Italian student filmmakers share their story

Thursday, November 04, 2010
by Barbara Vancheri, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Flavia Tiberi was in Rome when the walls -- and almost everything else -- came tumbling down 70 miles away in L'Aquila, where she was enrolled in film school.

"My house totally crashed down. So when I came back, my bed was full of rubble. I thought, if I was there, I probably die. I don't know," the 24-year-old Italian said from the cozy confines of Pittsburgh Filmmakers in Oakland this week.

As providence would have it, the student seated next to her also escaped the wrath of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that killed more than 300 residents, injured more than 1,500 and left 60,000 homeless.

It struck at 3:32 a.m. on April 6, 2009, and Michele Giacardi had left the city hours earlier.

"I moved from L'Aquila that night eight hours before the earthquake. I'm from Milan, which is very far away from L'Aquila, so I used to stay always in L'Aquila, and I was very lucky for the work in Rome," the 23-year-old said, also in accented English.

The pair had been assistants on a horror movie, and it saved their lives when their school, L'Accademia dell'Immagine in Abruzzo, was severely damaged.

They documented the devastation in L'Aquila and, with financial help from UPMC and others, joined fellow students Juri Fantigrossi and Antonio Paolucci in Pittsburgh. In fall 2009, they enrolled in classes and returned to the familiar: filmmaking.

The quartet's work will be showcased at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Filmmakers' Melwood Screening Room, 477 Melwood Ave., Oakland, as part of the Three Rivers Film Festival.

The program's centerpiece will be an hour-long documentary, "Familiar and Strange," which brought Ms. Tiberi and Mr. Giacardi back to Pittsburgh this fall.

It explores eight Italians, including a restaurateur, radio DJ, medical researcher, poet, businessman and lawyer/blues musician, who pulled up stakes and moved to the Pittsburgh area.

The pair had spent four months in Pittsburgh the first time and seven months editing in Italy before they decided to return and find the project's "soul." They explored their subjects' ability to criticize, compare and contrast Italy and America, and where their hearts belong.

Whether here 15 or 50 years, they harbor a love or nostalgia for Italy.

The immigrants cherish America and the family and work built here, but they still love Italy in a deep way. "In the documentary, one of the persons said that they are in the middle because they don't feel American and they don't feel Italian anymore," Mr. Giacardi said.

"So it's a strange feeling, I think, for them," Ms. Tiberi added, as if they are without a home.

Musing on what they miss about Italy, Ms. Tiberi said she pines for the everyday routine she enjoyed before the quake while Mr. Giacardi said, "It's strange, it's like a little part in your brain remains in Italy. I'm here but I have a connection with Italy."

And that's to the real Italy, not the "fake Italy" people envision based on mob movies or the fertile imaginations of Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese.

The decision to return to Pittsburgh this fall marked a turning point for the students.

"We decided to come back just because we believe in the project. Maybe it is the first time that we really decided to do something," Mr. Giacardi said.

"We were students, so the teacher said to us, 'OK, you have to do this, you have to do this, you have to do this.' Last year when we were here, we started to make the documentary just because other people said to us to do it. It is the first time that we decided to come back because we would finish a project in which we believe."