news of February
Ten years have passed since the first public release of the Lunàdigas web doc, that first space for the sharing of testimonies of childfree women which then converged in the 2016 film, “Lunàdigas, or concerning childfree women”.
Ten years of intense and continuous work have built a dense web of threads, intertwined stories, ties: a network of people who have gathered around the authors, Nicoletta Nesler and Marilisa Piga and who, with a growing commitment but also with a light-hearted spontaneity, have given rise to a Movement, which from (and with!) the voice of childfree women has spread to reach everyone.
Now Lunàdigas is committed to a new course that has already begun, built on the need to create an observatory on reproductive rights in Italy and in the world, which also includes testimonies on parenthood, on the family, on new forms of love and relationship.
A new course that we have also decided to celebrate with a new graphic design, with a completely revamped website, to which we have dedicated ourselves in recent months with handcrafted care: an even more agile, accessible, free and increasingly militant web space, which we will unveil to you very shortly. A new small revolution to strongly affirm that we are here and that we will continue our work at increasingly distant latitudes, to denounce and disrupt commonplaces, false narratives and myths about being mother, about family, and social roles divided according to gender.
An important step in this direction was taken with the opening of the international fund and with the project “ANNOTU – Sardinian language as a mother tongue”, carried out with the contribution of the Presidency of the Regional Council of Sardinia (Notice 2024).
Annòtu is the first archive of audiovisual testimonies on motherhood and fatherhood collected in the linguistic variants of Sardinia: after the first collection which took place in the first months of 2024, a second campaign to collect testimonies, in the Tabarchino and Sassarese variants, now enriches the project.
The new interviews, ten in total, are in addition to the 40 already available on the website of the project created last year as a spin-off of the Lunàdigas Live Archive.
How do you express your own experience and identity history when using your mother tongue? Annòtu (in Sardinian archive, annotation) tries to give an answer through the collection, archiving and indexing of testimonies on the themes of fatherhood, motherhood and the family.
One year after its debut, made possible thanks to the contribution of the Call for Studies and Research of the Sardinia Region, the Annòtu platform proposes the different testimonies, each in the linguistic variants of the island (Algiers-Catalan, Campidanese, Logudorese, etc.) in an increasingly accessible way: the audiovisual materials provide for the inclusion of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing, and the testimonies are transcribed, translated into Italian and English and archived.
After a first presentation in Cagliari, we will talk together about this specific project and the whole Archivio Vivo on 28 February at 3.30 p.m. in Rome (via dei Piceni 9/a): come and visit us, it will also be an opportunity to unveil live another wonderful surprise!
In the meantime, the new testimonials are already available, here they are!
Ada Ayse: ‘In Turkey, if you don’t have a child, you are pushed to the margins’
Ada Ayse talks about the condition of women who choose, as she does, not to have children in Turkey: a woman who does not have children is considered unhappy and marginalised. For society, it is as if she does not exist.
Testimony realised for the Mediterranean Women’s Archive project with the contribution of Mediterranean Women’s Fund – Fonds pour le femmes en Méditerranée.
Paz and Jenny: ‘My body, my choice’
Paz and Jenny, 32-year-old Ecuadorians transplanted to Germany, reflect on the topic of reproductive rights, which are of fundamental importance in the process of self-determination of women’s bodies: the desire for motherhood from an eco-feminist point of view necessarily takes into account the expenditure of resources involved in bringing a child into the world, thus clashing with the concept of environmental sustainability. In the course of the dialogue, Paz and Jenny discuss some of the main differences between Ecuador and Germany regarding conscious parenting.
Andrea: ‘Children? It has to be a choice that involves both of us’
Andrea reflects on the topic of children and family in Tabarchino language. Unlike his parents’ generation, having children today is not something taken for granted but the result of a choice in which various factors, not only possible social pressure, play a role. With his partner, he shares the project of enlarging the family.
Francesca: “With my girlfriend we had the desire for a child”
Francesca recounts in Tabarchino language the experience that led her and her partner to start a journey in Spain to have a child. However, family and work reasons did not allow them to fulfill their dream.
Adriana: “I dedicated my whole life to my family”
Adriana recounts her childhood and her relationship with her aunt and her loving but often absent mother in the Tabarchino language. Unlike her, Adriana stopped working early, preferring to devote her whole life to her family and children.
Marina V: ‘I did not have a second child but…’
Marina recounts her life as the mother of a daughter and grandmother of three grandchildren in Tabarchino language. Although she did not have a second child, Marina has always supported her daughter’s sociability. Today, she enjoys the company of her grandchildren.
Carla: “I imagine myself married and with a daughter”
Ten-year-old Carla talks in Sassarese language about her ambitions for the future: to become a dancer or a doctor, get married and have a daughter.
Roberta: “There is no right time”
Roberta, mother of a little girl, recounts the difficulties she experienced in deciding to have a child: job insecurity, money, pressure from people, the need to lean on the family of origin, are factors that affect the choice to become parents.
Teresa: ‘I’m not complaining about not having children’
Teresa looks back on her working career in the municipal offices of Sassari. Although it was not a conscious choice, Teresa did not have children, just like several other members of her family. Her priority was independence. Today, Teresa looks with concern at the lack of a welfare state that places childhood at the centre of attention.
Maria Daniela: ‘I still like myself, even without children’
Maria Daniela recounts in Sassarese language the pain she shared with her sister: neither of them could have children. Today she has processed her pain and feels grateful for the loving people around her.
Fabio: ‘Once a father, always a father’
Intro: Fabio recounts his experience in Sassarese language: he is the father of four children, the result of a choice of love, which, however, does not take away the hardships and difficulties. In the last part of his testimony, Fabio explains the expression ‘coffee mum’ used in Sassarese to indicate bad mothers.
