Creative Nostalgia for an Imagined Better Future: Il treno del Sud by the Migrant Filmmaker Alvaro Bizzarri

Abstract

This chapter will illustrate the idea of nostalgia in II treno del Sud, which was the first film by Alvaro Bizzarri, a migrant filmmaker who arrived in Switzerland in the late 1950s to serve as an apprentice blacksmith and became a typical and essential figure in Swiss film history (Buache, 1978; Schaub, 1985; Schlappner and Schaub, 1987; Dell’Ambrogio, 2004; Dumont and Tortajada, 2007; La Barba and Mayenfisch, 2009). As part of a larger research project in progress about cinema and Italian migration to Switzerland, this paper tries to sketch a hypothesis about the concept of migrant nostalgia, which stems from a cultural crisis of the present caused by ambivalence and conflict between different values, spaces, times and relationships. It enacts memories of the past and the imagining of a better future. Migrant nostalgia concerns persons, groups and nations, and migrants and non-migrants of a country of origin and a host country. In the late 1960s, Switzerland had a massive presence of foreign labour, the majority of whom were Italian. The consequences of Switzerland’s economic policies were quick to affect the socio-cultural dimensions of the nation. The old fears of Überfremdung (infiltration), as well as the ‘spiritual defence’ of the nation, reappeared. After the birth of an anti-Italian political party in the early 1960s, the xenophobic movement gave rise to several anti-foreigner initiatives throughout the 1970s.