ABSTRACT
The daughter of an African American mother and an Italian American father, Ragusa is a filmmaker whose work centers around a relentless questioning of the boundaries—of gender, race, and class—that have informed her life and the lives of her families and communities. The video, aptly titled Passing, represents a crucial moment in Ragusa's investigation of racial/ethnic identity. While Ragusa's voice is never heard—and her face is never seen—in the video, she is clearly the one who through her questions or requests prompts the grandmother's recollection. History, geography, and folklore—the geographical proximity of Sicily to Africa, the Carthaginian presence in the eighth century B.C., the Arab rule in the ninth century A.D., the geographical layout of the boot "kicking" Sicily, but especially the position of colonial subject that Sicily has held at various times—have all contributed to the creation of an ambiguous cultural and racial perception and self-perception.
