Polvere/Dust

The protagonist of “Dust” is a young woman we met for the first time when she jump off a train in an anonymous station; the scene and the setting assumes a timeless quality through the employment of the black and white. We don’t know the name of the girl, but we gradually guess she comes from South America and she is trying to discover her Italian roots. We follow her walk alone the countryside of the region of Veneto, her interaction with the inhabitants of a village is limited by a language barrier. They don’t recognize the surname “Maneglia”, nor do they help with the continuation of her search. The rejection of the other, of the foreigner, is embodied in the exchange that happens in a cafè when the girl is asked whether she is Moroccan. The emigration from the beginning of the 20th century from Italy’s North-East towards Latin America and the immigration from North Africa at the end of the same century, intersect and blend momentarily.
(Essay by Caterina Riva, in ANTIPODEAN VISION)