Ruling the Colonies with sound: Documentary, technology and noise in Cronache dell’Impero

In 1937, the state-funded Istituto LUCE realized Cronache dell’Impero/Chronicles of the Empire, a short-lived series of documentaries aimed at attesting the activities the Regime was carrying out in the recently conquered East-Italian African territories. Attempting to go beyond the exoticism and clichéd representations usually employed in colonial documentaries, the series resorts to modernist strategies in order to highlight the value of the so-called civilizing mission. By tracing how these strategies were configured, this article looks specifically at the rhetorical use of sound and technology as a means for contributing to the propaganda purposes of the series, primarily the formation of a colonial consciousness. In this respect, technology and sound operate within a symbolic domain in which modernization and other colonial outcomes hinge on the allegedly transformative power of the Regime. Their visual and aural representations belong to the tradition of the political, avant-garde and documentary film practice.