L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, APRIL 10, 2014 www.italoamericano.com L'Italo-Americano 5 KRISTA DOSSETTI LAwRENcE DISTASI Documentarian Fred Kuwornu Sheds Light on Italian Citizenship Struggles for Global Audiences Una Storia Segreta's 20th Anniversary Fred Kuwornu is a true human- itarian documentarian, and while you wouldn't know it from his last name, an Italian national drawn to giving disenfranchised subjects a voice through his lens. His latest triumph? "18 ius Soli," a documentary comprised of interviews with 18 Italians fight- ing to obtain citizenship in the country they were raised, and sometimes even born in. Although the issue is a hot-but- ton topic for those who follow Italian politics, and several ini- tiatives have been proposed to amend current law in the coming months, Kuwornu's work is gen- erating interest in countries the world over: its honest look at immigration and citizenship issues resonate with many European and Middle-Eastern countries, as well as Australia, and of course the United States. At the request and interest of various universities, nonprofit groups and other organizations, Kuwornu has recently embarked on a grass-roots screening tour, with stops here in the Bay Area at UC Berkeley and the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco. The showing in SF drew a full crowd and generated a lively Q&A that included fol- low-up on some of the young adults in the film: one man's family actually left Italy for the United States after more than 20 years of trying to settle there, while their son remains behind in the country he calls home. Kuwornu is brazen in calling 18 lus Soli a "propaganda documen- tary" that he hopes will create a "network (sic) of people who want to spread the word." While the response from people outside of Italy was surprising at first, he hopes sharing the film will pro- vide him with something to take back home: "I'm interested in every culture where the topic of ethnic diversity is really strong. In Europe this process is only just starting now. You can find stories that will be helpful to Europe." One reason for hope: Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi. Kuwornu explains, "There is a new Prime Minister who is very young and powerful, and he recently made a speech on this issue and it was the first time without any opposition." When asked if he'll celebrate if any bill comes to pass, Kuwornu reveals he's a keep-your-head-down kind of guy: "I will not cele- brate, I will try to do other works that help the inclusion, that develops a culture of diversity. " Kuwornu has never had to struggle for Italian rights like the subjects of his film, but his Ghananian father, who came to Italy in 1961 to study medicine and stayed to marry his Italian mother, creates an obvious con- nection to the subject at hand. Kuwornu's father eventually became an Italian citizen in the 80s. And speaking of immigration, Fred Kuwornu is about to set down roots in America. His past work includes writing for Italian television, and production work on the 2008 Spike Lee film, "Miracle at St. Anna." The story of African-American soldiers fighting on the side of the Italians during WWII inspired Kuwornu to make his first docu- mentary, "Inside Buffalo (They served America when America was not ready to serve them)," the story of the 92nd Buffalo Division. "Inside Buffalo" won Best Documentary at the Black Berlin International Cinema Festival and has been screened at the Pentagon and Library of Congress. Kuwornu's current residency in the U.S. is to contin- ue research and filming for his next project, a look at the civil rights voting act in time for its 50th anniversary, named "64" and "65." When asked about his fascination with black history in the United States, Kuwornu explains, "American culture has a great influence on my life." Director Fred Kuwornu On Sunday, March 23, the Museo Italo Americano was packed to the limit with a Standing Room Only crowd. The occasion was the 20th Anniversary of the 1994 opening of the WWII exhibit, Una Storia Segreta: When Italian Americans Were 'Enemy Aliens,' which also played to SRO crowds at the Museo twenty years ago. After that initial showing, the exhibit went on to be displayed in state houses, city halls, libraries and Italian American venues nation- wide—some 53 different sites in all at the last count. Most impor- tant of all, following the exhibit's appearance in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, Representatives Rick Lazio and Eliot Engel introduced legisla- tion calling upon the U.S. gov- ernment to finally acknowledge that these events had taken place and that the civil liberties of Italian Americans had been sys- tematically violated. On November 7, 2000, the Wartime Violation of Italian American Civil Liberties Act was indeed signed by President William Jefferson Clinton, and became Public Law #106-451. All this from an exhibit that was initially considered "of limited appeal" by the California Council for the Humanities when they rejected a grant application to sustain it, thus leaving it to sustain itself with grass-roots support from the Italian American community— which it did for twenty years. Sunday's event did not pre- sent the original exhibit. But the speakers— Adele Negro, President of the Italian American Studies Association, Western Chapter, which created the exhibit; Lawrence DiStasi, Project Director and author of Una Storia Segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II; Costanza Ilacqua Foran, whose father was interned during the war; Maria Gloria, longtime columnist for L'Italo-Americano and the per- son who first broached the idea of an exhibit; John Buffo, Pittsburg CA historian whose grandparents were forced to evacuate from the prohibited zone that included all of Pittsburg; and Richard Vannucci, whose uncle in San Francisco was so distraught by the curfew that kept him home-bound that he died of a 'broken heart'— along with the slide show that presented images of the original exhibit panels and some of the details of those panels, seemed to excite the fascination of the crowd. Numerous questions and comments from the audience fol- lowed the presentations, indicat- ing that interest in this issue remains as high today as it was twenty years ago. So does the fact that in the last month, sever- al requests to host the exhibit have come in from universities in various parts of the nation. The theme announced at the event by Lawrence DiStasi was simple: the coming together of Italian Americans and their orga- nizations throughout the United States to promote the exhibit itself, and to work to pass the legislation introduced in 1997. Both these aspects were success- ful. A related theme was recov- ery: recovery in the sense of recovering/uncovering the basic facts that had been buried for so long; and recovery in the sense of recovering from the repres- sion that had hidden those facts, even from those who went through them, for so many years. Both themes—unification and recovery—stood in vivid con- trast to the effects of the restric- tions at the time, which was to scatter and/or isolate Italian Americans nationwide. Indeed, at the May 1942 Tenney Committee hearings in San Francisco, one witness urged the committee to take measures (shutting down newspapers, clubs, even banks) that would induce Italian Americans in San Francisco and other Little Italies to "forget" their Italian-ness and "enter the American way of life." By contrast, Una Storia Segreta provides the Italian American community, and Americans in general, with the occasion, each time it appears, to remember. Whether Una Storia Segreta will travel for another twenty years is unclear. But it is certain that an issue that directly affect- ed 600,000 Italian immigrants branded "enemy aliens" during the war, and thousands more related to them, still retains the rare capacity to educate, inspire, and move. Banchero radio

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