ZaLab presents:
White Boss Black Boss (doc, 6’, Italy, 2012)
by Rossella Anitori and Antonio Laforgia,
Photography: Rossella Anitori, Antonio Laforgia, Raffaele Petralla
Editing: Rossella Anitori, Antonio Laforgia, Chiara Russo

They get up when it’s still dark and crammed in vans they follow a labyrinth of dirt tracks to the fields where they work head down for more than ten hours. They are the farm labourers of the great plain of Italian tomatoes. Thousands of African migrants condemned by the lack of other options to supply the great tank of off the books jobs supporting food farming industry profits. They know nothing about wage packets, contracts, or rights. They are recruted by a fellow countryman, the “blackboss” (“caponero”), behind whom the “whiteboss” (“capobianco”) hides. Two sides of the same coin, pertaining to a system recognized in 2011 as a crime, but still holding as general rule in Italian countrysides.

White Boss Black Boss is the second release of “ZaBits”, a series of short documentaries produced by ZaLab with the support ofOpen Society Foundations on the serious democratic emergency in Italy today. The main aim of the ZaBits is to “wedge themselves” in the folds of reality and narrate the several violations of fundamental rights across the country, collecting live testimonies from those who personally suffer from the situation, out of any preconceptions or journalistic simplification. ZaBits are conceived for web distribution within the context of public awareness and advocacy campaigns.