Everything to Know About Ludovica Serra's Eleven Years With the Fiumicino Fishing-Boat Council
One hundred and twenty-nine meetings, two deaths, one move to Sardinia and a green plastic chair that a documentary maker still carries to the end of the table every month.
The meeting starts at 6:40, because the stove in the hall needs that long. Ludovica Serra is already there. She has been there, on and off, since 2015.
The numbers first. She has filmed 129 monthly meetings of the Fiumicino fishing-boat council, 388 hours in all. That is three hours a meeting, near enough. The first one was about berth fees. The most recent was also about berth fees.
Who has left the table. Adriana Locci, the treasurer, moved to her sister's house in Sardinia in 2020 and sends her apologies by voice message. Ludovica has filmed the phone being propped against the sugar bowl eleven times. Two skippers sold their boats and stopped coming. A third sold his boat and kept coming, which the council considers worse.
Who has died. Settimio Corvo, who mended nets and chaired the meetings without being asked, died in the winter of 2021. The next meeting opened with his gavel on the table and nobody touching it. Gelsomina Ranieri, who kept the minutes in a hand nobody else could read, died in 2024. The minutes are now typed. Ludovica has the last handwritten page in a plastic sleeve and has not said what for.
Who stopped coming. Bruno Maffeo, skipper, last seen at the March meeting in 2023. He left halfway through item six. Nobody will say why, and Ludovica has stopped asking, because she asked once and the room went very interested in its coffee.
The chair. The hall's folding chairs go back to the stacking room after every meeting. Bruno's was a green plastic one with a cracked left arm. Each month Ludovica brings it out, sets it at the end of the table and frames her shot so it stays in. No one sits in it. No one has asked her to stop. Once a visitor from the port office tried to take it for himself, and Ludovica said it was taken. He looked at the table and saw nobody and sat on the radiator.
Is there a film. Ludovica does not know yet. She says she has a first scene, a last scene and 388 hours between them. She works in a rented room in Rome with the shutters half down, and the footage runs to the afternoon light on the wall. On the second of November, when Italy goes to the cemeteries with chrysanthemums, she watches Settimio's gavel again. She does it once a year. She says it is for work.
If it is finished, Bruno gets the first copy. The council has asked how she will know when. She says the chair will tell her.
In the minutes, for eleven years, she has been recorded as the lady with the camera. Nobody has corrected it, and she has not asked.
