Reviving Italy from the coma: interviewing Annalisa Piras, Director of Girlfriend in a Coma

Published on August 1, 2013

Culture

Girl­friend in a Coma (2012) by Lon­don based jour­nal­ist and film maker An­nal­isa Piras and writer and for­mer ed­i­tor of The Econ­o­mist Bill Em­mott, fo­cuses on how con­tem­po­rary Italy has been lying in a coma for the past twenty years. It explores the deep routed prob­lems of the coun­try while, at the same time, look­ing at its suc­cesses and pos­si­ble so­lu­tions for the fu­ture. Since the film a lot has hap­pened, and An­nal­isa Piras dis­cusses the film and her hopes for re­viv­ing Italy.

How did the idea for Girl­friend in a Coma come about? What was the in­spi­ra­tion be­hind the film?

Well, Bill Em­mott and I met in 2001 when Bill made the very fa­mous cover of The Econ­o­mist with Mr Berlus­coni and the head­line “Why this man is unfit to lead Italy”. We started a con­ver­sa­tion on Italy and its many un­re­solved is­sues that have al­ways seemed to come back in the same way over the past 20 years. So when Bill then wrote the book Forza Italia and the Eng­lish ver­sion Good Italy, Bad Italy we dis­cussed again how Italy seemed to be stuck in a time­warp, a sleep or paral­y­sis un­able to solve its prob­lems. And so the idea rose that maybe it would be use­ful to make a film, be­cause a film would allow us to reach a huge num­ber of peo­ple and, at the same time, would also very ro­bustly de­pict the sit­u­a­tion that many Ital­ians don’t want to see. So, the idea was that with a film, we might be able to help cre­ate more of aware­ness of this sort of sleep or coma that Italy seems to be in since 20 years ago.

You’ve done a tour not just in Italy but also in the UK and through­out Eu­rope, how has the film been re­ceived so far, how have you found the re­ac­tion of dif­fer­ent au­di­ences?

It’s been ex­tremely in­ter­est­ing, this kind of fol­low­ing that the movie has cre­ated be­cause you will re­mem­ber that the first screen­ing in Italy on Feb­ru­ary 13th was can­celled due to the de­ci­sion of the Pres­i­dent of the MAXXI Mu­seum in Rome where the screen­ing was booked. That mo­ment was seen by many as a form of cen­sor­ship be­cause the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion was that you shouldn’t screen a film that talks about pol­i­tics in a pub­lic in­sti­tu­tion be­fore the elec­tion. Since then, it has cre­ated a re­ally strong fol­low­ing es­pe­cially among stu­dents, which was  very re­ward­ing for us be­cause we were hop­ing some­how to reach the younger gen­er­a­tion, the peo­ple who know the se­ri­ous­ness of the sit­u­a­tion and want to do some­thing about it. So it has been very, very beau­ti­ful and it has filled us with pride to see these spon­ta­neous screen­ings or­gan­ised every­where in Italy. We’ve tried to go to as many as pos­si­ble, we’ve been so far to 45 but there has been as many or­gan­ised in­de­pen­dently, peo­ple get­ting to­gether to watch the film and de­bate the is­sues in a kind of par­tic­i­pa­tory cam­paign to analyse why the is­sues raised in the film are not part of the na­tional de­bate. The stark con­trast has been be­tween spon­ta­neous civic so­ci­ety em­brac­ing the film and the com­plete in­dif­fer­ence of the in­sti­tu­tions, the po­lit­i­cal world and the main­stream media.

Well, when the film was made Mario Monti had been elected after Sil­vio Berlus­coni stepped down amid scan­dal. Since then we’ve had the dis­as­trous elec­tion which lead to a long stale­mate and now fi­nally the ap­point­ment of En­rico Letta as PM. A lot has hap­pened, but can we say that Italy is wak­ing out of the coma?

It de­pends pretty much on who is watch­ing. It’s a typ­i­cal case of whether the glass is half full or half empty. A lot has hap­pened since we made the film. A lot of pos­i­tive things have hap­pened, no­tably there is a strong sense that the pub­lic opin­ion in Italy is de­mand­ing change. Even if it was not the best po­lit­i­cal so­lu­tion the fact that some­one from out­side the po­lit­i­cal class, some­one like Beppe Grillo has got such a suc­cess at the elec­tions... it is not a good thing in ab­solute terms be­cause there are a lot of is­sues with the Movi­mento Cinque Stelle, [but] it has sent a strong sig­nal that at least a third of vot­ers in Italy de­mand a rad­i­cal change. On the other hand, there are a lot of wor­ry­ing symp­toms that sug­gest the coma is get­ting worse. Par­tic­u­larly the elec­toral suc­cess of Sil­vio Berlus­coni has been a bad blow to those who thought some­how the Berlus­con­ismo era was fin­ished.

In the film, you look at the Mala Italia and Buona Italia. In the first part, bad Italy, you look at is­sues such as cor­rup­tion, po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, and or­gan­ised crime with fig­ures guid­ing us through the chap­ter. But was there a lit­tle too much em­pha­sis on Sil­vio Berlus­coni? Is he the cause or a symp­tom of Italy’s prob­lems?

Many peo­ple thought there was too much space for Berlus­coni when they saw it be­fore the elec­tions, be­cause many peo­ple hoped that Berlus­coni was gone, there was this sense that he be­longed to the past. But this was not the case, and so some­how Berlus­coni had sadly the right place in the film. I think that too often many Ital­ians have liked the idea of say­ing that Berlus­coni was the cause of all evil, but ac­tu­ally Berlus­con­ismo is a symp­tom, a symp­tom of fun­da­men­tal prob­lems with Ital­ian democ­racy. Cer­tainly a lack of grown-up po­lit­i­cal cul­ture is what has al­lowed some­one like him to dom­i­nate pol­i­tics for the past twenty years. So the fact that some­one who openly dis­plays a sense of dis­re­gard for the in­sti­tu­tions and for the state gets such a sig­nif­i­cant share of the vote is part of the prob­lem. With or with­out Berlus­coni, this dis­re­gard for le­gal­ity is a prob­lem that ex­isted be­fore Berlus­coni, and so as well has the prob­lem of sell­ing and rig­ging votes, and the in­flu­ence of or­gan­ised crime on the re­sults of the vote. Those are very old and per­ni­cious is­sues of Italy that Berlus­con­ismo has made worse.

It was in­ter­est­ing that when Mario Monti was nom­i­nated to be the tech­no­cratic Prime Min­is­ter after Berlus­coni re­signed, he had a very good track record in Eu­rope and some Ital­ian com­men­ta­tors said that he could be good for Italy. Is there more faith when some­one else does the choos­ing?

There is a very im­por­tant ques­tion.  Now I think there is a deep aware­ness that the lead­ers that are pro­duced by the tra­di­tional po­lit­i­cal par­ties, they end up mak­ing a mess. So there is this sense that when things get re­ally se­ri­ous, you need to call a tech­no­crat be­cause you can­not trust Ital­ian politi­cians with se­ri­ous mat­ters. It was in­ter­est­ing that when Mario Monti was nom­i­nated, there was a big mis­un­der­stand­ing es­pe­cially in Britain; with a lot of peo­ple say­ing this was un­de­mo­c­ra­tic. But, first of all, the Ital­ian sys­tem al­lows the Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic to nom­i­nate who he wants as long as he is a mem­ber of par­lia­ment, and Monti was a sen­a­tor, and then Par­lia­ment ap­proves him and has a vote of con­fi­dence in him. So that was in line with Ital­ian de­mo­c­ra­tic prac­tices. But sec­ondly, there was a also a mis­un­der­stand­ing of what the Ital­ians were think­ing them­selves be­cause most Ital­ians were very happy and pleased that [Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic Gior­gio] Napoli­tano chose a se­ri­ous pro­fes­sor. So there was some kind of pub­lic ap­proval of the choice of nom­i­nat­ing Mario Monti, be­cause peo­ple felt we needed some­one se­ri­ous and even though he wasn’t di­rectly elected he had a lot of au­thor­ity and re­spect. It’s all part of this issue with Ital­ian pol­i­tics that it’s a not a ma­ture democ­racy, and po­lit­i­cal par­ties have lit­tle re­spect and cred­i­bil­ity.

In the film, you look at the issue of l’ig­navia or sloth, namely the idea of being ap­a­thetic from the po­lit­i­cal process, un­will­ing to take a stand. But that’s not just a uniquely Ital­ian thing though, isn’t this ar­guably a prob­lem across Eu­rope and across the west­ern world?

Yes, it’s a huge prob­lem of all our democ­ra­cies of the west­ern world. In this sense, we were very keen that the film would not be seen only as ‘these Ital­ians, they’re al­ways in trou­ble’ be­cause the is­sues that we wanted to high­light are com­mon to other democ­ra­cies. And the sloth, the lack of per­sonal re­spon­si­bil­ity and the lack of courage to act is some­thing that is very wide­spread in Eu­rope. Why is that? I think that since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the so called death of ide­olo­gies, peo­ple have found it very dif­fi­cult to be­lieve in a cause and en­gage them­selves. So they have be­come more cyn­i­cal and de­tached from the en­tire po­lit­i­cal process, which is a dis­as­ter be­cause ex­actly at the mo­ment that peo­ple stop be­liev­ing in pol­i­tics, that is when pol­i­tics is al­lowed to de­te­ri­o­rate even fur­ther. There was a sense that this is a big prob­lem in Italy, but it’s a shared prob­lem with other west­ern democ­ra­cies and we need to fight it.

Mov­ing on to the Buona Italia, you use some in­ter­est­ing ex­am­ples of how civil so­ci­ety and com­mu­ni­ties can lead a reawak­en­ing. You also look at Ital­ian busi­nesses such as Fer­rero and FIAT, how can Ital­ian com­pa­nies help lead the way?

The thing about Fer­rero, and the rea­son why we put them in the film, is be­cause it seemed to us that they rep­re­sent a form of en­light­ened cap­i­tal­ism that cares about the com­mu­nity in which it op­er­ates and thinks about the long term. So, in that sense, we thought it was a good model be­cause it was clearly in­fused with Ital­ian tra­di­tional val­ues about fam­ily, sol­i­dar­ity, com­mu­nity, the re­spect of the tra­di­tion of the ter­ri­tory. It seemed to us that that was some­thing to be proud of, and to be pro­moted and pro­posed as some­thing that Ital­ians should go back to. Of course there is a kind of ideal as­pi­ra­tion, we are talk­ing about val­ues and they do not nec­es­sar­ily al­ways trans­late into prac­ti­cal so­lu­tions. Hav­ing said that, the spirit of com­mu­nity and the re­spect of the ter­ri­tory is some­thing that could help Italy, no­tably in areas in the South where the ag­gre­ga­tion of co­op­er­a­tives like we have seen in the film the Can­giari pro­ject http://​www.​cangiari.​it/​, and the GOEL group in Cal­abria http://​www.​goel.​coop/​, they are cre­at­ing jobs, they are cre­at­ing jobs for women and for young peo­ple based on a co­op­er­a­tive model that puts the val­ues of sol­i­dar­ity , com­mu­nity and ter­ri­tory at the cen­tre. Of course you’re not going to solve what is a struc­tural prob­lem, of a change of eco­nomic model in all of Eu­rope through these small co­op­er­a­tives, but it is quite an in­spir­ing ex­am­ple of things that you can do re­dis­cov­er­ing your val­ues and tra­di­tions.

That’s true, but as you say the big­ger is­sues mean that in Italy un­em­ploy­ment has rock­eted (lat­est fig­ures put it at a record of 40.5 per cent for peo­ple be­tween 15 and 24 years old ac­cord­ing to ISTAT, the na­tional sta­tis­tic of­fice) so, what is the role of Ital­ian youth and the role of the di­as­pora? As the di­rec­tor of Voda­fone Italia said in the film the issue is not young peo­ple leav­ing but whether they come back or not, the "re­turn ticket". So how can you reach out to the Ital­ian youth that you don’t lose that whole gen­er­a­tion?

That was one of the hopes of the film that some­how it would be seen as a call to arms for all those who have left. It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a struc­tured way of or­gan­is­ing this enor­mous com­mu­nity that is grow­ing over­sears every day. But cer­tainly what we thought could hap­pen is that this huge com­mu­nity of tal­ented young Ital­ians who are now abroad could con­nect with the peo­ple who want to change Italy from in­side and cre­ate a pos­i­tive syn­ergy in adding the pres­sure from out­side to the pres­sure from in­side and en­cour­age peo­ple who want change. I think there are a lot of pos­i­tive en­er­gies in Italy but they are very often iso­lated or dis­cour­aged or not con­nected with other like minded groups.

One thing we are doing with our web­site www.​girlfriendinacoma.​eu is cre­at­ing a map of or­gan­i­sa­tions in­side and out­side Italy to allow them to con­nect be­cause the great thing that we are see­ing in this mo­ment is an in­creased on­line par­tic­i­pa­tion to the de­mo­c­ra­tic processes. So this could be one way of reignit­ing some hope and some ac­tive en­gage­ment of peo­ple. We are also cre­at­ing with Bill Em­mott a foun­da­tion called the Wake Up Foun­da­tion be­cause we have seen that there’s so much work to be done in con­tin­u­ing the con­ver­sa­tion that we started with the film and so with the foun­da­tion we will try to keep rais­ing aware­ness and con­nect­ing peo­ple. We also want to in­volve all the peo­ple who love Italy and who study Italy from out­side. We want to keep in­creas­ing the crit­i­cal mass, to keep the ini­tia­tives going. We are also pro­duc­ing a new film, Eu­rope in a Coma, to con­tinue that re­flex­ion on the fact that in Eu­rope we all have the same prob­lems and we need to work to­gether be­cause the tired­ness of our democ­ra­cies is a com­mon prob­lem but to reen­er­gise it and renew it, we need to unite forces and tackle the prob­lem to­gether.

So fi­nally on a Eu­ro­pean level, with the eco­nomic cri­sis can Eu­rope and the EU be seen by young peo­ple as a hope or hin­drance?

I think we are at the end of the track with Eu­rope. Ei­ther we renew the so­cial con­tract among coun­tries or we go for dis­in­te­gra­tion. Which is why we are very ex­cited about doing Eu­rope in a Coma, be­cause at this pre­cise his­toric mo­ment it is very im­por­tant to raise aware­ness of what is at stake. Cer­tainly, the tech­no­cratic Eu­ro­pean Union has been for too long at the cen­tre of the dis­course on Eu­rope. Which is why we need to bring back a Eu­rope of the peo­ple, the Eu­rope of cul­tures and iden­ti­ties and the idea of how much we have been al­ways in­ter­twined in both his­tory and cul­ture. I think that we need to re­build that aware­ness of our com­mon des­tiny and that to link it to­gether we can be stronger, so the idea of sol­i­dar­ity and pros­per­ity and se­cu­rity of the peo­ple com­ing to­gether that’s some­thing that needs to brought back into the mind of peo­ple be­cause when in a fam­ily you start talk­ing only about money and debt that’s the end of the fam­ily. We need to start talk­ing with each other again and re­dis­cover why what unites us is much more im­por­tant than what di­vides us today.