PhD film studies student Giuseppe Fidotta wins Stand-Out Graduate Research Award

Giuseppe Fidotta was named as a recipient of the Stand-Out Graduate Research Award, which comes with a $1,000 prize. Fidotta is a third-year doctoral student at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema.

He researched Italian film productions set in the former colonies of East Africa during the fascist era (1922-1943). Fidotta’s project was developed in dialogue with a research collective of anthropologists, historians, media practitioners and Africanists. It concluded in the publication of the book Cine-Ethiopia: The History and Politics of Film in the Horn of Africa, the first academic volume dedicated to the history of Ethiopian cinema. Fidotta contributed one chapter in the book on fascist imperial cinema.

Concordia’s Stand-Out Graduate Research Award is awarded biannually to two students pursuing outstanding research in their own projects. To be eligible, graduate students must have previously applied to the Relève étoile Jacques-Genest (previously known as Étudiants-chercheurs étoiles) competition run by the Fonds de Recherche du Québec and published their research findings within seven months of the application deadline.

His supervisor, Luca Caminati, is delighted. He sees Fidotta as part of a next generation of young film and media historians who are breaking disciplinary boundaries.

“His work on Italian colonial films is on the one hand exemplary in terms of archival research methodology, while on the other, it offers a clear political blueprint to understand contemporary phenomena of postcolonial geopolitics, such as racism and migration.”

Fidotta spoke about his winning project, his experience at Concordia as an international student and the continuing evolution of his work.

Where are you from? What made you decide to come to Concordia for your PhD?

I'm from Siracusa, a town in Eastern Sicily, Italy. As often happens in these circumstances, I came to Concordia almost by chance. I had had the opportunity to meet a few faculty and students in Europe at various conferences before starting the program. These fleeting encounters gave me a glimpse of a vibrant, engaged community. Eventually my now-supervisor Luca Caminati told me more about the program. He captivated me within a matter of minutes. Retrospectively, it was a great choice. I arrived in Montréal in summer 2016.

Can you say a bit about the aspect of your research that won you the Stand-Out Research Award?

The project explores the Italian film production that occurred in the former colonies of East Africa during the Fascist era, with particular emphasis on the so-called Italian empire established after the conquest of Abyssinia (current-day Ethiopia) in 1935. Most of that history is poorly known even in Italy. The republican governments ruling the country after World War II actively worked to wipe out the colonial past from Italy's identity and culture. Consequently, I’ve had the chance to bring attention to a variety of archival and film materials never before uncovered. You can imagine how enthusiastic I was to find, watch, and study all these materials that no one had ever bothered to look for before.

What are some of the historical and political implications of this research?

The project has shed light on the structural involvement of the film industry in the Fascist colonial project. It’s made the long-denied collaboration between the government, the colonial party, and this film community clear. This work has also become a part of ongoing public debate on the legacy of colonialism. This is a discussion that has been made possible only in recent years by the work of other committed scholars. Of course, this means we are all also trying to get at the ways political repression is still affecting Italian society today.

What are your plans for your work in the immediate future?

As it happens, I'm leaving the country in a few hours for eight months of fieldwork in Western Sicily. I continue working with the same spirit of the Fascist empire project. I intend to keep doing research that contributes to the understanding of cinema as a political instrument.