Out in the open and invisible: The city as archive in essay film San Sabba

Independent filmmaking is often confronted with difficulties. For the team
behind San Sabha (Turina 2016) the issue resided in the invisibilities embedded
in the film's location: a concentration camp within the city of Trieste. This
article will explore how and why San Sabha considered the city of Trieste as an
archive of multiple histories, memories, and postmemory, and how it evolved
into a phenomenological examination of what a landscape can add to the collective memory of a city. Linking other locations in the city, which contribute to the elucidation of stories and histories deprived of public attention,
this article will consider the ontological qualities of the landscape as an archive
where dominant narratives impact the understandings of present and past identities.