Anthony LaPaglia explores Calabrian roots in ABC documentary The Black Hand, about early Italian migration and the mafia
When actor Anthony LaPaglia was approached to be the face of upcoming ABC documentary series The Black Hand — investigating the little-known reach of Italian mafia into Far North Queensland cane fields in the 1920s and '30s — he had more than just a professional interest. It also resonated on a personal level.
The three-part series explores the struggle of early Italian migrants and the question of what migrants bring from the 'old country', and what they leave behind. The program documents the Black Hand's decade of extortion, arson, kidnapping and murder and links to the underworld in Calabria in southern Italy.
The migrant odyssey is a story LaPaglia can relate to. His father, Eddy, was among the post-war wave of Italians to move to Australia in the 1950s.
Eddy LaPaglia also came from Calabria, where the leader of the Black Hand, Vincenzo D'Agostino, grew up and where the mafia has cast a long shadow and still sparks fear today.
"If your father was still alive, how do you think he would have reacted when you told him you're making a documentary about the mafia?" I asked LaPaglia.
"I think he would have had a stock answer, which is 'it's not true, it's all bullshit', and then he'd kind of let me know through a smile that some of it is true. But it was never spoken about," he says.
Read the full story here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/backsto...-hand-mafia-calabria-north-qld/102510246
