cinema impero

My approach stems from an interest in the moving image as a critical device, capable not only of representing reality but of constructing and distorting it. My research has always existed in a hybrid space between performance, cinema, visual arts, participatory practices, and emerging languages. In Cinema Impero, historical archival material from the Istituto Luce dialogues with private material from my first trip to Eritrea in 2016, and with the intervention of Artificial Intelligence: a field of inquiry into the ways images generate meaning and nonsense, and the responsibilities involved in their construction and dissemination. What I aim to highlight is that, between propaganda and algorithms, there is a certain continuity: the control practices of dictatorial regimes echo in the training processes of artificial intelligences, where language is educated, selected, corrected/corrupted, and directed.
The project is traversed by a deeply personal dimension: the historical, political, and emotional bond between Eritrea, my country of origin, and Italy, my adoptive country.
This relationship, marked by colonial history, manifests as a layered, at times repressed presence, which continues to act in the present. The architecture of Cinema Impero in Asmara, built in 1937 during the Italian occupation, thus becomes not only a symbolic reference but a point where private memory and collective history intertwine.
In this sense, the research also constitutes an attempt to navigate and rework this heritage, putting belonging, distance, and identity into tension.
The theme of the ghost emerges in this project: the specter of the colonial and fascist past that continues to inhabit the images, but also an unstable, almost hallucinatory presence generated by Artificial Intelligence. The ghost thus becomes a permeable figure, between personal memory, historical trace, and artificial construction.
The questions guiding the project are, on one hand: who produces the images and with what intentions? What power mechanisms lie behind the construction of narratives?
On the other hand: what does framing mean? What is included and what is excluded from the visual field? Which stories remain off-screen, and which are made visible?
Within this system of inquiries, between the visible and the invisible, emerges the theme of temporality as an experience of traveling through an altered space-time.
Cinema Impero constructs a dimension in which past and present, Eritrea and Italy, coexist, overlap, and contaminate each other, generating a discontinuous and layered perception of time. The viewer is invited to traverse this unstable landscape, where images act as thresholds and stories as trajectories.
The choice to work with a dual voice – that of a remote artificial intelligence, and that of an emotional intelligence, mine, present – responds to the desire to place two modes of interpreting reality in tension: one warm and affective, the other more detached and synthetic. Likewise, the construction of a “black box” – pertaining to cinematic, theatrical, and algorithmic language – is translated into an experience designed for one viewer at a time., aims to create a space of proximity and listening, where the spectator is not passive but called to take a position alongside me, both of us facing a story that belongs to us.
Cinema Impero does not offer definitive answers, but builds a repository, a multimedia device that invites critical questioning of images, their ghosts, and our ways of inhabiting them, guided by an intimate experience.

The text by Gianmarco Mancosu, Vedere L’Impero – L’Istituto Luce e il Colonialismo Fascista, has been a major source of inspiration.

Muna Mussie

“I am Muna Mussie, an artist of Eritrean origin, based in Bologna, where my journey in theatre and performance began. Between 1998 and 2001, I trained with Teatrino Clandestino, and in 2002 I attended the European Advanced Training Course for Actors led by Cesare Ronconi, an experience that marked the beginning of a long collaboration with Teatro Valdoca, which continued until 2012. In the early 2000s, I co-founded the research collective Open, an important space for experimentation.
Over time, I have developed a practice that moves between performing and visual arts. My works include Madrepatria, Monkey See, Monkey Do, Milite Ignoto, and Punteggiatura, as well as more recent projects such as Oblio, Curva Cieca, Bologna St. 173, and Cinema Impero. My work often stems from an investigation into individual and collective memory, and embroidery has become part of my practice as a shared and participatory gesture.
I have presented my work in a variety of contexts, including festivals, museums, and independent spaces in Italy and abroad. Some of my projects are included in public collections, such as MAMbo in Bologna. My artistic collaborations include Flavio Favelli, Massimo Carozzi, Invernomuto, Brett Bailey, Mette Edvardesen, Sara Manente, and Gianluca Mattei.
What continues to guide my practice is research: experimentation across media and the desire to give form to the tension that emerges between different expressive poles.”
Muna Mussie

Cinema Impero is the winning project of the first edition of blOOm, a one-on-one
creation network, promoted and conceived by: Fondazione Armunia, Primavera dei
Teatri, Santarcangelo Festival, Sardegna Teatro, and Triennale Milano Teatro.
Written and directed by: Muna Mussie
In collaboration with:
Video editing: Luca Mattei
Africanist ant(i)hropologist: Simao Amista
Contemporary art curator: Martina Angelotti
Musician: Matteo Nobile
Sound designer: SimonLuca Laitempergher
Translator: Susan Zuckerman
Project supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs within the framework of LANDING With the support of: Passage Festival, IIC Strasbourg, and the Export Department of ATER Fondazione Co-production: Museo delle Civiltà, Rome
Cinema Imepro is presented in the framework of the network R.O.M (Residencies On the Move) at la Balsamine (Belgium) at the invitation of Santarcangelo Festival (Italy) proposing venue, in partnership with , le joli collectif – Théâtre l’Aire Libre (France), Reykjavik Dance Festival (Iceland) and Théâtre Prospero (Canada).
The network R.O.M is supported by the European Union in the framework of the program Creative Europe and by Conseil des arts de Montréal.