RESEARCH
Red Wind (Jodhpur, India, 2018)
A commitment to social justice, equity, and the visibility of minority groups underpins my research. Through exhibiting my films and photographic work internationally, collaborating with community groups, and developing links with global organisations and charities, my work is concerned with making a significant social impact.
My academic research focuses on the cinematic representation of the migrant journey. Most recently, I directed 1001 Days (2024/2025), a documentary made in collaboration with an Afghan refugee and journalist. Employing mobile phone footage, social media filters, and reconstruction, the film offers a dialogic account of displacement and digital self-representation.
In 2023, I published Migranti alla regia / Migrant Filmmakers, part of the Rapporto Immigrazione (Caritas and Migrantes), examining the emergence of migrant filmmaking in contemporary Italian cinema. The piece considers how migrant filmmakers in Italy are reshaping national narratives through self-representation, challenging reductive and stereotypical portrayals of migration. Drawing on recent examples, I reflect on the tensions between women's self-representation and existing narratives, and the ways in which film becomes a space for reclaiming narrative agency within a complex sociopolitical landscape.
In 2022, my article Vesna va veloce: resistenza attraverso realtà e fantasia / Vesna goes fast: resistance through reality and fantasy examined the interplay of resistance and fantasy in cinematic portrayals of Eastern European migrant women. The role of imagination is also present in my monograph The Dialogical Gaze: The Migratory Journey to Italy in Contemporary Italian and Romanian Cinema (2021). The study identifies a distinct cinematic paradigm for representing transnational displacement and resettlement. The book includes interviews with contemporary Italian and Romanian filmmakers, archival research at the Romanian National Film Archive, and close film analyses.
Traveling to Norther Thailand, I directed Karen, an ethnographic, poetic documentary centred on the daily lives of Karen women living in the jungle, along the borders with Laos and Myanmar. Karen reflects my ongoing engagement with the representation of indigenous ethinic minorities and echoes my earlier work The Last Warriors (2016), which similarly explored indigenous identities in China.
In 2019, I published Io Rom romantica: The Discovery of the True Self in Laura Halilovic’s Accented Cinema. The paper examines the modes of self-representation employed by Romani filmmaker Laura Halilovic in her film Io Rom romantica / Me Romantic Romani (2014) a comedy about an emerging Romani filmmaker searching for her true identity while navigating systemic marginalisation and cultural stereotyping.
My previous research includes the Journey Through Imagination: Francesca (2018) an analysis of Romanian New Wave cinema that explored imagination as a critical mode through which migratory experience and cultural belonging are negotiated. Across these texts, I have investigated how cinema reframes dominant narratives around migration and identity in contemporary European cinema.
My practice-as-research has also been engaged with social identities at the margin and minority communities.
My photographic work shot in India has received international recognition, including the ‘Urban Award’ at the Still Awards (Ireland, 2020) and ‘Best International Documentary Photograph’ at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival (2019). My photograph Red Wind (2018), portraying a mother carrying her sleeping child through the backstreets of Jodhpur, forms part of Boundaries: A Stranger’s Journey across Nepal and India, a transnational documentary project examining the notion of borders through the intimate encounter between local inhabitants and the travelling filmmaker.
In 2023, I published a body of photographic work representing migration to Italy, featured in Migranti alla regia / Migrant Filmmakers, part of the XXXII Caritas and Migrantes Migration Report (Rapporto Immigrazione 2023).
This work builds on earlier research presented in my book The Dialogical Gaze: The Migratory Journey to Italy in Contemporary Italian and Romanian Cinema. The book launch was held in November 2021 at the Milan Culture Hall (Salone della Cultura), under the patronage of the General Consulate of Romania in Milan, the Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice, and the Italian–Romanian Cultural Horizons Association (Orizonturi Culturale Italo-Romane).
The emphasis on dialogism has been a recurring framework in my projects. This method is evident in Romanians of New York (United States, 2017), a documentary film sponsored by the Santander Travel Prize (University of Oxford) and Middlesex University.
In 2016, I directed The Last Warriors (China, 2016), a multidisciplinary film project examining the gendering of Miao warrior culture throughout the circle of life. The project was jointly funded by Beijing Normal University and the Academy for the International Communication of Chinese Culture, in collaboration with Oxford Prospects Programmes.
In 2014, I founded and curated the Pembroke Film Masterclass Series at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. Sponsored by Pembroke College’s Annual Fund and Dean of Graduates Fund, the series featured guest speakers including Amanda Nevill (Chief Executive, British Film Institute) and legendary documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield. The series marked a significant initiative for Pembroke College, positioning the college as an active site for dialogue between creative practice and film scholarship.
As a result of the Pembroke Film Masterclass Series, I was featured in the Pembroke College Oxford 400 Characters digital gallery, which celebrates individuals who have contributed to the college community and wider world, during Pembroke’s first four centuries at the University of Oxford.
My academic research focuses on the cinematic representation of the migrant journey. Most recently, I directed 1001 Days (2024/2025), a documentary made in collaboration with an Afghan refugee and journalist. Employing mobile phone footage, social media filters, and reconstruction, the film offers a dialogic account of displacement and digital self-representation.
In 2023, I published Migranti alla regia / Migrant Filmmakers, part of the Rapporto Immigrazione (Caritas and Migrantes), examining the emergence of migrant filmmaking in contemporary Italian cinema. The piece considers how migrant filmmakers in Italy are reshaping national narratives through self-representation, challenging reductive and stereotypical portrayals of migration. Drawing on recent examples, I reflect on the tensions between women's self-representation and existing narratives, and the ways in which film becomes a space for reclaiming narrative agency within a complex sociopolitical landscape.
In 2022, my article Vesna va veloce: resistenza attraverso realtà e fantasia / Vesna goes fast: resistance through reality and fantasy examined the interplay of resistance and fantasy in cinematic portrayals of Eastern European migrant women. The role of imagination is also present in my monograph The Dialogical Gaze: The Migratory Journey to Italy in Contemporary Italian and Romanian Cinema (2021). The study identifies a distinct cinematic paradigm for representing transnational displacement and resettlement. The book includes interviews with contemporary Italian and Romanian filmmakers, archival research at the Romanian National Film Archive, and close film analyses.
Traveling to Norther Thailand, I directed Karen, an ethnographic, poetic documentary centred on the daily lives of Karen women living in the jungle, along the borders with Laos and Myanmar. Karen reflects my ongoing engagement with the representation of indigenous ethinic minorities and echoes my earlier work The Last Warriors (2016), which similarly explored indigenous identities in China.
In 2019, I published Io Rom romantica: The Discovery of the True Self in Laura Halilovic’s Accented Cinema. The paper examines the modes of self-representation employed by Romani filmmaker Laura Halilovic in her film Io Rom romantica / Me Romantic Romani (2014) a comedy about an emerging Romani filmmaker searching for her true identity while navigating systemic marginalisation and cultural stereotyping.
My previous research includes the Journey Through Imagination: Francesca (2018) an analysis of Romanian New Wave cinema that explored imagination as a critical mode through which migratory experience and cultural belonging are negotiated. Across these texts, I have investigated how cinema reframes dominant narratives around migration and identity in contemporary European cinema.
My practice-as-research has also been engaged with social identities at the margin and minority communities.
My photographic work shot in India has received international recognition, including the ‘Urban Award’ at the Still Awards (Ireland, 2020) and ‘Best International Documentary Photograph’ at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival (2019). My photograph Red Wind (2018), portraying a mother carrying her sleeping child through the backstreets of Jodhpur, forms part of Boundaries: A Stranger’s Journey across Nepal and India, a transnational documentary project examining the notion of borders through the intimate encounter between local inhabitants and the travelling filmmaker.
In 2023, I published a body of photographic work representing migration to Italy, featured in Migranti alla regia / Migrant Filmmakers, part of the XXXII Caritas and Migrantes Migration Report (Rapporto Immigrazione 2023).
This work builds on earlier research presented in my book The Dialogical Gaze: The Migratory Journey to Italy in Contemporary Italian and Romanian Cinema. The book launch was held in November 2021 at the Milan Culture Hall (Salone della Cultura), under the patronage of the General Consulate of Romania in Milan, the Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice, and the Italian–Romanian Cultural Horizons Association (Orizonturi Culturale Italo-Romane).
The emphasis on dialogism has been a recurring framework in my projects. This method is evident in Romanians of New York (United States, 2017), a documentary film sponsored by the Santander Travel Prize (University of Oxford) and Middlesex University.
In 2016, I directed The Last Warriors (China, 2016), a multidisciplinary film project examining the gendering of Miao warrior culture throughout the circle of life. The project was jointly funded by Beijing Normal University and the Academy for the International Communication of Chinese Culture, in collaboration with Oxford Prospects Programmes.
In 2014, I founded and curated the Pembroke Film Masterclass Series at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. Sponsored by Pembroke College’s Annual Fund and Dean of Graduates Fund, the series featured guest speakers including Amanda Nevill (Chief Executive, British Film Institute) and legendary documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield. The series marked a significant initiative for Pembroke College, positioning the college as an active site for dialogue between creative practice and film scholarship.
As a result of the Pembroke Film Masterclass Series, I was featured in the Pembroke College Oxford 400 Characters digital gallery, which celebrates individuals who have contributed to the college community and wider world, during Pembroke’s first four centuries at the University of Oxford.
The Dialogical Gaze
"The dialogical gaze, refers to the cinematic juxtaposition of diverse cultural identities revealing similarities and differences between cinemas of migration. Its ethical application offers opportunities for reflection on cinema of migration, placing the drama of migrants at the center of the discourse" (Ippolito, 2019).
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Synopsis
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Sinossi (Italian)
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Over the past twenty years, Italian cinema of migration and Romanian Noul Val have emerged as vital components of European cinematic identity, portraying stories of diasporic migration. This book identifies a cinematic paradigm employed by filmmakers from both Romania and Italy, to represent difficult transnational journeys and migratory resettlement.
The Dialogical Gaze analyses the aesthetic representation of the Romanian migrant from an ethical perspective in order to identify the dialogic confrontation between the authors and their works and to highlight the implications of migratory films as an opportunity for an interdiscursivity based on empathy. This book establishes that the proposed dialogical paradigm can act as a model to create opportunities for cultural interdiscursivity and social empathy in the wider cinema environment. The "dialogical gaze" facilitates the understanding of intercultural and intercinematic connections between directors, works and spectators in relation to the migratory journey. |
Dalla svolta del Terzo Millennio, registi italiani e romeni hanno realizzato un considerevole numero di opere cinematografiche aventi come protagonisti figure di migranti provenienti dalla Romania in cerca di un’alternativa esistenziale in Italia. Questo volume analizza la rappresentazione estetica del migrante romeno da una prospettiva etica al fine di individuare i modi del confronto dialogico tra gli autori e le loro opere ed evidenziare le implicazioni dei film migratori come opportunità di una interdiscorsività basata sull'empatia.
Questo studio propone il paradigma inedito, qui definito “sguardo dialogico”, come modello che agevola la comprensione dei contatti interculturali ed intercinematici tra registi, opere e spettatori che prendono forma intorno al tema del viaggio migratorio. L’originalità di questo studio non si riscontra solo nella proposta dello sguardo dialogico, ma nella sua applicazione etica come occasione di riflessione sul cinema di impegno che pone al centro del discorso il dramma dei migranti. |