CBA TRIESTE · The Cinematic Battle for the Adriatic: Films, Frontiers, and the Trieste Crisis

The Cinematic Battle for the Adriatic: Films, Frontiers, and the Trieste Crisis

CBA TRIESTE analysed cinematic practices related to the Trieste Crisis, a diplomatic struggle over the Italo-Yugoslav border at the outset of the Cold War. Bordering Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, this ethnically hybrid region was the subject of long-term territorial aspirations of both Italians and South Slavs and has undertaken multiple border redefinitions. As one of the first manifestations of the Cold War, between 1945 and 1954 it was divided into two zones, under allied and Yugoslav control respectively. Central to the conflict’s soft power dimension, both Yugoslavia and Italy produced several films about the conflict, often utilizing the same footage, but framing them in conflicting ways. As the Crisis coincided with the wave of establishment of film festivals, the festival circuit became an arena in which the struggle for cultural hegemony took place. Due to the violence of the period, including accusations of war crimes committed by both sides, and Italian emigration from the areas that became part of socialist Yugoslavia, the conflict over this territory remains one of the region’s most controversial issues. In 2004 the Italian government established Giorno del Ricordo to commemorate what it terms the “Italian tragedy” in the territories that it lost to Yugoslavia. This has fuelled the rediscovery of this once-marginalised topic and inspired the restoration of old and production of new films on this subject. As such, any political analysis of this disputed past, is indisputably a political analysis of the present. Taking festivals as ‘lieux de mémoire’, the project explored how the cinematic images of this conflict have been employed to construct contradictory cultural memories related to the conflict’s national and ideological concerns. It investigated three levels of cinematic action: 1) production (How is the conflict represented in cinema?), 2) circulation (Which festivals did these films screen at?), and 3) reception (Did their critical reception, measured by press reviews and awards, bolster their status as cultural and political artefacts?). It compared two periods marked by significant interest in the topic: the Trieste Crisis itself and the post-Giorno del Ricordo era. Objectives: The project’s overall objective was to provide the first comprehensive study on cinema’s role in the creation of cultural memory regarding this conflict. It had three sub-objectives: 1) Provide data on the film production on this subject through an online database of the relevant films. 2) Provide analysis of these films and of their positioning in the public space in the given political, cultural and social context, through a series of publications and talks. 3) Bring a part of the relevant cultural heritage online and provide easy access to data, analysis and documents related to this theme through a Digital archive. By including historical and contemporary perspectives the study demonstrated how the narrativization of the analysed conflict evolved from the early Cold War to the present. By combining objectives related to data, analysis and digitisation, the project created new knowledge, enabled digital distribution of cultural heritage and provided direct access to relevant materials for both scholars, film professionals and general audiences.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union