Advertisement

Independent, Short and Controversial: The Script Development of San Sabba

Chapter
  • 2 Downloads

Abstract

From the beginning, the Risiera di San Sabba, the only concentration and extermination camp of the Axis in Italy, had been the central character in the film San Sabba (2016). However, in 2014 the project was denied access to the premises. This chapter explores how and why the initial treatment, featuring interviews with survivors and tour guides conducted in a traditional participatory style, evolved into an experimental script for an essay film questioning the ontological status of memorialisation. Constructed around unseen documents, held in multiple languages (Italian, Slovenian, German and English), the narrative aimed to illustrate the harrowing topic without entering the camp. With the story locked in the relationship between the silenced history of the victims and those who struggled for the persecution of the perpetrators, when late into production some access to the camp was granted, the team was brought back to the drawing board and editing became screenwriting.

Keywords

■■■ 

References

  1. Bonfanti, E., & Porta, M. (1973). Città museo e Architettura Gruppo BBPR. Milano: Vallecchi.Google Scholar
  2. Čermelj, L. (1936/1945). Life and death struggle of a national minority (The Jugoslavs in Italy). Tiskarna Ljudske Pravice,Google Scholar
  3. Collotti, E. (2001). I Campi di Concentramento in Italia. Franco Angeli.Google Scholar
  4. Ebner, M. R. (2011). Ordinary violence in Mussolini’s Italy. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  5. Hirsch, M. (2012). The generation of postmemory: Writing and visual culture after the holocaust. Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
  6. Institute for International Politics and Economics. (1954). Italian genocide policy against the Slovenes and the Croats—A selection of documents. UN Archive.Google Scholar
  7. Italian crimes in Yugoslavia. UN Archives.Google Scholar
  8. Jakubowska, W. (1948). The last stage. P. P. Film Polski/ Times Film Corporation. Warsaw.Google Scholar
  9. Kalc, A. (2005). Ai confini orientali della civiltà Italiana tra le due guerre mondiali. In Rojc, T. (Ed.), Trst—umetnost in glasba ob meji v dvajsetih in tridesetih letih XX Stoletja (pp. 57–76). Glasbena Matica.Google Scholar
  10. Lanzmann, C. (1985). Shoah. New Yorker Films.Google Scholar
  11. Liss, A. (1998). Trespassing through shadows—Memory, photography & the holocaust. University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
  12. Maranzana, M. (2004, December 5). Schiavi di Hitler, 60 anni dopo. Il Piccolo. (p. 9).Google Scholar
  13. Munslow, A. (2006). Deconstructing history. Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Pollock, G., & Silverman, M. (2014). Concentrationary cinema—Aesthetics as political resistance in Alain Resnais’s night and fog. Berghahn.Google Scholar
  15. Purini, P. (2010). Metamorfosi etniche. I cambiamenti di popolazione a Trieste, Gorizia, Fiume e in Istria, 1914–1975. Kappa Vu.Google Scholar
  16. Resnais, A. (1956). Night and fog. Anatole Dauman; Argos Films. Paris.Google Scholar
  17. Royal Yugoslav Government Information Department. (1945). Summary of first six reports of the state commission for the investigation of the crimes of the invaders and their assistants. UN Archives.Google Scholar
  18. Sereny, G. (1995). Into that darkness: From mercy killing to mass murder. Random House.Google Scholar
  19. Škerl, F. (1945). The struggle of the Slovenes in the littoral for the people’s authority. Ljubljana University Press.Google Scholar
  20. Turina, R. (2015). Behind the book. Printed Press Productions.Google Scholar
  21. Turina, R. (2016). San Sabba. Printed Press Productions. http://film-directory.britishcouncil.org/san-sabba.
  22. Verginella, M. (2008). Il Confine degli Altri: La questione giuliana e la memoria slovena. Donzelli Editore.Google Scholar
  23. Žižek, S. (2006). The parallax view. MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Arts University BournemouthPooleUK

Personalised recommendations