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42 maltatoday, SUNDAY, 1 NOVEMBER 2015 This Week Film festival sheds personal Ahead of the RIMA Film Festival – part of a project focusing on migrant narratives and memory – TEODOR RELJIC speaks to two of the event's participants, both of whom set out to add nuance and poignancy to the stereotypical political and media narrative on migration Still from To Whom it May Concern by Zakaria Mohamed Ali Beyond sensationalism and inquisition Gianluca Gatta is the co-founder of the Archive of Migrant Memories in Rome. While collaborating with the RIMA to help organise its film festival, he speaks about the Archive's empowering mission and its global scope, as well as Malta's crucial geopolitical position in this ever-unfolding issue How did the Archive start, and what were its initial aims? The idea of compiling an ar- chive of memories made by and for migrants came out of an experimental School of Italian for migrants and asylum seek- ers which was started in Rome in the early 2000s in associa- tion with a group of psycholo- gists and therapists, named 'Doctors against Torture', who were helping migrants affected by post trauma stress. Together with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers mostly com- ing then from the Horn of Af- rica, we were a small group of volunteers, schoolteachers and researchers coming from differ- ent work and field experiences who simply wanted to make mi- grant memory a source of valu- able knowledge and common good to all. What are some of the key chal- lenges you face? The Archive of Migrant Memories was born out of the necessity to gather, share and make public the daily stories of people who, through a mix of choice, determination and external forces, decide to leave their countries in search of a new future, and come to stay or cross the Italian peninsula. Only a few echoes of these nar- ratives reach private media, and no trace of them is to be found in public statements, as little peoples' histories often strug- gle to find an audience beyond the attentions of sensational- ist journalism and inquisitorial bureaucracy. The Archive's aim is to put together researchers and migrant witnesses in order to produce oral, written and audio-visual narratives. In this way migrants participate di- rectly in the collection, archiv- ing and diffusion of their own stories and testimonies. Do you have an ultimate aim for the project in mind? It was our own way to respond to the need to leave a trace in public records and in the con- sciousness of society of the importance of transnational mobility and of its human en- trepreneurship in Italy. We wanted to empower migrants and their voices so that their presence and role in our soci- ety could be delineated in all its creative agency and self-expres- sion. This participatory process involves Italian and non-Italian actors in one single ethical and political project which aims at changing transnational mi- gration from being something radically 'other' into a collective shared patrimony, one which – we hope – might allow a more balanced view of Italy's own growth and change in time. Are there particular geograph- ical locations that you've fo- cused your work on over oth- ers, and why? At the beginning (early 2000s) we worked mainly with refugees and migrants coming from the Horn of Africa, as the turn of the century saw repeated crises and interethnic wars in Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia-Eritrea, and our earliest movie produc- tion ('Like a Man on Earth') was co-authored by an Ethiopian refugee, Dagmawi Yimer (our vice-president). But later of course we broadened our scope and we worked with Afghan, Kurdish, Bulgarian or West Af- rican migrants. What is your impression of Malta, in terms of its geo- political position with regard to migration? Would you be interested in expanding your field of research and archival to Malta? For us Malta is a key geo-po- litical actor in migrants poli- cies. Italian mainstream media used to exclusively represent Malta as a sort of "competitor" in avoiding to save migrants in danger of life in the Mediter- ranean Sea, while benefiting from a wide Exclusive Econom- ic Zone. At the same time, the percentage of migrants rescued by Malta in the total population is dramatically higher than the Italian one. From our point of view it would be very interesting and innova- tive to stimulate a dialogue be- tween the civil societies of the two countries based on the mi- grants' self-narratives. For mi- grants play a "mirror function" in a society, such a transna- tional communication process could also contribute to better understand the whole Mediter- ranean situation, producing a complex account of inhabiting this area from different "status" (citizen, denizen, stranger, ref- ugee, "undocumented"…) and points of view. Are you looking forward to experiencing it directly dur- ing your participation at the RIMA Festival? Yes, together with the organ- izers of Rima Festival we are trying to create a network in- volving migrants and citizens interested in migrant issues. We hope that the screening of our movies and the discussion of our approach would be a good opportunity to meet existing or incentivate new similar projects in Malta. Gianluca Gatta The RIMA Film Festival will be taking place at Casa Pereira, Republic Street, Valletta on November 6 and 7. Entrance is at €3.50 per night or €5 for two nights. Drinks will be available at the bar. The event forms part of the RIMA project, which is supported by the Malta Arts Fund and Valletta 2018. For more information on the project, log on to https://rimaprojectblog.wordpress. com/. Photography on page 29 by Mario Badagliacca YOUR FIRST CLICK OF THE DAY www.maltatoday.com.mt