The Cinematic Battle for the Adriatic: Films, Frontiers, and the Trieste Crisis

Project Information

CBA TRIESTE

Grant agreement ID: 101020692

DOI

10.3030/101020692

Project closed

EC signature date 22 March 2021

Start date 1 October 2021

End date 30 December 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 275 209,92

EU contribution

€ 275 209,92

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CBA TRIESTE (The Cinematic Battle for the Adriatic: Films, Frontiers, and the Trieste Crisis)

Reporting period: 2021-10-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

CBA TRIESTE analysed cinematic practices related to the Trieste Crisis, a diplomatic struggle over the Italo-Yugoslav border at the outset of the Cold War. Bordering Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, this ethnically hybrid region was the subject of long-term territorial aspirations of both Italians and South Slavs and has undertaken multiple border redefinitions. As one of the first manifestations of the Cold War, between 1945 and 1954 it was divided into two zones, under allied and Yugoslav control respectively. Central to the conflict’s soft power dimension, both Yugoslavia and Italy produced several films about the conflict, often utilizing the same footage, but framing them in conflicting ways. As the Crisis coincided with the wave of establishment of film festivals, the festival circuit became an arena in which the struggle for cultural hegemony took place. Due to the violence of the period, including accusations of war crimes committed by both sides, and Italian emigration from the areas that became part of socialist Yugoslavia, the conflict over this territory remains one of the region’s most controversial issues. In 2004 the Italian government established Giorno del Ricordo to commemorate what it terms the “Italian tragedy” in the territories that it lost to Yugoslavia. This has fuelled the rediscovery of this once-marginalised topic and inspired the restoration of old and production of new films on this subject. As such, any political analysis of this disputed past, is indisputably a political analysis of the present.

Taking festivals as ‘lieux de mémoire’, the project explored how the cinematic images of this conflict have been employed to construct contradictory cultural memories related to the conflict’s national and ideological concerns. It investigated three levels of cinematic action: 1) production (How is the conflict represented in cinema?), 2) circulation (Which festivals did these films screen at?), and 3) reception (Did their critical reception, measured by press reviews and awards, bolster their status as cultural and political artefacts?). It compared two periods marked by significant interest in the topic: the Trieste Crisis itself and the post-Giorno del Ricordo era.

Objectives:

The project’s overall objective was to provide the first comprehensive study on cinema’s role in the creation of cultural memory regarding this conflict. It had three sub-objectives:

1) Provide data on the film production on this subject through an online database of the relevant films.
2) Provide analysis of these films and of their positioning in the public space in the given political, cultural and social context, through a series of publications and talks.
3) Bring a part of the relevant cultural heritage online and provide easy access to data, analysis and documents related to this theme through a Digital archive.

By including historical and contemporary perspectives the study demonstrated how the narrativization of the analysed conflict evolved from the early Cold War to the present. By combining objectives related to data, analysis and digitisation, the project created new knowledge, enabled digital distribution of cultural heritage and provided direct access to relevant materials for both scholars, film professionals and general audiences.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Work was divided into 7 Work Packages (WP). Management (WP1) and Training (WP2) activities lasted throughout the entire project. Researcher used an inter-sectorial methodology combining approaches from film studies, film festival studies, cultural history and tools from digital humanities. Research activities started with identifying the films relevant for the project and determining which festivals screened them (WP3 Dataset Gathering). This was followed by the analysis of films, jury reports and press reviews. Specific attention was paid to the film circulation and reception in the region involved directly in the conflict. Both qualitative (textual analysis) and quantitative methods (number of films produced, screened, awarded) were used (WP4 Content Analysis). The last step was the creation of an online open access Digital Archive with the database of relevant films and a more detailed visual section for a selection of films (WP5 Digital Archive Creation).

Dissemination activities (WP6) resulted in 4 conference papers, 1 peer-to-peer workshop, 2 articles, 1 book chapter, 1 monograph drafted, 1 digital archive and database created and 1 symposium organised. The main communication activities (WP7) included 4 public lectures with multiple film screenings, 5 invited talks at universities and advanced schools, and 1 workshop with PhD students.

The project’s main outputs include:

- [WP5, digital archive] An open access online digital archive with: a) historical overview, b) film database and c) visual section with archival documents, visual materials and texts providing context for a selection of films. Continuously updated with new materials, it is available here:
https://pric.unive.it/projects/cbatrieste/digital-archive

- [WP6, book chapter], D. Jelenkovic, “Warrior or Victim? Representations of Women in post-1945 Films about the Northern Adriatic Borderlands”, in Marta Verginella (ed.), Edited collection on female trauma (ERC project EIRENE), CEU Press, forthcoming in 2025

- [WP6, article] D. Jelenkovic, “’Words Matter: Film Festivals and Territorial Conflicts”, Alternator.Science Ljubljana, 2024, https://doi.org/10.3986/alternator.2024.03

- [WP6, article] D. Jelenkovic, “The Cinematic Battle for the Adriatic: Film Festivals and the Trieste Crisis”, Cinergie – Il cinema e le altre arti, N.22 University of Bologna, 2022, pp. 55-68. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2280-9481/14925

Researcher continues to work on articles and a book manuscript, as well as to present her work through conferences, lectures and public talks.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Some of the first films made in socialist Yugoslavia were about the conflict with Italy over the position of the border, yet no study before CBA TRIESTE has explored this part of Yugoslav cinema history. The project breaks new ground by providing the first overview of cinematic actions related to this conflict. It also represents the first comprehensive study on the role of cinema in the forging of cultural memory in relation to this territory. By investigating the circulation and reception of these films throughout Europe, it moves beyond the region in question and explores the cultural exchanges and forging of cultural memory related to this topic in a wider European context. In doing so the project has improved our understanding of how cinema and film festivals correlated with ideological and national, diplomatic and military conflicts, migrations of populations, war crimes and border changes.

One of the project’s major societal impacts is dissemination of knowledge on the cinema’s role in this conflict among the local populations from the region in question, directly touched by this history. This was achieved through a series of public talks and film screenings in Ljubljana, Nova Gorica, Gorizia and Trieste (2022–2023).

Through its digital archive the project enabled digital distribution of relevant data, archival and visual materials, providing direct access to it for all its three target groups: scholars, film professionals and general audiences.

Images from the newsreel "Pola, addio" (La Settimana Incom n. 46, ITA, 1947). Courtesy of Cineteca d

Images from the newsreel "Pola, addio" (La Settimana Incom n. 46, ITA, 1947). Courtesy of Cineteca d

Images from the newsreel "Pola, addio" (La Settimana Incom n. 46, ITA, 1947). Courtesy of Cineteca d

Images from the newsreel "Pola, addio" (La Settimana Incom n. 46, ITA, 1947). Courtesy of Cineteca d