Intervista a Mark Pedri

Mark, together with your wife and colleague Carrie McCarthy, you made the documentary Dear Sirs: A Personal Journey Through World War II 75 Years Later. It recounts the WWII’s story of your grandfather Silvio Pedri. Could you please tell us what the documentary recounts?

The documentary is an effort to recover and tell the story of my grandfather, Silvio Pedri, who was an Italian American Prisoner of War (POW) in WWII. The film follows my journey assembling the pieces that Silvio left behind in an archive in his office containing documents, letters, and photos that detailed his experience between 1942 and 1945, in addition to his parents’ immigration from Val Di Non in Northern Italy. He was captured during the Battle of Metz in November of 1944 and he spent the remainder of the war in Europe being marched and transported to a number of different POW camps across Germany. In order to tell this story, I retraced Silvio’s route across France and Germany by bicycle with my wife who is the producer of the film. The documentary depicts a detailed account of Silvio’s journey, from basic training in the U.S. Army through liberation, while contemplating the impacts of war and tying the past to the present.

Could you talk about why did you decide to recount Silvio’s story in a full documentary?

Silvio was the center of our family in Rock Springs, Wyoming. We met at his house for every holiday and he was also the central figure in our family business. Even though so many members of his family, including myself, spent so much time with him, none of us knew about any of the details of his experience as a POW in WWII. He never shared anything about this part of his life. When I found the documents after his death, it was the first glimpse into the most mysterious part of the person I thought I knew the best. There were two reasons for making the documentary: I wanted to know the version of Silvio that he never revealed, and I wanted to preserve the archive that detailed his experience. From a personal perspective, I wanted to connect with my grandfather. From a professional perspective, I wanted to contribute to the historical record of Italian American Prisoners of War.

You decided to undertake a winter trip across Germany to touch and document all locations in which Silvio had been imprisoned. Could you describe this experience?

It is possible to create a connection to someone by going to the places that they went with the intentions of studying and learning their story. This experience for me was life changing. To be able to connect with someone in a place 75 years after they were there was eye-opening because it proved that these stories and relationships can be revived and told anew even after the person who experienced it is gone. By going to Germany during the same time of year that Silvio was there, and traveling slowly by bike allowed me to document the places in a way that wouldn’t have been possible under other conditions. The film is about extracting the human experience from the places that Silvio passed through, so it was important to see those places in a way that brought me closer to how Silvio would have seen them. It’s important to point out that while the physical and emotional impacts of war still exist, much has changed since 1944, so I had to focus on factors that would have been similar such as weather, light, and the pace of movement.

What do you think about the Italian American experience in wartime?

The Italian American experience and WWII are inextricably linked. For many Italian Americans, their first time returning to Italy was during wartime as a soldier fighting on the opposing side of their mother country. For others, serving in the US military was a way to prove their allegiance to their new home. Because the community of Italian Americans in Rock Springs was so tight knit, everyone was directly connected to someone who served in WWII. Each one of these stories is unique but there are common themes that arise such as how little these soldiers spoke about their experience until very late in their lives, if ever. They also took their Italian heritage with them when they became soldiers. In my grandfather’s case, all but one of the soldiers in his machine-gun squad were Italian American. All of them still had family in Italy.

Silvio came from Rock Springs, Wyoming, an unusual place for Italians who had mostly concentrated on the Eastern coast. Do you think they lived a “special” or rather different life in the Midwest?

Even though Wyoming is the least populated state in the US, there is actually quite a large Italian American population in Rock Springs, Wyoming. There was a mining boom in the early 1900s, which drew a large number of immigrants from Italy, Greece, China, Croatia, Slovakia, and various other Slavic countries in Europe. As a result, it is common for people of my age to have grandparents who spoke their native language in the house and lived by the culture of their home country. In my case, this culture was Italian, which was especially present through my grandmother Rena Ruffini. Even though she was born in Rock Springs, she didn’t start learning English until she entered public school in first grade. As she learned English, she would go home after school and teach her parents. Food, family, and music were central components to my childhood, all heavily influenced by the northern Italian culture of my grandparents. All of the meals such as polenta and canederli were made in the same way that their family was taught in Italy. My grandpa made sure that at least one person in each of his kids’ family played the accordion. I was that person from our family.

From a national perspective, the stereotype of cowboys and the Wild West tends to overshadow the deep Italian history that still exists today. But if you’re from there, even today, people associate Rock Springs with Italian Americans, which is not the case for many towns in Wyoming or the Mountain West. One key difference between being Italian American in Wyoming versus New York is that you don’t realize how Italian you are until you travel to other areas that are heavily influenced by the Italian American heritage.

How was your documentary received in the United States?

We’ve held screenings in over 20 cities across the United States ranging from film festivals to cultural centers and movie theaters. An interesting conversation that comes up at the screenings is how we as a society pass on our cultural heritage and how something like a wartime experience can make it difficult for people to tell their story to the next generation, so as a result it gets lost along with the cultural context of whatever else was happening during that time. We just received an award for the Best Documentary at the GI Film Festival in San Diego, which is the largest military-themed film festival in the United States. The film has had a powerful impact in bridging the gap between veteran communities and civilians. After screenings, it’s common to meet people who have a similar story about a relative who experienced war but never talked about it, and as a result they didn’t talk about many other things relating to their upbringing and family history. We’ve had screenings and discussions of the film at many Italian American organizations including the Leonardo Society in San Francisco, and the Calandra Institute in New York. We have 20 more in-person screenings planned before we will release the film on TV in the US.

You also participated to a film festival in Milan. Could you please tell us about?

We were nominated by the Milan International Film Festival for Best Director, Best Music, Best Editing, and Best Documentary in the 2021 Festival. The awards ceremony was postponed due to Covid-19, but we look forward to coming to Milan in the future to show the film.

The U.S. Mission in Germany awarded you a fellowship to screen your documentary throughout the country. Could you recount your experience?

In April of 2022 we traveled across Germany to hold screenings of the film at the locations where Silvio was held as a Prisoner of War. The purpose of the fellowship was to promote culturally significant programming that discusses the shared history between the United States and Germany. It was a gesture to acknowledge and preserve the history of WWII, but also to have a conversation about the current relationship between the two countries within a modern context. We visited schools, museums, and memorial sites to hold screenings of the film and conversations about the impacts of war. It was very moving to watch the film with an audience in the place where my grandfather was a prisoner 77 years prior. It was inspiring to see how much the German people value the preservation of this history with the intention of educating each subsequent generation about how an oppressive regime can sweep over a nation and cause irreversible societal damage and immeasurable death and suffering. It’s important not to lose sight of these tragedies of war no matter how distant in the past they took place.

In your recent European tour, you have also been in Italy and you visited the Val di Non, in Trentino, the ancestral place of Silvio’s family. How was your experience?

Yes! It was my first time visiting the birthplace of my grandfather’s father. We still have family living in the same house and they welcomed us with open arms. The most surprising thing to me was to see how similar our families are even after being separated for nearly 100 years since my grandfather and grandmother’s families moved to the United States. I felt as at home with them as I do in Wyoming. It’s really incredible to experience this connection when you realize the origin of where so many of the traditions that you celebrated as a child came from. Going to the ancestral place of Silvio’s family reinforced how connected we still are through our shared culture.

What are your plans with Dear Sirs for the next future?

We will be attending screenings of the film in the United States from June 1 until mid-October. After that, we are hoping to put together a screening tour in Italy this fall or winter. This film has been a tool for me to connect with my grandfather and his Italian roots. My hope is that it will also be a tool for Italians to connect with Americans through a series of screenings and discussions around the topic of the Italian American experience during WWII and also two generations later.