“Arb쳥sh촢 Fatmir Koci’s documentary on the Arberesh of Italy

TIRANA, March.18 – This is one of the latest artist’s productions, set in December 2006 in Sicily and located in the area of some arberesh villages, Piana degli Albanesi. It is realized with a very personal perspective, far from the classic schemes that are usually applied to this issue in documentaries and books. The author has visited these places and he has brought a very realistic picture of what he has seen, without the nostalgic description. The documentary is titled “Via Mare Adriatico” and it is written by Koci himself. The documentary about the arbereshe is a part of the program “Projecto Alba”, funded by the Italian government for the linguistic minorities (e.g. Mediterranean people which were part of the Roman Empire). It will be shown in Italy together with the other 8 movies of Italian authors. The first part of the movie is a parallelism of the two documentary genres, realizations of the Albanian National Radio and Television, taken from its archive. The two stories are written by two Albanian authors during the years 1965-1982 in Italy. The second part combines a contrast between the mentality of the past and the one of our days, which is in the centre of the documentary. The documentary refers to the history of 500 years ago in the ‘Piana degli Albanesi’ where the Albanians used to gather. This was a tradition where they used to discuss and take decisions about the marriage and the family. These art works bring to the audience a sample of what the arbereshe-s of nowadays think about their past.