Kif Tebbi based on Luciano Zuccoli’s novel by the same name, is set during the 1911 war between Italy and Turkey, scene of the first large scale political project of Italian colonial expansion. Camerini tells, in the context of the conflict, of the opposed love of a young notable Arab that, due to his admiration for western civilisation, is arrested and condemned by the Turks to the death penalty. He is saved by the timely intervention of the Italian troops and the previously threatened marriage can go ahead. As well as being hailed by the press of the period as “the film that marks the resurrection of Italian silent film” (“La rivista cinematografica”, February 1928), during a time when Italian cinema production experienced a downward trend, it more importantly represents the “first significant example of fascist ‘colonial’ cinema” (Paolo Cherchi Usai). As of June 1928, in fact, the press started talking about the “imminent birth of a cinema capable of supporting colonial literature” (Gian Piero Brunetta). Even though the regime limited itself to controlling the morality of the films (cinema was yet to be considered an important propaganda tool), a sizable production started presenting stories with an educational background, able to celebrate both national valour and the goodness of spirit (in other words militarism and a conciliatory attitude configured ideologically as innate virtues of the homeland), with alternating intensity of tones according to the events in progress. In this perspective Kif Tebbi can be seen as a retrospective praise for “positive Italian colonialism” in Libya, attuned to the envisaged greater Italian expansion in Africa that the regime was preparing.
Chelu Deiana