Frontiers of the Political: “Closed Sea” and the Cinema of Discontent

Abstract

This chapter explores some of the ways in which cinema as a medium can offer possibilities for civic action and political transformations. It proposes in particular an analysis that foregrounds the relationship between postcolonial cinema and citizen media as a way of articulating active participation that manages not only to transform public space but also to propose alternative visual registers. Postcolonial cinema, I argue, contests mainstream and dominant visual registers that propose stereotypical or biased representations of the Other, undoing tropes of mastery and control by offering, or opening up, the space for different voices and viewpoints. The argument is developed through an analysis of Mare Chiuso (Closed Sea, Italy, 2012), a documentary film by Andrea Segre and Stefano Liberti, focusing in particular on the video footage produced by the refugees themselves during the Italian push-back operations in the Mediterranean, which features in the film. Interpreted as an example of citizen media, the miraculously saved video footage becomes a symbol for self-representation as well as political self-determination.