Niside Panebianco

'genius loci as a drifter' is a transatlantic research-based project exploring the psychological, spatial, and historical consequences of mass migration between Calabria and Brazil. Rooted in personal archives — letters and photographs found in my great-grandmother’s abandoned home — the project unfolds through two interconnected films that trace different aspects of the migratory experience.

The first is a short docu-fiction (11') set in a nearly abandoned Calabrian village. Blurring fiction and documentary, it examines the psychological aftermath of those who remained — the ones who witnessed their community disappear as generations migrated abroad. Through the careful use of sound, the film invites the viewer to dwell on abandonment, absence, and the weight of memory in depopulated landscapes.

The second, a medium-length documentary (43'), shifts the focus to São Paulo, Brazil. Mainly set in a neighborhood commonly referred to as “Italian,” it interrogates the legacy of migration from the perspective of second-generation Italo-Brazilians. It explores how migrant memory reshaped identity, often at the cost of erasing or overshadowing the histories of other marginalized communities in the city. Through field research, interviews, and urban exploration, the film maps how these layered identities and colonial traces are inscribed in the city’s spatial fabric.

Both the works invite viewers to drift between personal memory and collective history, between Southern Italy and Brazil, and between spaces that bear the quiet imprint of displacement. Ultimately, my project reflects on how migration reconfigures both people and places — often in ways that are intangible, intergenerational, and unresolved.