Le mamme di San Vito.

Film Reviews • 149
Works Cited
Carosone, Michael. 2012. “A Personal Paradox: My Life as an Italian-American Gay Man;
or, The Identity Crises of Ethnic Queers/Queer Ethnics.” Huffington Post, July 9.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-carosone/a-personal-paradox-my-life-asan-italian-american-gay-man_b_1656426.html (accessed January 15, 2013).
De Stefano, George. 2011. “A ‘Finook’ in the Crew: Vito Spatafore, The Sopranos, and the
Queering of the Mafia Genre.” In The Essential Sopranos Reader, edited by David Lavery,
Douglas L. Howard, and Paul Levinson, 114–123. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
Le mamme di San Vito.
By Gianni Torres.
Associazione Culturale Altre Produzione, 2010.
65 minutes, DVD format, color.
Le mamme di San Vito (The mothers of Saint Vito) is a touching documentary that
recounts the story of the work of an Italian immigrant association in São Paulo, Brazil.
The film revolves around the annual Feast of Saint Vito, a feast that was created in 1918
by Italian migrants from the community of Polignano al mare (Bari province) and that
continues to this day. The film provides an engaging look at the feast itself and all its
sights and sounds, including participants dressed in traditional Polignano costumes,
music, dancing, and, of course, lots of food. The director, Gianni Torres, also does
especially well in highlighting the role of the feast’s elderly volunteers in this ninetyone-year tradition. These immigrant and Brazilian-born women, all over seventy
years old, are affectionately known as the “mothers of Saint Vito.” They cook typical
Italian dishes in order to raise money to support their association’s charitable work for
underprivileged children. The director chooses to end the film on a somber note with
participants expressing their fear that the feast may not continue much longer as the
older generation disappears and the younger generations lose their ties to their local
Italo-Brazilian version of southern Italian cuisine and culture, a trend that can be seen
in Italian immigrant communities throughout the world. This final scene, like much of
the film, suggestively hints at the complex question of Italian identity in Brazil. This is
in fact an important underlying theme that should have been further developed and
more thoroughly explored.
Although Torres frames his work with the Feast of Saint Vito, he actually does
much more than simply depict the popular local event. His film additionally discusses
the history of the Polignano community in São Paulo as well as the association’s
ongoing charitable work, which provides daycare services for 120 children. Also interspersed throughout the film are descriptions of the food itself (e.g., orecchiette, focacce,
and ghimmirelle) and how it is prepared. In addressing these different themes, the film
does particularly well in highlighting the importance of voluntary associations among
Italian immigrants and their descendants, as well as the centrality of local rather than
national forms of identity. It also demonstrates quite effectively the significance of local
religious beliefs and practices along with regional cuisine in maintaining community
bonds and preserving identity.
150 • Italian American Review 3.2 • Summer 2013
Interviews with the association’s elderly members inform the documentary’s
history of this community and give visual shape to the film. Without the interference of
a narrator, the viewer has a direct and immediate relationship to the film’s participants.
This technique has the advantage of personalizing and giving voice to their collective
story; however, a wider historical context that speaks to the overall experience of Italian
Brazilians would have been helpful, especially for viewers who may be unfamiliar
with that history. The need for such historical breadth is made clear when a woman
interviewed in the film suggests that this community’s history was not typical of the
overall Italian immigrant experience in São Paulo. Furthermore, it would be interesting
to know more about how this local association, which is now (according to the documentary) famous throughout Brazil, compares to the work of other Italian associations
and to what extent their work is interwoven into the wider history of Brazil.
The most moving scenes in the film depict the children (all under three years of age)
who are cared for in the association’s nursery—the reason for the feast. In one particularly touching scene we see one of the elderly volunteers joyfully playing with them.
Later this volunteer emphatically declares, “The children are my flag! They are the most
important part of our association.” The scenes in the nursery call attention to the challenges faced by poor working-class families in Brazil, which is an important facet of the
film’s overall story in that it speaks to the volunteers’ commitment to helping others
as the primary motivation for their work. These scenes also suggest that the society’s
charitable work is directed primarily toward Brazil’s racially diverse population. It
is, however, unclear in the film whether this relationship is a recent phenomenon, the
result of changes in the neighborhood’s demographics, or whether this has always
been the focus of the association’s effort. Although we do not know from the film, it
seems likely that the association may have originally served the children of Italian
immigrants, but as the neighborhood changed so too did the population it served.
Similarly, these scenes make one wonder to what extent the members of the tight-knit
Polignano community in São Paulo identify with their new Brazilian homeland or see
themselves as a distinct group, a question the film does not address directly.
The director’s excellent technique of moving shots through hallways helps
advance the narrative and allows the viewer to experience the participants’ point of
view. Background noise and street sounds also enhance the sensation of actually being
there. They are, however, quite distracting during interviews. The film is also heightened by the sweeping and at times haunting original score by Vincenzo Abbracciante.
All in all, this film is memorable and well worth watching for anyone interested
in local Italian culture in the diaspora, although a more thorough historical-sociological examination of the association within its wider Brazilian context would have
enhanced its value to students and scholars. That being said, Le mamme di San Vito is
especially successful in capturing the heart and spirit of a community that is proud of
its traditions and happily devoted to helping others and, in so doing, preserving its
own local identity.
—DAVID ALIANO
College of Mount Saint Vincent