"In mezzo agli Africani": Forgetting Fascist Colonialism in Natale al campo 119

Pietro Francisci's 1947 film, Natale al campo 119, offers unacknowledged insights into the representation, redirection, and repression of the memory of Italian colonialism in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Portraying colonial agents and parodying colonial ideology, Francisci's film approaches the history of colonialism, and in particular the invasion of Ethiopia, both more directly and more critically than other post-war Italian commercial films. Yet Natale al campo 119 also demonstrates how a direct but nevertheless dishonest confrontation with colonialism more effectively facilitated its displacement from the national narrative than could the supposed silence that is often identified in Italian cinema. In its depiction of Italian prisoners of war, and especially in its depiction of the African American guard who oversees those prisoners, Francisci's film appears to invert the nationalist and racist hierarchies that undergirded Italian Fascism's colonialist ideology. At the same time, however, Natale al campo 119 exemplifies Italy's post-war national mythology in too readily granting self-absolution for Fascism's crimes, including those committed in pursuit of colonial conquest. Thanks to the evident contradictions in its representation of Italian colonial history, Natale al campo 119 provides fertile ground for investigating the discursive formation of Italy's multidirectional memory.