AUTHOR`S NOTE
LA DUNA (2023)
by Emerson Culurgioni and Stefanie Schroeder
Our work on LA DUNA developed from an observational documentary film to a play with narrative patterns, genre conventions and special forms of documentary, such as the re-enactment of texts and situations with amateurs and professional actors. This way of working corresponds to the reality we wanted to describe rather than a clear narrative form. The seemingly fairytale-like and absurd "urban legend" about the stolen dune of Porto Pino in Berlusconi's villa in northern Sardinia was the starting point for our research and captures the essence of the controversial businessman, politician and media mogul. Against this background, the influence of power-oriented and entrepreneurial thinking and unscrupulous actions on all areas of life was a key selection criterion for the stories in our film. For just as the international consortium SITAS illegally and ruthlessly built on the land of the legendary farmer Ovidio Marras, the Italian military expropriated and expelled hundreds of Sardinian farming families. But where there is injustice, there is also resistance. Fisherman Domenico Marongiu cunningly markets his access to the restricted military zone to cover the financial losses caused by the military. Firmly rooted and uncorruptible, the farmer Ovidio Marras also refused to give up his land. He became famous for his statement "Money has wings, but the soil does not". However, even sand is economized in many ways, on the one hand as a building material and on the other as a lure for tourism. So it seems reasonable to think that even the rumor of stolen sand could just be a successful marketing gag by the Sardinian Ministry of Tourism. Sand as a souvenir and at the same time as a carrier of identity was therefore suitable for us as a recurring narrative element to tell of the universal political paradoxes of Sardinia. Just as the wind scatters the sand in all directions, sand theft is instrumentalized for various political narratives. On social media, the story of the honorable sand and coastal protectors has become a trigger point for hostility towards tourists from Northern Europe and migrants from North Africa. There is an inextricable link between property, power and narratives. For three decades, Berlusconi has spread the sweet poison of negative freedom, spectacle, meritocracy and neoliberalism across an entire country through his media empire like no other. Thirty-year-old waitresses Deborah and Federica are the victims of this generation. Torn between seasonal tourism and extreme unemployment in the off-season, they drift through their lives precariously, cynically and unattached, and despite their non-conformity, they are always extras in a breathtaking setting. Every year, BMW shoots automobile commercials on one of the most beautiful stretches of coastline in Teulada. Roberto Culurgioni, whose family once owned this coastline, worked at the BMW factory in Munich for forty years - a fact about Emerson's father that didn't make it into the movie.
Ultimately, it was both of our marginalized backgrounds, as East Germans and children of Sardinian migrant workers, that sensitized us to this subject matter. During our research, we dealt intensively with the media representation of Sardinia, Italy and the global South and our role as filmmakers and as characters in the film. Although we traveled from the rural south to the glamorous north of the island and collected a variety of historical and contemporary stories about struggles for land, culture and autonomy, we found the most important narrative elements of the film around the dune in Porto Pino, where it all began, during a walk on the beach, within sight of a NATO troop exercise. The question of the sand dune's whereabouts is answered in the fiction. Emerson's mother Yvonne, disguised as the psychologist Jennifer Melfi from the "Sopranos" series, hypnotizes Berlusconi in order to find the stolen sand and take revenge for 30 years of "Berlusconismo".