Donne/Women: Canadian Film and Video Makers of Italian Heritage

the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism's Book IV: The Cultural Contribution of the Other Ethnic Groups.He stated, For although there are two official languages, there is no official culture, nor does any ethnic group take precedence over any other.No citizen or group of citizens is other than Canadian, and all should be treated fairly [...] Such a policy should help to break down discriminatory attitudes.(Trudeau, Hansard, 8545)It was here where the Multiculturalism Act, Bill C-93, had its genesis and then became law in 1988.Though multiculturalism has been nurtured both symbolically and through policy statements and legislation, both Himani Bannerji's (2000) and Will Kymlickas (2001) writings provideample evidence for the ongoing lively debate and the complexity of the "multiculturalism" experience in Canada and what "diversity" can mean both in words and in actions.As Bannerji points out, multiculturalism is not a thing: "It is a mode of the workings of the state, an expression of an interaction of social relations in dynamic tension with each other, losing and gaining its political form with fluidity" (Bannerji, The Dark Side,\lG).The Act, then, is a living tug of words and actions between diverse peoples.One of the continuing areas of tension for Canadians is that while some ethnic and visible minority groups have begun to receive more understanding and support in relation to the dangers of reproducing their stereotypes and how these can contribute to the perpetration of racism, Italian Canadians instead, continue to be marginalised.There is a silence in academic research that explores the problem of negative stereotyping from an Italian Canadian perspective.Most mainstream representations, both in Canada and in the USA, continue to reproduce many negative stereotypes of Italians (L'Orfano, "Challenging Exclusion," 2002; Italic Studies Institute, MediaWatch, 2001).Italian North Americans are con- stantly told that the overwhelming negative media reproductions are not Quaderni d'italianistica.Volume XXV, No, 2, 2004, 117 Francesca L'orfano only supported in their representations, but are even legitimised with gov- ernment financing and artistic awards.Recent Canadian examples are Mob Stories (2002) and Mambo Italiano (2003), both funded by Telefilm Canada and Ciao Bella (2004) fiinded by the Canadian Broadcast Corporation.American examples include HBO's The Sopranos (1999-2004) with its multiple Emmy Awards and its Canadian distributor, the CTV Network, and Dreamworks production SharkTale (2004).With the issue of funding and distribution, then, we are therefore reminded of Smaro Kamboureli's "point of great importance, namely, the increasing awareness that the political and the cultural are inextricably inter-related, that they in fact inhabit the same discursive site" (Kamboureli, "The Technology," 209).As Carol Tator notes, "'Codes of Recognition such as stereotypical representations are woven into radio and television news production and programming, advertisements, the print media, the visual arts, literature, the music industry, and the theatre [...] and communicate [...] powerful messages about the core values, norms, cultural hierarchies, and central narratives of mainstream society" (Tator, Challenging Racism, 5).This article continues to build on the work of my MA thesis "Challenging Exclusion: Film, Video, Identity, Memory and the Italian Canadian Immigrant Experience" (2002).While "Challenging Exclusion" broke the silence and absence in scholarly writings of Italian Canadian film and video produced since 1955, it also began to analyse critically ethnic- minority representation, action, and agency, framed against a mainstream media dominated by the negative Italian stereotypes.Both Christopher Gittings' Canadian National Cinema (2002) and Kay Armitage's Gendering the Nation: Canadian Women's Cinema (1999) make no mention of any Italian Canadian filmworks.The purpose of this article then is to explore the representations in the films and videos by Canadian women of Italian heritage.While the mass media continues to disseminate one-dimensional stereotypical renditions of Italian culture, as noted above, Arjun Appadurai suggests the actual "work of the imagination" (Appadurai, Modernity, 4) is taking place in the margins of these sites.

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