I am a Visual Anthropology student a month away from my graduation; I worked on a film on my hometown and my community (Venice, my friends and my family) for a year and then ‘lost’ the hard-drive with all the footage and audio recordings of my project 40 days from my university deadline. I am talking about the (lost) work on Venice to suggest that I am interested in documenting a place and a community of people I am part of, that I know as an insider.
So, how did I go from Venice to Amantea? North to South? Venetians to migrants and refugees of various nationalities? Well, just a week before my loss, I was in Belmonte Calabro (Calabria) taking pictures and videos during a workshop, called "Crossings" on architecture and integration that involved migrants, locals and students, a project organized by La Rivoluzione delle Seppie. In a climate of aperture, availability and brotherhood, I easily felt part of this heterogeneous community that formed 3 years ago and involves Africans, Asians and Europeans, and dreamt of making a film or a documentary on the reality I just discovered.
The broken hard-drive was the perfect excuse to fast-forward things a little and go back to Calabria, see my new friends and make a film with them there.
I contacted Rita, the main heart and mind behind Le Seppie, explained the situation and proposed to curate a short film-making workshop. She was immediately available to help. We then contacted the migrant friends I had met only two weeks before and they seemed very happy to help me too.   In two days I booked a flight ticket and decided how to structure the workshop in Calabria. I could not make this film on my own, I don’t have the ability to represent a place and people I know so little about. I needed the locals and adopted locals to suggest what to do and what to represent, to identify the stories that need to be told. With that in mind, I put together a list of my favourite films and documentaries, packed my camera, rented all the sound equipment I could from university and gave an appointment to all the interested people: Monday 10AM at Le Seppie lab in Amantea.
  That first day we all watched fragments of a horror movie (Lybian Safa is obsessed with anything horror!), of docu-films, of collaborative documentaries, of feminist avant-garde shorts. Agnes Varda, Jean Rouch, Patricio Guzman... not the usual Hollywood filmmakers. Before and after each screening I improvised an introduction, a contextualization; I asked my new friends and now 'students' to focus on sounds, I encouraged discussion, asked questions, listened to comments, what people liked, what they didn’t and why.

At the end of day 2, we had four stories that were born out of collective discussions but that were always approved or changed by me. “We are in a democracy” I said on the first day “But I am the queen”.
  When I took out my camera it was really hard to let go of it. In fact, I didn’t. I asked Zeshan and Jerry to take care of the sound, I gave a borrowed GoPro to anyone who seemed interested in filming what we were doing, but I kept my Sony glued to my hands. I knew we were learning and working all together and creating beautiful and long-lasting relationships, but I also knew my goal was to make a 20’ film for my graduation and that the two days of filming I had to achieve this did not allow enough time to teach exhaustively about camera operations. I couldn’t take any risks.
  Therefore, I myself directed and filmed, Zeshan and Jerry recorded sound, Freeborn, Zeshan, Jerry, Safa and Precious acted, the other assisted in every little task, Alasan made a website about what we were doing (is this text on that website now?), Zeshan took pictures of us.
    The first story I filmed was Freeborn’s: a reproduction of something that really happened to him, a story about hope for integration and work and the frustration given by encountered racism.
  The second story was Jerry’s; an improvised conversation between Libyan Safa and Nigerians Jerry and Precious. We all went by the sea, the sea where they struggled, the embodiment of life and death, the door to Europe or to death. The three actors naturally argued about their experiences of Libya, surrounded by the sea, the moon and a visible though distant lightning storm.
    The third story was signed by Zeshan. He chose his favourite place as filming location, we went next to the ruins of an ancient church on top of a hill. We had decided the story was a scripted conversation between two friends who were smoking while looking at the sea. “The sea looks calm now…” it starts. The subjects are past, nostalgia, sea, dreams, hope and frustration, documents… The fourth and last story we filmed was Safa’s. She wrote it completely by herself. That’s what she likes to do: she draws and writes horror stories. It was the fourth and final day of our workshop, we had worked really hard every day, it was 10PM, it was hot and we were tired and dehydrated. There almost was a revolution!!! People wanted to leave, they started arguing, we all shouted. After a couple of wrong rehearsals, Rita brought pizzas, beers and coke and after a well-needed break, we managed to get a good take. Safa’s story had to be horror (obviously!), it involves chaos and calm, sounds and silence, life and death. She wrote about a shipwreck and we filmed shadows on a wall while she was reciting in Arabic. Everybody helped, one holding a light, others holding cardboard shapes,…