Upstairs @ the RAI, Friday, 30 November 2012, 6.30 pm

LETTERS FROM PALESTINE (2011, 36 minutes)

Film screening and discussion about the use of archival material to create a documentary with Ludovica Fales

The Royal Anthropological Institute
50 Fitzroy Street, London W1T 5BT
(North-East Corner of Fitzroy Square, off Warren Street, next to the French Theatre Book shop)

One family, two journeys, 90 years apart

Imagine discovering an unsolved family mystery in your great-grandfather’s letters – a mystery nobody in your family wants to talk about. My great-grandfather, Angelo Levi Bianchini, set out for Palestine on a diplomatic mission in the 1920s and never came back. After spending a few months in Palestine, he had become a vocal advocate for Jewish-Arab coexistence but his views were often unpopular. To his ninety year old daughter Angela, my grandmother, the
mystery of his death remains an open wound. This is the story of a journey into the unresolved questions of the Middle Eastern conflict which are still being addressed today, ninety years after my great-grandfather’s journey. In a land divided by a wall that in his time would have been unthinkable, today it seems that his dream has been destroyed forever. But in this ongoing state of conflict – the power of his voice still resonates.

Ludovica is a recent graduate of the documentary course of the National Film and Television School. After her MA in Political Philosophy between Rome and Berlin, Ludovica had a career as columnist newspaper and researcher. Ludovica has a particular affinity to the use of archive and other media and to the narrative of memory. She is a founding member of the Kitchen Sink Film Collective based in London. Her website is www.ludofales.com

Organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in collaboration with SOAS, The Brunei Gallery, Britain in Palestine (until 15 Dec)

For further information or booking a place please contact: RAI Film Officer, Susanne Hammacher, film@therai.org.uk