Shooting the Mafia

"The first woman (news) photographer in Italy," says Letizia Battaglia of herself.

If Letizia is not that, she is the most daring and outspoken of the bunch. If like me you have some Sicilian DNA in your makeup, you'll want to see this intrepid photographer in Shooting the Mafia begin her career with Wegee-like street photographs and then slip into depicting the Sicilian curse of the Mafia, whose bloody business makes The Irishman look like a school picnic.

Documentarian Kim Longinotto has a similar gift capturing the aging red-headed Battaglia as she reminisces about the Cosa Nostra's corrosive effect on Sicily. In addition, she shows her challenges making their images of brutality meaningful, as well as her many love affairs, some of whom appear in the doc.

In all it's a full look at the robust and dangerous life of Sicily seen through a Pentax and video cameras. The images that don't work as effectively are the large crowd scenes of demonstrators protesting the Mafia. Sometimes, there are images even closer up that don't quite fit the narrative. A shot of Mount Vesuvius erupting goes too far the other way, figuratively speaking.

No moment in this doc is dull; images are powerful. The film at times cross edits shots of Battaglia as a lovely, animated young woman who tells us of her burden being a young mother not allowed to break through education to a more expansive life.

This engrossing doc is pervaded by the undaunted spirit of Battaglia. She is a modern feminist heroine, a companion to the current Little Women. She fearlessly looks in the Mafia's face and photographs it for the world to see the evil that has been in Sicily for centuries. Come to think of it, Shooting the Mafia is also an illustrative companion to the current Irishman and the legendary Godfather.

Also read Theresa Maggio's The Stone Boudoir: Travels Through the Hidden Villages of Italy for a benign view of this beautiful country sans gangsters.

Even for old jaded me, further insights abound, such as my realization that respect is a building block of the Sicilian character. Young men are shown acting out becoming part of the mob, looking to become someone who is admired as he strolls the streets. For me, I now know why I demand a swift return to my emails: respect!

"Photographing trauma is embarrassing." Battaglia

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.

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.

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.

The use of old movie clips felt heavily contrived and only worked 20% of the time. While I know Letizia had hard, unfortunate relationships with men and has a strong feminist side to her Kim's overt attempt to bring that side of Letizia to the fore also felt forced and takes away from the subject at hand - her photography and the power her images had and still have towards raising awareness and motivating societal change. I wish the film was helmed by someone else more capable of telling this important story.