Memory, subjectivity and maternal histories in Un'Ora Sola Ti Vorrei (2005), Histoire d'un Secret (2003) and On the Border (2012)

This chapter explores how certain elisions occurred in the experimental biographical film which aimed precisely to highlight the processes of projection with which representing one’s own family – and especially one’s own mother – must inevitably be imbued. It focuses on Marianne Hirsch’s analysis of feminist authors’ difficulties in representing mother as a subject rather than an object, not least because of their own struggles for control over their own lives, bodies and ‘plots’. In both Un’Ora Sola Ti Vorrei and Histoire d’un secret, film-maker daughters investigate lives of their respective mothers, who both died young, Marazzi’s from suicide following mental illness and Otero’s from complications after a self-induced abortion. The chapter argues the original statement that accompanied the film that the multi-vocal narration is intended to suggest aspects of projection and encryption – that is, blurring of boundaries between the lives of mother, grandmother and daughter and the nostalgic desire for reunion and recognition of each by the other.