Shooting the Mafia

The title of this documentary is misleading. It is not directly about the mafia but about the biography of the photographer. It seems she has had a strange life but it is very difficult to decipher as stories from her past are suggested and not clearly put together. There is no clear milestones to help follow a clear timeline of what is happening in her life, so it ends up becoming a very confused autobiography where a hectic love life and blurry career moves are mixed incoherently to form some kind of feminist testimony told by a red hair grandma. As far as the "mafia" pictures, it seems she spent most of her life taking shots of mafia victims. Not sure this was the best way to spend 1:34min of my life.

Movie night with Iris.

Movies have typically glamourised the Mafia, but for the common people of Sicily, the Mafia has been a long-term waking nightmare. Photojournalist Letizia Battaglia started photographing Mafia crime scenes in her hometown Palermo during the 1970s.

Battaglia today is a vital and energetic woman in her early 80s with punky, pink hair. And her story, sexual awakening; dalliance with politics is just as engrossing. It perhaps isn't a coherent film. The first half a meandering journey, and the last half a more traditional, docu-telling of Mafia trials and retributions.

'Shooting the Mafia' is a documentary that tells the story of the life of a woman who is our contemporary, but whose biography is very different from that of most people around her and us. The merit of the Irish director Kim Longinotto is that she chose a non- conventional way of bring on screen an extraordinary biography. The combination of a special subject and of an exciting way to make movies makes of 'Shooting the Mafia' a captivating film, which also enters in a polemic with the way the the Sicilian Mafia is presented on the screen.It's a story we seem to know from films like 'The Godfather', but here we see it from another perspective.

Letizia Battaglia's biography covers all of Italy's modern history since the Second World War. The Sicilian teenager is raised in a strict atmosphere by a tyrant father. She accepts to get married at age 16 with the first man she was proposed to, in order to leave the house where she was secluded. Soon she gives birth and she grows up two daughters up to the age of maturity, like a typical Italian domestic woman, whom the man does not allow to learn or to practice a profession out of their home. Her re- birth of the person takes place when she is about 40 years old, but she will will take revenge on life as they say, divorcing, maintaining numerous relationships with men (many of them younger), and working as a photojournalist at a newspaper in Palermo . Here she will soon come in contact with the sordid realities of poverty and corruption, but especially with the violent society dominated by Cosa Nostra (the name of the Sicilian mob). She will photograph the murders in blood soaked pictures, become a friend of the judges who are trying to fight the phenomenon and who are murdered one after another, and she will get involved in politics when it becomes apparent that journalism activism is no longer enough. This is the biography of a special woman of great courage. The feminist message and the political criticism of violence, corruption, and especially fear are combined directly and expressively.

In order to bring the story of Battaglia's life on the screen, director Kim Longinotto has film sequences, photographs made by Battaglia throughout her work (many of them filled with violence, but of remarkable expressiveness and quality) and testimonies of her own and of those who have surrounded and accompanied her throughout her life (among which some of her former lovers, but also the current one). For the first period of her life, when she was not in front of the film or photo cameras, sequences from the films of the Neo-realistic era of post-war Italian cinema were used. The result is a documentary that is never boring, from a visual or from a message point of view. The spectators get the portrait of a strong and courageous woman who had the power to change the course of her life, to overcome the social and gender prejudices, to love and work in a profession she taught herself in which she excelled, a woman who has not remained indifferent to suffering around her, a woman who has done and continues to do all she knows and can do to correct injustice. 'Shooting the Mafia' is an interesting documentary and a remarkable cinematic portrait. It's also a condemnation of organized crime, showing its the real sordid face, very different from the glamor it gets in some of the Hollywood movies.

Think4Yourself thinks... (2 stars). It looks to me from this documentary that Letizia was just the press agent for the Mafia. Rather than expose their actions as we're told to believe, it looks like she was just giving them the publicity they wanted. Her pictures of death just advertise what happens when you cross the Family and glorify their tough-guy image. You expose corruption by showing things they don't want known like meetings with politicians, deals with businessmen, payoffs to police. I'm sure the people of Palermo and Corleone already knew of the violence of the Mafia; this is not news to them.

Italian photographer Letizia Battaglia has been documenting life in Sicily for over 40 years and Palermo in particular. The most compelling of which are her photos and footage of Mafia hits. She recounts her life and her work. Besides the shocking pictures of murder victims, there is simple life on the street. One memorable footage is a man beating on what looks to be his wife. It's another random day in the life. This documentary talks about her life and her loves. I don't think it's the most interesting other than as another small slice of life. I also don't like the use of obvious film clips. Her personal life is never going to outshine her murder photos. All the dead bodies are incredible but also mind-numbing. The gangsters are compelling. A large part is Judge Falcone. The bodyguard widow's speech is heart-breaking. All in all, the personal story can be cut back and more of the mafia should be used.