Shun Li and the Poet

Director Andrea Segre in person!

Many recent European films have chronicled the social and personal consequences of the recent wave of immigration to Europe, but few with the delicacy and insight of Andre Segre’s lovely film. Brought to Italy by a “broker” who she’s slowly paying off while saving money to bring across her son, Shun Li (Zhao Tao, Jia Zhang-ke’s muse in Platform and The World) is sent from her factory job to a bar in Chioggia, a small island in the Veneto lagoon. There she strikes up a friendship with Bepi, a fisherman nicknamed “the Poet,” himself a representative of an earlier immigration to Italy from Eastern Europe. The two come to share a special understanding, and their relationship transforms them both. Segre effectively draws us into this “immigrant world,” not simply to expose its unfairness but to reveal the ways in which immigrants create their own special support systems.

This screening will be preceded by an Olympic clip from the Instituto Luce Archive:
La XV Olimpiade – 07/1952
The 15th Olympiad: the first gold medal for Italy conquered by Giuseppe Dordoni
(Settimana Incom 818)