Docu-musical, migration and media reflexivity in The Harvest (2017) and Dimmi chi sono (2019)

ABSTRACT In the documentaries The Harvest (2017, Andrea Paco Mariani) and Dimmi chi sono (Sarita, 2019, Sergio Basso), the directors seek to raise awareness of a rarely told story, true to the tradition of politically engaged documentary. The Harvest denounces the slavery-like conditions in which Indian harvest hands work in Italy, while Dimmi chi photosono serves both as an archive for forgotten stories of the stateless Lhotshampa (an ethnic group displaced from Bhutan to Nepal) and to reveal the role of audio-visual media as vehicles for individual and collective memory. Though they tell very different stories, the films are united by their search for a suitable documentary language, since they can no longer rely on the authenticity effects that have been made hackneyed by the mass media to lend credibility to their accounts. The directors therefore combine conventional documentary methods with intermedial references to painting and photography, in particular pastiches of Hollywood/Bollywood musical scenes, so as to question Western concepts of authenticity.