The Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago and the Consulate General of Italy in Chicago commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021 with the screening of Witnesses of Witnesses (Testimoni dei testimoni) by Studio Azzurro.
Witnesses of Witnesses documents the exhibition created at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome in 2019. The project was first conceived by a number of students who participated in the Journey of Memory to Auschwitz and by the Municipality of Rome. The documentary confronts forms of memory, weaving them into a layered fabric, similar to the one with which everyone’s personal memory is “naturally” built. Silent images detailing the point of no return, of the encounter with the unspeakable reality of what has been, are juxtaposed with the voices of surviving witnesses, including Sami Modiano and Tatiana Bucci, who, together with others, physically met the students in the Journeys of Memory. Their voices hand us what we can not see, without which, we risk forgetting forever. As a counterpoint, the voices and faces of today’s students declare their intention to save us from the lethal forgetfulness of what happened, keenly aware that only by preserving the memory of those who have lived, can one succeed in building a future that does not replicate “what has been.”
The video will be available at this link on Wednesday Jan. 27th.