The Coat
2014
A 60 minute narrative film made with Canadian artist Tony Tomano
A 60 minute narrative film made with Canadian artist Tony Tomano
Created collaboratively with performer participants, the work depicts patterns of human movement across history. The Coat interleaves established film narratives, historical theatre works and contemporary and historical trajectories of emigration and immigration around the Italian south to critically position itself against common representations of the migrant. It articulated instead, the migrant as a figure of multiple histories and social force.
The film draws from ancient Greek theatre, stories of medieval and contemporary Albanian migration to Italy and recent movements around the Italian south. A collaborative and location-bound production method was built to ground the film’s narrative in the particular while opening out to the historical. Scripting was improvised with Canadian, Italian and Albanian migrants on location, to fold action into the landscape and reiterate migrants as involved in producing their own variable journeys.