America il Paradiso
Running Time:   12:31 minutes
© Sara Angelucci 1997

   

This video addresses the complex and rich cultural history inherited by the children of immigrants. Through a layering of stories from Italian immigrants, images from Super 8 family films, and remembrances of my grandmother, America il Paradiso seeks to express the complexity of history.  This work also questions how official history is written: who can speak and who cannot be heard.  Stories found in everyday life are an important vehicle of reinscription for those who have been overlooked.  Throughout the video, notions of home and exile are set against the immigrant dream of America the Paradise.

"Every gesture, every word involves our past, present and future.  The body never stops accumulating, and years and years have gone by mine without my being able to stop them, stop it.  My sympathies and my grudges appear at the same time familiar and unfamiliar to me; I dwell in them, they dwell in me, and we dwell in each other, more as guest than as owner.  My story, no doubt, is me, but it is also, no doubt, older than me."

A very dear friend once said to me, "if you speak two languages you are two people." Sometimes I feel I have the best of both worlds, but often I have felt that I live in a fractured state. Somehow, I want to integrate these two sides of myself, to make a living history. A history that can express my experience of cultural hyphenation; to create a shared state of the in-between.

Trinh T. Minh-ha, "Grandma's Story" in Blasted Allegories, ed. BrianWallis (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1987), p. 6.