In a few days it will mark the 120th anniversary of the Battle of Adwa, climax of the war in Abyssinia, where the Italian army was defeated by the troops of the Negus of Ethiopia, Menelik II.

While the defeat of Adua stopped for many years the colonial ambitions of our country, the other just his memory and the desire to avenge contributed greatly to rekindle those same ambitions in a later period, that of the fascist colonialism in Africa Oriental.
As was the case in Libya, also in Ethiopia the Italian domination was noted for its hardness and for the atrocities committed in an attempt to crush the separatist guerrillas of the local populations who resisted the occupation.
Moreover, to physically perform the repression in Ethiopia were the same people who already if it were employed in Libya.
An example of this is quite telling the massacre of Debre Libanos, which occurred in 1937, when in response to an attack were exterminated all the monks of the main monastery Coptic Ethiopian-with a budget ranging from about 500 to more than 1,600 victims.
"No one has ever dared so much: no colonial power, while tragic in the history of colonialism, have you ever spotted a similar fault," said Angelo Del Boca, the greatest historian of Italian colonialism, talking about that episode.
Still, the memory of that massacre as well as that of the Italian colonial crimes has always been dormant and removed, so that was even possible they would erect a monument to the memory of its main executor.
Of all these topics deals with If Only I Were That Warrior, a documentary filmed in Italy and Ethiopia trying to tell, rebuild and deepen the historical legacy of Italian colonialism in Africa.
Its world premiere at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence last November, the documentary has been a great success and is currently on tour around the world.
I spoke with the director Valerio Ciriaci of Italian colonialism and because after a century, Italy has still not managed to come to terms with its past.
The trailer If Only I Were That Warrior VICE: Your documentary begins with an episode of the news: the construction of Affile shrine in honor of Rodolfo Graziani in 2012.
Why did you choose this place to start? Valerio Ciriaci: When in 2012 was inaugurated in Affile monument to fascist Rodolfo Graziani, the news has gone quickly around the world, as Graziani is infamous for war crimes he committed in Libya and Ethiopia and for his active and never denied participation in the Republic of Sal.
In Italy they had talked about it some newspapers, but to raise the alarm had been mostly international publications such as The New York Times, El Pas and the BBC.
At that time I was living in New York and hearing about the matter I decided to go to a conference on the subject organized by the Centro Primo Levi.
On that occasion I saw for the first time the furious indignation of some members of the Ethiopian community attended the meeting, whose testimonies brought back to life the Italian atrocities in Ethiopia and made me realize how little is known of the Italian colonial wars, the consequences of which are still visible today.
The fact that we start from here is interesting, because the figure of Graziani is quite emblematic of the removal of the Italian war crimes by our historical memory.
How was it possible for you?
Removal is one of the main themes of the film.
Surely, in part this is because they have never held trials for crimes committed during the invasion and subsequent occupation of Ethiopia.
To quote Del Boca, the greatest historian of Italian colonialism, there has never been a "Nuremberg of Africa."
This is why people like Graziani not only have served a few months in prison but often has rebuilt a new image, often going so far as to hold public office after the war.
In the later part it was because in Italy the transition from the fascist regime in the Democratic Republic was weak and ambiguous.
Guido Cortese, for example, the head of the fascist party in Addis Ababa and is directly responsible for a brutal massacre against the civilian population of that city, then it became State Secretary for Finance in the Government Scelba.
And also the same Graziani after the war he lived in Affile where he worked as a manager of the MSI, a party, going back to the old values of fascism.
And this removal has also led to see the Italian colonization as "good" or different from the other European powers, despite the facts to the contrary.
See for example the myth of the "Italians good people."
Actually this myth dates back to the First World War, but it spread and became plausible because of the weakness and ambiguity with which Italy has come to terms with fascism.
In the absence of a process that would make public the true facts, we have been lacking a serious investigation of those atrocities and thus an actual admission of guilt on the part of the Italian state.
Many of the documents certifying the Italian war crimes, for example, have only recently been declassified for decades, and many of those massacres were deliberately hidden.
This revisionist forces have been able to create this myth, in fact, an interpretation of convenience but absolutely false, that took root deep in the collective consciousness of the Italians.
So much so that even today events like those of Affile is not an isolated case.
The Affile shrine.
Still from the documentary courtesy of Valerio Ciriaci
Returning to the documentary, it was hard to put together the material and testimonies?
It was a long process, which required a lot of research.
The documentary contains much archive material, which comes mainly from the Archives Central State-where I had access to the Fund Graziani, a collection of documents and photographs that follow the career of Rodolfo Graziani from World War I to the Social Republic.
Many of these images have never been published or used in a documentary: I I used to reconstruct the historical context occupation of Ethiopia.
For instead of telling the massacres of Addis Ababa and Debre Libanos, which took place in 1937, I decided to interview the writer Ian Campbell, who is considered the greatest expert on the subject.
I was also the person in Debre Libanos, where I filmed the testimony of one of the few eyewitnesses of the massacre are still alive.
In total, when it started the installation I found myself to have about 100 hours of footage.
Many interviews, many characters and many archival images were then excluded.
In future I would like to extend this project and use all that material that due to time constraints remained out of the finished documentary.
How long did you work on this project and where it led you?
The making of the film lasted about three years and has led me to travel to three different happy.
The filming in Ethiopia have been realized in Addis Ababa, Debre Libanos and in the Tigray region, the scene of several battles including those dell'Amba Aradam and dell'Amba Alagi.
In Italy I shot in Rome, in Predappio and obviously in Affile.
It was a real company, we traveled with a handheld camera through a lot of places and times and this has taught me a lot of things from a technical standpoint and logistics is not easy to plan a project like this, that moves between different continents and several generations following migratory flows and family stories.
Not to mention the human experience given by dealing with people that I could not meet outside of this context.
What reactions are getting the documentary?
The reception was very good.
After the world premiere at the Festival dei Popoli in Florence, I have received many requests to organize screenings in Italy and the United States.
There is so much interest, especially in the academic world, and often receive requests from teachers who want to bring the film into their classrooms to use it for educational purposes.
What are the key questions that you wanted to meet with this project?
I think the main question was, "How is it that in a state that the Constitution condemns fascism can be built using public funds, a monument to a fascist like Affile shrine?"
I know it may seem like an obvious question, but during production of the film I realized that I was not.
Somehow, I think I found an answer to this question.
Although the main focus of the film does not offer a definitive answer and unique, but give rise to new questions.
It is an attempt to open a discussion at last openly and transparently on the subject of Italian colonialism, discussion so far has been lacking.
Why do you think after so many years Italy has not been able to accept its colonial past?
It's a complex question, which is really hard to find a single answer.
I can only tell you that all of these questions is the conceptual stream that connects all parts of the film.
Probably before going through the acceptance of these historical facts it is necessary a process of analysis and interpretation that has not yet arrived, and a maturation process that still did not happen.
It is precisely to help with this that I decided to make the documentary.
At the opening, a still from the documentary courtesy of Valerio Ciriaci.
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