ITALIANS AT HOME (Excerpt) | 1991 | Film, 16mm | 29’00” | Colour | English and Italian

Two men in a darkened room, watching photographs of houses of Italian immigrants, for a would-be photo-book entitled Italians At Home… The photographs, their encounters with Italian immigrants and gaze of their domestic space, proceeds to unfold a multi-layered film essay on media images of otherness and displaced culture.

Reviews Excerpts

“In a migrant culture, what rituals are consciously and caringly enacted? What rituals are simply the unconscious response to alienation, adaptations or misrecognitions? This film lovingly witnesses the kinds of ‘collage’ experience that millions of Australians enact every day as they attempt to make sense in a world composed of infinitely fragmented traditions and languages.”
Ross Gibson, Catalogue Experimental Film Week Madrid, 1998

“An intricate and mysterious and breathlessly cinematic exploration of cultural cliches of Italianess. Siracusa’s film is a gem and one of the real highlights of the festival”
Adrian Martin, 3RN ‘Screen’, 15-5-91

“Visual confidence of this film, I thought, was absolutely stunning”
Julie Rigg, 3RN ‘Screen’, 15-5-91

“Counterpointing written text over image – luminous household interiors and backyards, epiphanies of domestic life – and alternating fictional and documentary voice over to dialogue, the film ironically comments on cliches of Italianess and says nostalgic farewell to nostalgia.”
Catalogue, ‘Wit’s End’ Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 24-5-93

“Like the films of Raul Ruiz… ITALIANS AT HOME is about that strange and murky space that is exile. It is a kind of travelogue in the land of imaginary scenarios where we are never quite sure about accepted notions of cultural identity.”
Vikki Riley, 3RN ‘Screen’, 13-5-93

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