Between Trieste and Silence – Giampaolo Penca

Giampaolo Penco on His Work in Film and Television
I was born in Trieste, right on the border. I only speak Italian. I started working in Trieste but soon left. I studied at the University of Trieste and then deepened my film knowledge in Paris, France at the Varan Association, which focuses on documentary filmmaking. After that, I returned to Italy and worked in Milan for a few years while also working for RAI. At one point, some acquaintances suggested that I join Videoest, a company that emerged from TV Koper, part of Alpe Adria, which had been closed due to financial issues. During this time, I had the desire to return to Trieste, so I joined this new entity. This happened in 1990, and I stayed there. I continued working for national networks, and despite speaking poor English, I also worked for foreign television channels—Norwegian, Austrian, and Swiss. Perhaps the amusing fact is that I worked a lot for Slovenian television. I made a telenovela in Slovenian, even though I don’t know a word of the language. Since I live on the border, I can understand from facial expressions roughly what someone is trying to say. I don’t know the language, but I believe I understand people from an anthropological perspective.

Between Trieste and Silence
This is a story with dramatic nuances. None of my four grandparents spoke Italian. Perhaps they understood a little, they knew the dialects, but they all attended schools that were not Italian. One of my grandmothers went to a Slovenian school. Her surname was Kregar. She married Penko – without the "c" – who was educated in Hungarian schools. Another grandmother was from Istria and studied in Croatian schools. No one knows where my other grandfather came from, nor whether he was even educated. He spoke Croatian. For a while, we even assumed he was from Russia, but we never found proof of that.

Wars caused a lot of confusion and severed many ties. The most heartbreaking story is that of my paternal grandmother, whose surname was Kregar. They came to Rijeka from Ilirska Bistrica, and before that, she attended school in Ljubljana. After her parents died, there were three sisters left. The oldest one fell in love with an Italian policeman just before World War I. My great-grandfather, a committed Slovenian nationalist, tried to prevent the marriage. But the daughter, determined by nature, left—without money, with just a ship ticket—from Rijeka to Cleveland. There, she severed all ties with her father. Paradoxically, although she left because he didn’t allow her to marry an Italian, she married a Slovenian, also an immigrant, in the USA.

My grandmother, the youngest of the sisters, also cut ties with her father. After a family tragedy—the suicide of her father due to alcoholism—she completely distanced herself from the Slovenian language. She never spoke Slovenian with her son, my father. Nor with me. My father understood some Croatian, as Croatian was spoken in Rijeka, but not Slovenian. The third sister stayed in Yugoslavia and married a partisan hero. My grandmother learned Italian only in fascist schools, along with her son. With my grandfather, who had learned German and some Croatian in Hungarian schools, they spoke German at home. Later, they switched to an Italian dialect. But when my grandmother fell ill—Alzheimer’s—she forgot Italian. She only spoke Slovenian. With us. In a language she had once so stubbornly rejected.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Tsex92Ojlgs?si=-lgLfXgn1f8PU9ob" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>On my mother's side, the story of national identity was also complicated. Two sisters, two brothers—a peasant family from the outskirts of Rijeka, with Istrian roots. They had land and animals. They agreed that one of the brothers would stay in Yugoslavia and take over the family property. My mother followed my father to Trieste, and the other brother went to Genoa. Exiles. The family still had property in Yugoslavia for a long time, but to this day, we have seen nothing from it.

Talking about this isn’t easy. Anyone who knows psychoanalysis knows: a therapist can’t analyze their own family members. Not their wife, not their son, not their relatives. Many directors tell stories about their families—but this is risky. It quickly becomes idealized. You need to find actors who embody the characters. Intimacy is like a mountain. I don’t have problems exposing myself when I talk about myself. But family? That’s different. I also write; I’ve always kept diaries. My mother did too. Once, I wanted to compare our records—especially the ones about the days we spent together. But I quickly realized how difficult this was for me. I discovered that I have a completely different relationship with my mother than I thought.