Professor Della Ratta’s GEN_ Premieres at Sundance Film Festival
The latest project by Communications and Media Studies Professor Donatella Della Ratta, the movie GEN_, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 30th. Co-authored with director Gianluca Matarrese, the documentary stems from Della Ratta’s research on hormonal treatments at a public hospital in Milan.
GEN_ will be the only Italian movie running in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance.
Behind the Scenes
The idea for the film first came to Professor Della Ratta in May 2023, when she was conducting ethnographic research in Milan’s public hospital, Niguarda with the goal of understanding how the hormone industry and the politics behind it work. “I was studying the ways in which hormones change people’s bodies,” explained Della Ratta, “the ways in which they can make something you wish for happen in your life, such as becoming a parent or changing your gender.”
Della Ratta followed Dr. Maurizio Bini, who oversees hormonal treatments at Niguarda, such as gender reassignment therapy, In Vitro Fertilization, and menopause therapy. Professor Della Ratta began reworking her research into a film and brought in director Gianluca Matarrese and editor Giorgia Villa. The production consisted of Professor Della Ratta and Matarrese filming in the hospital with no additional crew. This allowed them to build a relationship with the patients, who began trusting them.
“What impressed me the most was everybody’s willingness to be filmed, especially very young people,” said Della Ratta. “They were keen on sharing their stories.” A great help came from Dr. Bini and his team: “He understood the importance of visual representation.”
Creativity in Research
Professor Della Ratta’s research will be published in book form following the film release. It will focus on the market of hormonal treatments worldwide, which she refers to as “hormonal capitalism.”
The research was conducted also thanks to John Cabot University’s financial support. It is Professor Della Ratta’s intention to make her students understand that it is not necessary to have a big starting budget: “It should not be an obstacle to your creativity.” In light of the film’s success, Professor Della Ratta wants to underline that academic research is not simply an end to itself but can be developed into a creative project. As she said, “You can make something out of research.”
Donatella Della Ratta has a background in Media Studies with a specialization in Arabic-speaking media. From 2007 until 2011 she lived in Damascus and carried out an extensive media ethnography of Syrian TV series which became the topic of her Ph.D. research, obtained from the University of Copenhagen in 2013. She is a former Post-Doctoral Fellow at University of Copenhagen and at the Annenberg School for Communication, Pennsylvania University and an Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
