Bella Ciao

Part of The Telling Image.  Ten films from eight film makers, curated by Gareth Evans for Estuary 2021.  

Jem Cohen:  Bella Ciao

Bella Ciao is in part a reworking of Jem’s independent short about the Trump inaugural, Birth of a Nation.  As Jem says “the song, Bella Ciao, can be considered a protest-movement ‘chestnut’ at this point, but who cares - reactivation is half the point of ‘folk music’. My challenge was to collaborate with the Ribot/Waits version in making sure the song belongs to the present and future as well as the past. I pulled shots from my archives of a Black Lives Matter rally and a climate change protest and in the middle of editing I rushed out to shoot protests in defense of immigrants, one of many Trump-exacerbated crises. I also included a massive windowless tower that was part of the NSA’s secret spying operations in lower Manhattan.”

Two other films by Jem Cohen are also part of The Telling Image:  The Militant Ecologist and This Climate.

Both The Militant Ecologist and Bella Ciao were made for guitarist Marc Ribot’s Songs of Resistance project. Ribot’s versions are notably based in early Italian folk songs historically attached to militant struggles (ie. partisans fighting fascism in the 1930’s and 40’s). Eras, histories, and lyrics change but resistance is, sadly, always necessary and often too little too late. Ribot and Waits' take is resolute and mournful, angry and weary, and in these contradictory impulses it recognizes the complexity of our times and our resistance.