"Smarginando. Festival Migrante" brings a variety of events to town to tell the story of Italian emigration.

The concept and creation are by Leila Maiocco. 
 

Smarginando - Festival Migrante
Two lives, two different looks at contemporary art. Photographs by Uliano Lucas and films by Gino Brignolo. 

Sala Punto d’Incontro COOP, Via Merano, 20 – Sestri Ponente

Friday, 14 October 2022

Although the great domestic migration in Italy, between the 1950s and 1970s, encompassed some of the most important transformations of society, not many social surveys were carried out and published during the years when this phenomenon peaked, and there is still much left to be written. The task of narrating the vicissitudes of the "terroni in città" (southerners in town) - in the words of the provocative title of Francesco Compagna's book - was left mainly to newspapers, television and cinema. The material is vast and interesting but has not yet been carefully studied and can add important details to the history of the time. It is a parallel narrative, a kind of counter-song, like the photo-reports by Uliano Lucas and the footage by film maker Gino Brignolo preserved at the MEI. 

A meeting will be held on Friday 14 October at 5 p.m. in the Sala Punto d'Incontro COOP in Via Merano in Sestri Ponente - Genoa, to talk about some sections of the permanent collection dedicated to photography and emigration at the MEI - Museo Nazionale dell'Emigrazione Nazionale. Prominent photo-journalist Uliano Lucas and Silvio Brignolo, son of Gino Brignolo, a former partisan and video maker from Turin, will be participating. They will be talking to Dario Basile, journalist and professor at the University of Turin, Pierangelo Campodonico, Director of Mu.MA, with journalist Andrea Castanini chairing the debate.

Tiziana Cattani, Director of Members and Consumers at Coop Liguria, and Paola Leoni, Leoni Archive - Mu.MA. will also be present.

Those taking part in the talk will be:
Uliano Lucas – photographer
Dario Basile – journalist – professor at Turin University
Silvio Brignolo – son of Gino Brignolo, former partisan and video maker from Turin
Pierangelo Campodonico – Director of Mu.MA
with
 
Andrea Castanini - journalist
 
Uliano Lucas
Born in Milan in 1942, Uliano Lucas grew up surrounded by the climate of civil and intellectual reconstruction that animated the Lombard capital after the Second World War. When he was just seventeen, he began mixing with the circle of artists, photographers and journalists who were living in the Brera district at the time, and it was here that he decided to pursue a career in photojournalism. With his documentation campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, he investigated the facts and contradictions of his time, including immigration in Italy and abroad. A selection of these are included in the MEI exhibition itinerary.

In the decades that followed, he continued to report on the different faces of society, with reports on current affairs and the world of art and culture, reportages and books, with wide-ranging investigations conducted together with journalists, sociologists and historians.
A well-read and visionary man, he combines a commitment to knowledge and analysis with a special narrative and evocative ability. 
  
Gino Brignolo
A former partisan, he was born in Turin in 1921. He began working at Fiat Grandi Motori before moving to the Italian National Social Security Institute (INPS). His passion for filmmaking developed after he joined a recreational photography club. He bought his first 8mm camera in 1956 and immediately started filming the city. Filming was his passion but not his job and he put in lots of overtime at work to buy rolls of film. He completely self-produced his films: a large cupboard at home became his workshop, where he installed the editing machine and the titler. In the years of the migration boom, he realised that something important was happening in the city and, for this reason, he went to the Porta Nuova station in Turin in the morning and filmed, with his camera hidden in a pierced bag, the immigrants landing in the city with the "Sun Train". His slightly blurred images are of immense emotional impact and have great historical value.