CSI presents: Toni, My Father screening with Q&A

Anna was 14 when her father Toni was jailed on charges of being the secret mastermind of Italian terrorism. After 4 years in prison and 15 in exile, Toni Negri became a world-renowned philosopher and his arrest and jailtime were just a chapter in an extraordinary life. For Anna, however, that event had a traumatic impact, and this film is an attempt to make sense of it. Their relationship becomes a powerful dramatic struggle between them

The lives of Toni (90) and Anna (58) are intertwined by a trauma, which is both familiar and collective in recent Italian history. What begins as a daughter’s film about her father transforms into a film about a father and daughter relationship and the wounds of two generations. They meet in Venice to complete the conversations they have been filming for the past three years. Anna has realised that in order to tell the story of their relationship, she must also engage on a personal level. Venice is the city where Anna was born, where she lived as a child and where her mother is buried. It is in this very poignant place that Anna and Toni meet on camera, filmed by a friend of Anna’s. Toni knows that he is seeing the city for the last time, he will die six months later. Anna, who hasn’t lived with him since he got arrested 44 years ago. She accompanies him with trepidation as she tries to make up for lost time. It is in this new dimension of travel and mutual discovery, reduced to a few gestures and essential conversations, that we see the last knots, doubts and desires of two complex lives gradually loosen. In the editing, the present life in Venice is flows freely with previous interviews, photographs, 8mm and Super8 family films. There are also official archives from television or newspapers that illustrate how official History has intruded into their personal stories.

Meghan Sutherland will moderate the Q&A with Anna Negri.