by Martina Melilli, Italy 2017, 16'
Presented at Lo schermo dell'arte 2018 in occasion of the exhibition European Identities. New Geographies in Artists’ Film and VideoThe film is part of VISIO – European Programme on Artists’ Moving Images - 7th edition
The project is based on the dialogue between the artist and migrants who survived long and risky journeys to reach Europe, and it’s the result of the collaboration with Dr. Cristina Cattaneo, anatomopathologist and forensic anthropologist. The artist shows clothes, watches, identification documents and photographs once owned by men and women who died trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea. These simple and common objects speak about their lives, hopes and dreams and become tangible traces of the biggest tragedy of our times.
Martina Melilli is a visual artist, filmmaker, translator and curator. She is interested in the representation of the individual and collective imaginary in connection with memory and reality. In the relation between the individual and the surrounding space. Melilli got an MA degree in Visual Arts (IUAV) and studied documentary and experimental cinema at Luca School of Arts, Brussels, where she also collaborated with the artistic platform Auguste Orts. She’s the winner of Artevisione 2017, a project promoting the young Italian video art, curated by Careof and Sky Arte, which produced her short film Mum, I’m sorry, presented at Museo del Novecento in Milan. My home, in Libya, it’s her first documentary film, produced by Stefilm, ZDF/ARTE with the support of MiBACT, that also recognized it of being of cultural interest. It premiered at the 71st Locarno Film Festival.