A documentary film dedicated to the former ‘Casa d’Italia’ in Marseille: an architectural reflection on the traces of the past.
‘La Casa d’Italia di Marsiglia. Finestre su una terza Roma’
Categories: Culture and creativity -Cinema and Audio-visual -Design and Architecture
The Italian Cultural Institute of Marseille participated in the making of the documentary film ‘La Casa d’Italia de Marseille. Fenêtres sur une troisième Rome‘ (The Casa d’Italia in Marseilles: Windows onto a Third Rome), written by Stéphane Mourlane and Alessandro Gallicchio, directed by Agnès Maury.
The film was financed by the TELEMMe Mixed Research Unit, which is a part of Aix-Marseille Université, and the CNRS Humanities Department. The Consulate General of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute of Marseille collaborated with the project by making their premises and certain objects and archival materials available.
The former ‘Casa d’Italia’, which is now the headquarters of the Consulate General of Italy in Marseille and the Italian Cultural Institute of Marseille, is a unique example of modernist architecture of the fascist period in France. Two members of TELEMMe, a historian and an art historian, have decided to share their perspectives on this ‘dissonant’ legacy, on the motivations behind its construction and on its history. Research was mainly carried out in historical archives in order to explore a past in which Mussolini’s expansionist dreams in the Mediterranean mingled with the much more complex realities of a a migrant population seeking to integrate. In revisiting these places, they also pose a key question: what importance should we place on the traces of fascism today?
The Italian Cultural Institute of Marseille financed the Italian version of the documentary, complete with Italian subtitles and captions.
The official screening of the Italian version took place on 16 November, 2021 pas part of the exhibition ‘Marseille l’Italienne‘ organized by the Municipal Archives of the City of Marseille and curated by Stéphane Mourlane (Aix-Marseille University), Jean Boutier (Center Norbert Elias/EHESS) and Sylvie Clair (Marseille Archives). A section of the exhibition is dedicated to the Casa d’Italia in Marseille.
The film, with Italian, subtitles is available on the Institute’s YouTube channel and here, on italiana.
