At the beginning of the 1900s in Ustica, a marginalized island north of Palermo, the arrival of the vaporetto was an event that attracted the islanders to the pier, intrigued by the news arriving from the “continent”. From 1926, however, the steamboat also began to carry men in chains. The island of Ustica was destined to welcome not only the criminal prisoners but also the political prisoners, sent there so as not to harm the fascist regime. The documentary analyzes through direct and handed down stories the memory of the figure of Antonio Gramsci, a communist intellectual deputy to the Italian Parliament, confined to Ustica in December 1926 by the Fascist Regime. Gramsci remained on the island for 44 days. In Ustica Gramsci found “his” south, before being transferred to the prison of San Vittore. The documentary focuses on the Scuola dei Confinati Politici set up on the island by Gramsci in the very short period of his stay. For the confined politicians, the school represented a way of surviving the slow and exhausting intellectual death to which they were condemned, and for the islanders, sensitive to the charm of hospitality, an attempt to build moments of social inclusion in a period in which the island was considered a place of marginalization for the whole nation. The school, which was open to all, also served to curb illiteracy, involving citizens of all ages and social statuses. Many Usticasi still have memories of that school and of Gramsci today, and it is for the island of Ustica one of the foundations of their historical memory.
Wednesday May 24th at 5pm
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Montréal
1200 Av. du Dr Penfield
Free admission
“Gramsci 44” – Italy 2016, 66 minutes
Director : Emiliano Barbucci
With: Peppino Mazzotta, Americo Melchionda
Italian with subtitles in French
This film is part of the cycle of conferences “Rethinking Gramsci – Hegemonic Trajectories, Subalternity, Emergent Political Agencies and the Decline of the Intellectual”
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