV has been one of the primary sources
The North Est and the of education for the masses (it was on national television that Maestro Manzi
Sea, 2001), Marghera taught a common language through Italian grammar lessons in Non è mai
Canale Nord (Marghera
North Channel, 2003), troppo tardi (It Is Never Too Late) (1960–1968). The ‘visible’ Italy, the world-view
PIP49: I ribelli di San of Italians, was thus manipulated by programmes geared towards light enter-
Pietro (PIP49: The tainment and tainted, in particular, by the presence of many barely dressed
Rebels of Saint Peter,
2006) and La Mal’ombra and wordless women (the velina figure).18 The female body is an important
(The Bad Shadow, ‘Other’, and we could even state that this use of the female body, as an empty
2007). More recently,
he reflected on the
sensuous form, is the most visible sign of the use of the Other as a reduc-
contemporary social tion to the Self for exploitative enjoyment.19 At the same time, the Berlusconi
situation in Kazakhstan governments faced the growing problem of undocumented immigrants, and
in I sogni del lago
salato (Dreams of a Salt in the attempt to stem it, tended to lump together immigrants as a faceless
Lake, 2014). and criminal mass of dangerous individuals to be controlled and rejected, irre-
16. The Center for spective of where they were found or under what circumstances they arrived.
Compassion and In this social and political situation, it is no wonder that Segre and a
Altruism Research young generation of filmmakers started to long for a different world-view. As
and Education in
the Stanford School Alessandro Bignami pointed out, it was Berlusconi’s ‘era of artifice’ that created
of Medicine studies the ‘cinema of reality’.�20 It seems a matter of historic recourse, a reminder of the
compassion as a
separate category,
Neorealism of decades ago, that broke ties with the mannered calligraphy of
recognized as essential ‘white-telephone’ cinema from the fascist period. In today’s Italy, the ‘cinema
for the human species, del reale’ appears as an antidote to artifice, and as a way to bring reality to
in evolution theory.
For Darwin, ‘sympathy’ the forefront together with stories from the margins of society, personal experi-
was the most beneficial ences, first-person narration and topics less concerned with market demands
asset of social and more with ethical stances. This antagonism is particularly evident in Segre’s
communities.
documentaries, Sangue verde and Mare chiuso, which directly protest against
17. A recent article on desperate and ill-directed attempts of the Italian government to stop migrants
partisan control and
media bias recognized from crossing the Mediterranean Sea. They set up a stark dichotomy: news foot-
the uniqueness of age and uninvolved political statements alternate with first-person stories that
the Italian situation,
‘where the main
describe the ominous effects of these policies on the lives of those involved.
private television A large part of Italian film production today is comprised of traditional
network is owned by documentaries and of the more nuanced category called ‘cinema of reality’.
Silvio Berlusconi, the
leader of the center- The first, documentary films, deal with real events, real people and real places
right coalition, and and, as Bill Nichols underscored, require a special pact of trust between social
the public television agents, filmmaker and audience, an assumed sincerity in treating reality.�21
corporation is largely
controlled by the ruling In the Italian case, the rejection of dishonesty is accompanied by a rejec-
coalition’ (Durante and tion of a television-dominated culture. Thus, making a documentary in our
Night 2012: 451).
country becomes a deeply political act, an exploration of new ways to deal
18. Velina is the name with social issues. Exposing the darker sides of reality can be a non-violent
of two scantly
dressed dancers that
revolutionary practice, ‘an aesthetical act of civility and democracy’ (Bertozzi
accompany the news 2012: 31).22 Documentaries can be seen as a way to speak the truth to power,
programme Striscia la when they bring to the foreground urgent social accusation and they aim to
notizia (1988–present),
a long-running news be eye-openers for the large public. In this respect, Andrea Segre adds his
programme on own personal story:

196   New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film

 Cinema of compassion

The new documentary tradition to which I belong was born in the epoch Berlusconi’s Canale
5. They dance their
of great media superficiality. My generation was raised in the television- numbers in between
based popular culture of the Berlusconi period. We felt the need to go news commented by
beyond that superficiality and start discovering the reality underneath. two, fully dressed, male
leaders. Etymologically,
We foretold the crisis before the crisis hit because we recognized its signs velina is the name
when everybody was still enchanted by Berlusconi’s promises. We were of a ‘breaking news’
living in a bubble that pretended to make our life better and easier.�23 and it refers to its
thin weightless
paper. Significantly, it
A second trend in Segre’s film production is situated in the category of Italian was a documentary
filmmaker, Lorella
‘cinema of reality’, a hybrid film form deeply indebted to reality, but whose Zanardo, who
transparency is problematized as it crosses the realms of fiction, nonfiction denounced the view of
or reality/fiction. The cinema of reality includes but is not limited to docu- the female body in the
Berlusconi Era in her
mentaries. John Corner attempts to account for this flexibility by proposing movie, Il corpo delle
to use the term only as an adjective: ‘the term documentary is always much donne (2009). See also,
safer when used as an adjective rather than a noun’ (2009: 46; see also Austin Stefania Benini’s article
‘Televised bodies:
and Jong 2008). Italian critics call this hybridization of film languages, realistic Berlusconi and the
and fictional, a spurious English term, ‘docu-fiction’.�24 According to Giovanni body of Italian women’
(2013).
Spagnoletti (2013), docu and fiction weave a ‘dangerous relationship’ that is
anchored in the long wave of the neorealist tradition.�25 Hybridization happens 19. Levinas discussed
femininity as a
on both sides. On the one hand, documentaries are aware of their fictional ‘mysterious’ and
nature, welcoming autobiographical and subjective elements.�26 One example ‘modest’ Other,
is Segre’s last film, Sogni del lago salato (Dreams of the Salt Lake) (Segre, 2014), unknowable because
‘a mode of being that
that overlaps his family story in the lagoon of Venice and the lasted lakes of consists in slipping
Kazakhstan. On the other hand, fiction movies borrow the coarse immediacy away from the light’,
that is inherent in documentary. They adopt realistic elements such as the use ‘a flight before light
[…] hiding is the way
of a mobile, unsteady camera and a ‘dirty’ style. They include the point of view of existing for the
of marginal subjects. They choose contemporary and urgent themes, and spin feminine’ (1989a: 49).
stories of crisis where ‘the materiality of places […] and bodies is extremely 20. A recent book, Il
closely interrogated, in the attempt to reach their soul’ (Medici 2012: 68). documentario: Scrivere,
realizzare e vendere
Antonio Costa uses the term ‘hybrid cinema’ for Segre’s fiction films (Costa cinema della realtà
2012), and Segre agrees: nell’era dell’artificio,
by Alessandro Bignami
(2011) employs these
Our fiction movies could be called ‘documentary fiction.’ Because we counterposing images.
start from the need to tell a real story, we use the language of docu-
21. In Bill Nichols’s
mentary. Our generation starts from reality and arrives at fiction, unlike summary:
our predecessors. That is why I tell film students: first of all, you need ‘Documentary film
to feel the urgency to tell something. Strangely, the construction of my speaks about situations
and events involving
fiction movies always departs from the last scene. I have that in mind: real people (social
the father’s grave [La prima neve], the burning fishing house [Io sono Li]. actors) who present
themselves to us as
Then, I go backwards and tell the story.27 themselves in stories
that convey a plausible
This cinema of reality is raising interest in Europe as the recent success of proposal about, or
perspective on, the lives,
Gianfranco Rosi’s reality-oriented work demonstrates. Rosi’s Fuocoammare – situations, and events
a story of a painful migration set against the quiet daily life of a fisherman’s portrayed’ (2010: 14). For
family in Lampedusa, the island on the Mediterranean crossing route – won Nichols’s idea of a pact
with the audience see
the Golden Bear at 2016 Berlin Film Festival. Rosi’s preceding movie, Sacro his page 66.
GRA – a trip between people and cars in the traffic of the ring road that
22. Marco Bertozzi
encirculates and strangles Rome – won the Golden Lion at the 2013 Venice underlines the other
Film Festival.28 This cinema creates stories of deep humanity while observ- tendencies of recent
Italian documentaries:
ing them, and it renounces the author’s passivity by revealing an innovative expressive urgency,
fictional structure. This cinema raises hopes for a newer, more ethical outlook use of found footage,
on reality: it presence of the

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Ilaria Serra

author’s personal can prepare a fertile common ground that favours the comprehension of
voice, attention to
the marginal and
an elusive world – especially in its most urgent aspects: new poverties,
consciousness of the migration fluxes, integration, work, resistance pockets, social emergen-
limits of expression: cies, and territory mutations – by searching for a functional and contam-
‘the documentary is
aware of handling inated interpretative key.
“images of reality” (Pedroni 2016: 136)
rather than “credible
realities”’ (2012: 29).
This and all following
translations from The face of the Other
Italian are mine.
Let us now delve into Segre’s documentaries, which attempt to bestow a face
23. Interview with the and a voice to socially faceless and voiceless subjects. The first characteristic
author, held on 7 April
2014, in Boca Raton,
of these movies is narratological, and it involves the position of the narrator.
Florida. The storytelling is heavily controlled by the story’s subjects.29 In Come un uomo
24. ‘Non esiste più il
sulla terra, an Ethiopian immigrant, Dagmawi Yimer, holds the camera and
confine tra film e narrates his story in first person and by interviewing other refugees, students
docu’ (‘The border of a language school in Rome, about their harrowing trip through Africa at
between fiction and
documentary does not the mercy of human traffickers. In Sangue verde, Amadou Bodian and six other
exist anymore’), affirms undocumented immigrants from African countries tell their own version
Vito Zagarrio treating of historical facts and become authors of counterhistory. They recount the
the ‘urgency of the real’
in Italian cinema (2012: upheaval of Rosarno, Calabria, in 2010, during which they revolted against the
162). Mafia’s exploitation of their illegal work in the orange groves. The alternate
25. Spagnoletti enumerates editing shows the comparison between the two versions – the media’s and
the documentary the immigrants’ – of the same story. In Mare chiuso, the refugees of the camp
filmmakers who tried a
debut in fiction movies:
of Shousha, on the border between Tunisia and Libya, recount their crossing
Alina Marazzi, Leonardo of the Mediterranean Sea, when they were intercepted and consigned to the
di Costanzo, Massimo Libyan ships of Gheddafi and held in prisons from which they escaped at the
Coppola, Andrea Segre
and the Del Serio beginning of the war in March 2011. Their stories of violence clash with news-
brothers (Spagnoletti reel clips of politicians in jacket and tie explaining government policies. The
2013: 12). movie includes precious first-hand footage captured by the immigrants’ cell
26. Today’s documentaries phones while in the wretched boats: a primary source never previously seen.
are ‘far from the idea Finally, in Come il peso dell’acqua, three migrant storytellers answer the ques-
of “documenting,”
but closer to an idea tions of Venetian actor Beppe Battiston in what starts as an empty room: why
of autobiographical, do people risk everything and embark on a deadly trip? The answers of the
essay-type, nonfiction
cinema’ (Aprà 2012: 38).
migrant women produce a multitude of objects that, by the end of the docu-
mentary, fill the empty room with content.
27. Interview with the
author, April 2014.
In all four documentaries, there is a clear stress on foregrounding the
‘second’ point of view, not the filmmaker’s, the Italian side, but the Other’s.
28. ‘Today the attention
toward more indefinite
The ‘other’ story is counterposed to the official or the superficial version,
forms of cinema – by and it refuses a single hegemonic meaning. Dag unveils the hidden life of
festivals, by critics and Rome’s immigrants, the Rosarno workers and the Mediterranean refugees
by the most attentive
type of audience – has reveal their side of the story; the three migrant women answer Italian ques-
never been stronger’, tions. I would see in this stressed alterity the filmic version of the presence of
affirms Federico the Other that, for Levinas, represents the limit to one’s own point of view.
Pedroni (2016: 127).
Furthermore, I would propose that this encounter takes place by looking at
29. Alessandra Di Maio the immigrant’s face.
notices that ‘by filming
their stories from their A second signature feature of Segre’s style is the space and importance
own points of view, that he gives to the face of the Other in his documentaries. Just the face.
Segre reveals a non-
official, non-hegemonic
Nothing else. Long segments of his films are dominated by closeups of the
record of the events face of the Other, silent and still. For uncomfortably long stretches of time, the
[…]. One must hear immigrants look in the camera or allow it to scrutinize their features, sitting
the full story, not only
the dominant version’ quietly as for a portrait, sometimes returning the spectator’s gaze: Dag, as
(2013: 46). he waits in the Roman bus station; his friends sitting in the language school

198   New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film

 Cinema of compassion

(Come un uomo sulla terra); the refugees, surrounded by the yellow of their 30. For Levinas, ‘The
attestation of oneself is
tent; the Madonna-mother, rocking her baby in her arms (Mare chiuso); and possible only as a face,
the immigrants, squatting on the side of the road in Rosarno (Sangue verde). that is, as speech’ (1969:
Through these faces – simply facing us – the spectators experience what 201).
Levinas described as the ‘epiphany’ of the Other: ‘The epiphany of the face
qua face opens up humanity. […] The poor one, the stranger, presents himself
as an equal’ (1969: 213) – that is, the other becomes a viable interlocutor,
able to talk back. Even more, these faces become a powerful synecdoche: ‘the
epiphany of the face […] attests the presence of a third party, the whole of
humanity, in the eyes that look at me’ (1969: 213). When speaking of visage –
the face – Levinas does not indicate exactly or exclusively a human face since
this concept ‘exceeds and undoes any image we attempt to form of it’ (Saxton
2007: 9); however, we may still find it enlightening when dealing with this
particular documentary approach.
Finally, in their nakedness, these faces pose a silent interrogation; they
call the viewer into question, to become part of the story, in an unmistak-
able summon to responsibility. Wordlessly, they command attention.�30 Feeling
a slight discomfort, the spectator is called inside the narration, unable to feign
indifference or disinterest for the migrants’ destiny: ‘the facing position, oppo-
sition by excellence, can only be as a moral summons’ (Levinas 1969: 196). We
are reminded of the long documentary Shoah by Claude Lanzmann (1985)
that avoided showing images of the shoah, preferring instead to show inter-
views with survivors and perpetrators. Libby Saxton applied Levinas’s philos-
ophy to Lanzmann’s work and described it with words that can perfectly apply
to our documentaries:

[The film] addresses its audience and evokes the alterity of the trau-
matic past primarily through discourse. The film interpellates us not
only as spectators but also, and perhaps most significantly, as listeners.
The witnesses appear first and foremost as sources of language, and it is
as speaking faces, talking heads, that they resist reduction to objects of
our perception. It is through the singularity and unpredictability of their
spoken depositions that they confront us with new and unexpected
meanings and realities, calling our preconceived ideas into question and
probing the limits of knowledge in the face of their experiences.
(2007: 10)

It is important to note that, in these documentaries, we are not experiencing

a simple identification with the Other. Levinas’s philosophy does not reduce
the Other to the Self. As opposed to classical film, where the viewer identifies
with the characters by sharing their gaze, these documentaries resist spectator
identification. In film terms, the direct look into the camera always challenges
and divides the viewer and the viewed by breaking the fourth wall. It distances
the viewer at the same time as calling him/her into question. As Sarah Cooper
writes, ‘the spectator is prevented from identifying with his/her own gaze,
since someone else is placed in the way of such self-identification and self-
reflection’ ([2006] 2008: 21). The same effect occurs in Levinasian thought: the
face opposes us and remains strongly other, summoning us as counterparts.
We do not recognize ourselves in the others but accept and welcome them as
separate-yet-connected to us: ‘The face resists possession, resists my powers.
In its epiphany, in expression, the sensible, still graspable, turns into total
resistence to the grasp’ (Levinas 1969: 197).

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31. I think of Paulo Freire’s The third way in which the documentaries hinder simple identifica-
Pedagogy of the
Oppressed ([1968] 2007)
tion is by exposing the presence of the filming apparatus: the camera. The
and the treatment of camera that Dag carries, shown within the frame, is an object of estrange-
Third Cinema in Ella ment, another Brechtian moment of resistance to identification. In Come un
Shohat and Robert
Stam’s Unthinking uomo sulla terra, the diegetic camera is never hidden; sometimes it is filming
Eurocentrism: and sometimes it is inactive on the table. The importance of letting the immi-
Multiculturalism and grant tell his own story and use his own camera becomes doubly important
the Media (2014).
in a narrative of oppression. When the ‘oppressed’ holds a camera, the narra-
32. Their style is tive is overturned. The object stops to be an object and steps up as a subject of
‘participatory’ (those
who speak are all narration. In Paulo Freire’s philosophy, becoming an agent of our stories is a
actively engaged tool against passivity and it is the root of liberation.�31 Taking possession of the
in the story) and
‘performative’ (they
narration – through theatre for Freire and through film for Dag – is a liberating
tell highly subjective action of self-determination.
stories). See Ardizzoni’s The documentary that mostly builds on this identification/opposition
classification in her
article, based on Bill between Us and Other is Mare chiuso. This movie follows the ruling of the
Nichol’s theory. European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, which concluded with a repri-
33. Angela Gregorini mand to the Italian state for the rejection of refugees and with an injunction
is describing the to pay the sum of 15,000 euros to the twelve Somalian and thirteen Erithrean
movie Rom Tour by refugees who sued the state. The narration sets up an internal opposition: the
Silvio Soldini, based
on the reportage by Strasbourg process versus the interviews of the refugees in the UNHCR camp.
the writer Antonio A complex crosscutting editing builds this contrast by dramatizing the Us/
Tabucchi, on gypsies
living in Florence
Other opposition and bringing the viewers closer to the Other, the immigrant.
(1999). For her, recent The judges of the European court (representing Us) are shot from far away,
Italian documentary through an impersonal camera, sometimes through the television screen, their
cinema is a ‘machine
for watching and for voices thus reaching us as incorporeal and cold. On the opposite, the refugees
thinking’ (Gregorini are shown full-faced, in intimate close-up. Two types of discourse contrast:
2006: 476). impersonal official declarations, fluent, verbose presentations by politicians,
lawyers and judges versus the laconic emotional stories of the refugees, their
intimate confessions. Two diegetic melodies clash in the film: the angelic, crys-
talline voices of a girls’ choir performing in the Strasbourg building versus the
soft mother’s lullaby in the African tent. Even the colours conflict: cold tints in
the Northern scenes in Strasbourg – light blues and mostly shades of grey –
versus the warm yellows and browns of the refugee camps in Africa. Sets and
composition build an opposition: long shots in the Strasbourg scenes – alumin-
ium cylinders, glass and marble buildings swallowing human beings – versus
extreme close-ups in the desert scenes, tight in the intimate space of a small
tent. Everything, even the film technique, conspires to create an encounter
with the different, the Other, as the refugee.

The voice of the other

Segre’s documentaries make large use of talking heads, real people as social
actors.�32 They avoid giving an overarching interpretation of the story through
an omniscient voice-over. Instead, they follow the protagonists, ‘stalking’ them
in their houses and their private spaces. They situate the narrator diegetically,
always visible in the scenes. Gregorini describes this type of cinema as ‘a tran-
sitive activity, and never neutral’ (2006: 490).�33 Reducing the filmmaker’s intru-
sion to the minimum, the ‘facts’ appear written in superimpression, with dates
and numbers. It is fundamental that the narrative be entrusted to the immi-
grants’ first-person speaking. The I of the speaker in fact endows the speaker
with subjectivity. The ‘object’ of these documentaries is thus transformed into a
subject – a most ethical action on the part of a cinema geared to social justice,

200   New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film

 Cinema of compassion

and for Levinas – in his characteristic high-sounding terms – a warranty of 34. The shock produced
by hearing these
respect: ‘Speech cuts across vision. […] The formal structure of language stories of the Other
thereby announces the ethical inviolability of the Other and, without any odor entails what Levinas
of the “numinous”, his “holiness”’ (1969: 195). called traumatism
of astonishment:
The stories of the Other are very personal. In Come un uomo sulla terra, ‘The experience
Dagmawi Yimer starts the narration with a first-person singular pronoun of something
and an opinion verb – establishing his own individuality – before continuing absolutely foreign,
a pure “knowledge”
with a statement that recognizes his commonality with the viewer: ‘I think or “experience”,
this story should start one hundred years ago when our great-grandfathers a traumatism of
astonishment’ (1969: 73,
met each other’ – referring to the time of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. His original emphasis).
interviewees then narrate traumatic stories of human trafficking and unspeak-
able violence: gratuitous beating, poking the bellies of pregnant women with
sticks, repeated sexual violence on boys and women, forceful assisting to
torture. ‘I was in prison seven times, I was sold five times’, states a man. No
food, no water, no air to breathe. Horror stories they want to forget but find
necessary to tell. These experiences sound foreign and shocking to an Italian
ear (Levinas speaks of the traumatism of astonishment caused by the story of
the Other).34 As Dag confides to his Italian girlfriend, part of his pleasure in
telling his experiences is seeing the face of his interlocutors: ‘I like to tell what
happened in Libya. You know why I like it? Now that I am safe in Italy, I see
the face of the listeners. They can’t imagine what I tell them is true, they don’t
expect it […] you can’t understand’.
The shock of recognizing the voice of the Other is especially notable in
Mare chiuso, where it becomes an accusation. Here the speakers summon
Italian viewers directly and ironically. In their voice, Italy becomes a unified
personification, a deceiving friend and an unexpected enemy. First, the refu-
gees state that the Italian soldiers who took them aboard behaved like the
ultimate cheaters, robotic executioners of orders. When they received the order
to hand them over to Libyan ships, they turned from friends and saviours
to executioners. They stared and pretended not to comprehend the request
for water and struck the migrants in order to force them aboard the Libyan
ships. Then, the ironic words uttered by an Eritrean man: Semere Tsegay, with
tear-filled eyes, points his finger at the Italian spectator: ‘Thank you, Italians
[…] We love Italy […] and we love all Italians, but […] Thank you, thank
you Italians’. Italians are lumped together – and the audience with them – as
deceivers who should have helped the agonizing refugees and instead passed
them into the cruel hands of Libyan police. The spectators cannot hide. We are
the perpetrators, but at the same time we feel the pain of the victims. A sense
of guilt exacerbates compassion.

The call to compassion

Let us now analyse Andrea Segre’s fiction films that take the spectator along
a narrative path leading to an empathetic encounter. Both Io sono Li and La
prima neve propose stories where a meeting with the Other leads to a possi-
ble (if not definitive) outcome of compassion, of mutual understanding. Yet, as
in the documentaries, the recognition of the resemblances and the common
ground that the protagonists share happens once the differences are acknowl-
edged, not erased.
In Io sono Li, Shun Li, a Chinese immigrant is given the responsibility of
managing a coffee bar in Chioggia, a maritime city in the Venetian lagoon. The
Chinese man is the epitome of the Other in today’s Veneto region, where the

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35. This is my personal Asian community is impermeable and tightly closed, incomprehensible and
reading of the image of
stravedimento in the
secretive. This setting in a provincial, impermeable community is particularly
movie. Andrea Segre expressive, and the local spirit is reinforced by the casting of a triad of actors
had something slightly associated with Venice: Beppe Battiston (Devis), Marco Paolini (Coppe) and
different in mind: ‘For
me that image meant Roberto Citran (the lawyer). The coffee shop is an important meeting hub for
the opening of the the local community, an established locus of the Venetian theatrical tradition
horizon, the ability since playwright Carlo Goldoni. It provides the stage for an encounter with
to see beyond the
closed Venetian world’ the Other that leads to refusal and contempt (for Devis), but also to accept-
(interview with the ance (for Coppe and the lawyer) or to sincere affection and compassion (for
author, April 2014).
Bepi, a Serbian fisherman who had moved to Chioggia 30 years earlier, and is
still kept at a distance by the locals).
The message of the movie is an invitation to go beyond prejudice and
discover that cultural differences hide a strong human similarity. Some striking
images from the movie support the idea of this double relationship of differ-
ence, yet specularity. The film set suggests a poetical duality. In the Venetian
lagoon, a landscape that adds ‘feeling’ to the film reality (Pedroni 2016: 130),
earth and sea meet to form a harmonious environment: ‘the lagoon, the sea,
the harbor streets are the place where the elements touch and mix without
losing their identity (land, fresh water, salt water, sky)’ (Medici 2012: 65). Other
visual elements emphasize mixing without melting into each other. A still
image of a geometrical reflection of a street corner and a bridge on the water
of the canal remind us of two worlds that cannot meet, one of earth and one
of water, but can perfectly mirror each other. The surreal image of the atmos-
pheric phenomenon of stravedimento on the lagoon also becomes symbolic.
Stravedimento is a peculiar visual effect that occurs when the air is so rarefied
that, especially on winter days, one can see the mountains rising from the sea
around Venice. They appear so close that you think you can touch them stand-
ing on top of the belltower. The use of this image in the movie becomes an
index of the oxymoronic ‘close distance’ or ‘different sameness’ of the cultural
encounter in film, or the Levinasian Other–Self relationship.35 Furthermore,
the images that open and close the movie also reinforce this contrast through
colour contrasts: the warm light of red floating candles clashes with the cold
colours of the neon-lighted bathtub; the burning fishing house contrasts
with the icy colour of the lagoon. The throbbing red of the Chinese world
(in repeated details such as the umbrella, the lamp, the lanterns and the
candles) clash with the cold colours of the damp Venetian winter. It is a union
of contrasting sights, a conjunction of opposing elements. The poetic power
of images thus contributes to the philosophical interpretation of this movie.
In La prima neve, the encounter takes place between Dani, an immigrant
from Togo who obtains the status of refugee, and another provincial commu-
nity, a mountain town in Trentino, an Italian region close to Austria. Dani finds
hospitality in Pergine and ties a relationship with a boy, Michele, who lives
nearby. Dani and Michele share the pain of a loss: Michele has lost his father
and struggles to deal with his young mother, while Dani has lost his wife in the
crossing of the Mediterranean and cannot love, touch or accept his newborn
daughter. They are both prisoners of their pain, which is specular. The figure of
Michele’s grandfather, Pietro, becomes the trait d’union that understands and
connects: his life is simple, he works with wood and he raises honeybees –
basic natural elements that become meaningful. Pietro stresses the similarities
between people of different colours and different cultures with an up-in-your-
face metaphor: wood and honey need to stay together because ‘they have the
same odor’. Differences should not separate. That is how the blond white boy,

202   New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film

 Cinema of compassion

Michele, finds peace and companionship with the big black man, Dani, before 36. Levinas opens an
unexpected possibility
they part again. ‘Having the same odor’ thus becomes the central point in a when he asks:
movie about the necessity to heal incomprehension and the inability to love.
 Is not the evil
Segre again chooses a closed, isolated mountain community. He records their of suffering –
strong accent, which separates dialect speakers from the rest of the world. He extreme passivity,
also employs a strongly marked landscape: the trees of the Dolomiti become helplessness,
abandonment and
father figures that mirror the internal conflict of the protagonists. The secret solitude – also
hideout in the forest and the bee-houses become metaphors for the boy’s the unassumable,
desire for protection. Finally, the first snow marks a time of change, much whence the
possibility of a half
anticipated in the smell of the air. Its white blanket pacifies the contrasts and opening, and more
covers the differences without erasing them. precisely, the half
opening that a moan,
Both movies, Io sono Li and La prima neve, do not simply draw attention a cry, a groan or a
to the problems entailed by migration. They instead move beyond them and sigh slips through –
indicate the possibilities of encounter and enrichment that migration can the original call for
aid, for curative help,
promote. These movies step beyond the suffering that Segre’s documenta- help from the other
ries etch in fire and propose a solution. Departing from broken homes and me whose alterity,
severed ties, the film narrative hypothesizes a reconnection, a reconfiguration whose exteriority
promises salvation?
of the symbolic family. Migration promotes an ultimately positive encounter (1988: 159)
with the Other on the ground of compassion – of common pathos. Levinas’s
37. Levinas specifies:
idea of compassion is precisely described as the ‘suffering in the Other’, which ‘The suffering of
is the only possible sense for an otherwise senseless suffering. For the philos- the suffering, the
suffering for the
opher, the true meaning of pain is shared pain. In fact, while, in general, pain useless suffering of the
is ‘absurd’ and ‘useless’ (1988: 157), suffering in and with the other is redeem- other person, the just
ing.36 Segre transforms the experience of suffering into a call for human suffering in me for the
unjustifiable suffering
connection, what Levinas defines as the ‘interhuman’.37 Thus, according to the of the Other, opens
philosopher, ‘it is this attention to the Other which, across the cruelties of our upon suffering the
century – despite these cruelties, because of these cruelties – can be affirmed ethical perspective of
the inter-human’ (1988:
as the very bond of human subjectivity’ (1988: 159). However, the feeling of 159).
compassion is not enough for Levinas. It is not a goal in itself. It has to lead
38. ‘For me, the suffering of
to responsibility.38 compassion, suffering
because the Other
suffers, is only one
aspect of a relationship
From compassion to responsibility that is much more
Responsibility is the final and most important outcome of Levinasian philosophy complex and much
more complete at the
and of Segre’s movies. Io sono Li and La prima neve do not close with an easy same time: that of
happy ending, but with an open ending. The glimpsed solidarity remains a prom- responsibility for the
ise, never entirely fulfilled. It is left to the viewer, to the world outside the movie, other’ (1998: 92).

to bring it to completion. Levinas’ words come to mind, with their urgency: 39. White explains:
 The commandment
The will is free to assume this responsibility in whatever sense it likes; of the Other
it is not free to refuse this responsibility itself; it is not free to ignore the is profoundly
traumatic. It
meaningful world into which the face of the Other has introduced it. brings me to birth
(Levinas 1969: 218)39 as a subject, by
summoning me
to shoulder the
The call for compassion is never a simplistic invitation to agape or univer- burden of an infinite
sal love.40 While the movies make inclusive statements such as ‘We have the responsibility in
anguish, turmoil and
same odor’ (La prima neve) or ‘We all have red blood; nobody’s blood is green’ guilt. For Levinas,
(Sangue verde), or ‘I am just a man’ (Come un uomo sulla terra), these are aimed ethics is not about
neither at a quiet resolution of conflict nor at a trouble-free fusion of the Same flourishing, and
it is more about
and the Other.41 The Other remains threateningly different and its proxim- being chosen
ity problematic. The Other’s appeal is harsh and prepotent, even violent. than choosing. It
is traumatic to be
These movies shake the spectators by disturbing their peaceful ‘sovereignty’.42

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Ilaria Serra

called to such infinite Levinas himself included the possibility of an imperfect meeting, envisioning
responsibility.
(2012: 119)
a scenario in which the guest may become the besieger as the host becomes
the hostage.43 Sarah Cooper translated his thought in film terms when she
40. Compassion and
responsibility are
noticed that films that deal with the Other are deeply ‘unsettling’:
recognized as
central in Levinasian The recognition comes with a price. The encounter with the face erases
philosophy, but critics
debated the degree the conventional security of a viewing position that knows where it
of their relevance. stands. The ethic of hospitality for Levinas is conflicting and hostile
William Edelglass to both the images and perceiving subject. Ethics, says Levinas, places
proposed considering
compassion as the extreme demands on the subject to the extent that, although the
very basis of Levinas emphasis is on the preservation of the Other, no such reciprocal security
philosophy (2006): ‘My
purpose is to show that
or protection is guaranteed.
Levinas’s valorization ([2006] 2008: 23)
of compassion as
“the nexus of human
subjectivity” and the In conclusion, I would propose that movies that promote the recognition of
“supreme ethical the Other – seen in this article as an immigrant other – and lead to a possi-
principle” provides an bility of compassion, are vital today. Instead of television news and piece-
important key to his
philosophical project’ meal images from distant places that prick our conscience but do not call it to
(Edelglass 2006: 44). On responsibility – these movies work as educational tools. In fact, they tour the
the other hand, Richard
White and Terry
schools and call large audiences to the University auditorium.44 In this time of
Eagleton minimized crisis, these film force us to face the other, in close-up, listening to his or her
the role of compassion, voice and seeing his or her mute countenance gazing back. The call to respon-
subordinating it to
the call of an ethical sibility is strong, as in Levinas’ profound words:
responsability.

41. Dag says: ‘I don’t
believe in ethnicities.
If someone asks me
what my ethnicity is,
I answer that I am an
Ethipian, and that’s it. I
am a man’.
My position as I consists of being able to respond to the essential desti-
tution of the Other, finding resources for myself. The Other who domi-
nates me in his transcendence is thus the stranger, the widow, and the
orphan, to whom I am obligated.
(1969: 215, original emphasis)

42. Levinas refers to ‘the It is imperative, as an Italian film title beckons, as Once You Are Born You Can
peaceful and sovereign
identification of the self
Hide No More.45
with itself’ (1996: 15).

43. ‘The hospitable “host”

of Totalite, is taken
References
“hostage” by a guest Aprà, A. (2012), ‘Il documentario italiano “classico”’, in G. Spagnoletti (ed.), Il
in Autrement. We
are captured by the reale allo specchio: Il documentario italiano contemporaneo, Venice: Marsilio,
“prochain” and without pp. 33–38.
being objectified Ardizzoni, M, (2013), ‘Narratives of change, images for change: Contemporary
in our turn, we are
nonetheless besieged’ social documentaries in Italy’, Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies,
(Cooper [2006] 2008: 23). 1:3, pp. 311–26.
44. See the chronicle Austin, T. and Jong, W. de (2008), Rethinking Documentary New Perspectives,
of such events in New Practices, Berkshire and New York: Open University Press.
Andre Segre’s blog
(andreasegre.blogspot.
Bayraktar, N. (2012), ‘Heterotopic intersections of tourism and undocumented
it). migration in Southern Europe: The video essay Sudeuropa (2005–2007)’,
45. Marco Tullio Giordana’s
New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, 10:1, pp. 17–43.
Quando sei nato non Benini, S. (2013), ‘Televised bodies: Berlusconi and the body of Italian women’,
puoi più nasconderti Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, 1:1, pp. 87–102.
(2005).
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 Cinema of compassion

Suggested citation
Serra, I. (2017), ‘Cinema of compassion: Andrea Segre and Emmanuel Levinas’,
New Cinemas, 15:2, pp. 191–207, doi: 10.1386/ncin.15.2.191_1

Contributor details
Ilaria Serra is associate professor of Italian and comparative studies at Florida
Atlantic University. She is the author of The Imagined Immigrant: Images of
Italian Emigration to the United States between 1890 and 1924 (New York: Farleigh
Dickinson University Press, 2009) and The Value of Worthless Lives: Writing
Italian-American Immigrant Autobiographies (New York: Fordham University
Press, 2007, 2010). She is the editor, with Daria Mizza and Andrea Dini, of
the American Association Teachers of Italian (AATI) – Online Working Papers.
Among her recent articles and book chapters are ‘Voyageurs sulle vie italiani
del mondo’ (Studi italiani XXVIII.1 2016); ‘Italian American Femininities’ in
The Routledge History of the Italian Americans, edited by William Connell and
Stanislao Pugliese (New York: Routledge, 2017); and ‘Femminismo Ruggente
Cantato’ in Dieci passi nella storia dell’emancipazione femminile italiana (Venice:
Marsilio, 2016).
Contact: Florida Atlantic University, Department of Languages, Linguistics
and Comparative Literature, CU242, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton FL 33421,
USA.

Ilaria Serra has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work in the format that was
submitted to Intellect Ltd.

www.intellectbooks.com   207
The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema
1960–2000
By Christian B. Long

The Imaginary Geography of Hollywood Cinema 1960–2000

combines digital cartography with close readings of representative
films from 1960-2000. Christian B. Long offers an unusual history
of twentieth-century Hollywood narrative cinema, one that is
focused on the intersection of the geographies of narrative
location, production, consumption and taste in the era before the
rise of digital cinema. Long redraws the boundaries of film history,
both literally and figuratively, by cataloguing films’ narrative
locations on digital maps in order to illustrate where Hollywood
ISBN 978-1-78320-829-6 actually locates its narratives over time.
300 pp | £70, $93
Hardback | 170 x 230mm
Published Fall 2017

To order this book online visit our website:

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