Tuscan History gets Spiked!

Tuesday September 29^th I attended the press conference here in Florence at Palazzo Stozzi. It was a stimulating event where the community of Tuscany had the opportunity to comment on the James McBride and Spike Lees’ very controversial interpretation of what historically occurred here in Tuscany during the second world war.

As the James McBride the Author of the book The Miracle of Santa Anna so eloquently put it was a fictional story set in the historical background of the The second World War played out in Tuscany. It was about the relationships between Afro American soldiers or Buffalo soldiers and the other groups of people they encountered, The white American soldiers, Germans, Italian patricians and the common villagers who were caught up in the cruelty of War.

Writers and Directors often take liberties to tell a story that is free from stereotypes and has a fresh original angle . In this story there was a good German, bad American officers, divided villagers and a partisan who played the villain. Not even the black American soldiers themselves were black and white characters.

This is a common approach for writers to create deep and rich stories filled with three dimensional characters. What is uncommon and was done by both the writer and the director was to listen to the concerns of the community they had offended in their manner of telling this fictional story.

As a writer and Director I felt is was a powerful moment in history to see a community hold artist’s responsible for their creative work and to see the artists step up to the plate to defend their work.

How responsible are we as writers and film makers to accurately recount historical facts? Certainly Disney or Touch Tone Studios has been notorious for rewriting history. What exactly is history? It goes back to the old saying five people witness an accident and everyone has a different version of what they saw.

Whether we like it or not as artist’s writers, painters, film makers our depiction of history will most likely be the version that is most identified by future generations since the oral traditions of storytelling have been replaced with Art and Entertainment. The Last Supper by Da Vinci will be most people’s visual image of that famous evening dinner. Just as Dante will be thought of as walking around with a red cape and laurels..

How responsible are we as artists to history? Would it be better to rewrite history changing the past as we change the future? Should we pretend the holocaust never existed and make up a happy history?

Should art be used dig up old wounds?

Or can is be a way to learn from our mistakes and heal the past, finally putting it behind us a creating something new?

History Repeats itself is the catch phase. But do we have to keep repeating these terrible mis-takes? Can we edit out the bad scenes reshoot them and change our future at long last?

When we made Eve olution it was a very difficult film to make. I had to come face to face with how much women had suffered. Over 5 million women were killed in a holocaust called the Inquisition. These facts are rarely is heard of.. When I visited a torture exhibition in Prague most of the instruments had been designed and used on women.

The tragedy of Santa Anna is now known to a much larger population thanks to Spike Lee and James Mcbride and maybe the first step to putting the past behind us is to face, it grieve it, learn from it and then move on. This is the healing power of film. I feel Spielberg did that with Schindler’s List although I am sure every good story teller takes some poetic license to tell a good story.

Spike’s agenda was, as always to show the Afro American perspective of the injustice of racism. He made a powerful comment at the press conference about ending the injustices of society racism , sexism and his film was meant to highlight that issue. I commend him as a film maker who has a moral responsibility and has had the courage to follow his mission despite criticism. He has been a pioneer in the Art and Craft of Film and a voice for a people who have not been justly treated or recognized.

I have a good friend who was a Tuskegee Airmen, and finally On 29 March 2007, about 350 Tuskegee Airmen and their widows were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal presented by President Bush for his heroic acts in World War II. This was after a HBO aired The Tuskegee Airmen (1996) starring Laurence Fishburne .

So as the Director of The Florence Film School I say unto you : you can and must influence our social memory of history in a positive way helping future generations to learn from the past and pay recognition to those who may not have a voice in a society that has lost it’s perspective and morals.