An earlier post spoke of the singer songwriter (and film-maker) Pietro Pietrangeli as one of the protest singers of the 1970s and certainly some of his song could be seen to have a direct link to Italy's so-called Hot Autumn (Autunno Caldo) and the wave of militant strikes in 1969. His Mio caro padrone domani ti sparo(My dear boss tomorrow I'm going to shoot you) might be seen as one of the symbolic songs of a militancy that was more radical than ever and could no longer be contained in traditionally revolutionary structures. The subject imagines different ways of physically eliminating his boss from making donkey's soap from his skin to tearing off his head and learning to play bowling with it.
Nanni Balestrini's book Vogliamo Tutto (and recently translated by Matt Holden for Telephone Publishing - later my review of the translation will appear elsewhere) was the ultimate literary work associated with this book. Yet what about popular song? How did the Hot Autumn find its way there?
Nanni Balestrini, the author of Vogliamo Tutto, the literary work which symbolised Italy's Hot Autumn of 1969 and the revolt of the 'mass worker'
One example is the song of Rino Gaetano L'operaio della Fiat «La 1100» ((The worker of the Fiat 1100) in which a white collar worker at FIAT ready to enjoy his weekend finds his machine burned by some anonymous workers:
Gaetano also sung another song related more obliquely to the emigration of southern workers north and a sense of anarchic revolt in his Agapito Malteni, il ferroviere about an engine driver who started off as an obedient Catholic but then became tempted by emigration north and revolt against his lot in the South:
Gaetano was not the only one to talk about emigration from the south to the north and the destiny of the internal immigrant to become the 'mass worker' radicalising the revolt at FIAT.
Lucio Dalla in his 1973 album Il Giorno aveva cinque teste (The Day Had Five Heads) also sang of the fate of a family of southern immigrants travelling to Turin in desperate circumstances in his song Un'auto targata TO (A car with a Turin numberplate).
Dalla's song rather than a song of revolt is a description of the conditions that led to revolt. Lucio Dalla is not thought as a committed singer but here in this album (where he began his collaboration with Bolognese poet Roberto Roversi) the social theme comes to the forefront. Dalla also sings about work-related accidents and emigration in his song L'operaio Gerolamo (The worker Gerolamo):
A few songs are included in this documentary on the Hot Autumn which gives a good overall indication of the atmosphere of the period and some of the more directly political songs of the time. In many ways the ultimate song of workers autonomy and unrestrained revolt could be seen in a famous song by Francesco Guccini La Locomotiva(The Locomotive) which recounts the story of an anarchist engine driver who commandeered an engine at the end of the 19th century and deliberately intended to crash his engine as a symbol of protest against injustice. Not influenced by the Hot Autumn the song was a symbol of its period in which
La bomba proletaria illuminava l'aria e la fiaccola dell'anarchia
(The proletarian bomb illuminates the air
and the flame of anarchy
Francesco Guccini was to write and perform the song which illuminated the revolt set off by the Hot Autumn- La Locomotiva
Of course, the political group most associated with the mass workers revolt at FIAT Potere Operaio used as their song an old Polish and then Russian revolutionary song the Varshavianka which was then transformed into Stato e Padroni as their hymn:
I am publishing this crib (not as yet a translation) of Pasolini's Ballad which was written between 1961 and 1962 as it seems an additional text in which one can observe the importance of Russia in the work of Pasolini. This ballad doesn't seem to have been commented on by Francesca Tuscano in her book on 'Russia in the poetry of Pier Paolo Pasolini' and brings forth a number of reflections. There does seem to be translation of this ballad published in a City Lights anthology of translations of poems and other pieces by Pasolini's. Nonetheless here is a quick first crib of this important Pasolini poem.
Ballad of the mother of Stalin.
"My son, I who was innocent,
Gave you a love of guilt.
From a dove was born a fox,
He who comes at night and ravages
The livestock of the poor.
In those centuries in which we’ve been servants,
Innocence render parents
More children than their children: and their masters
Love them because they are so green.
The innocence of servants is not history!
My son, I who was meek,
Gave you a love of rancour.
From the little star was born the sun
Which burns the enemy lands
Of poor labouring folk.
Meekness in us servants is fear:
We look only for the respect
Of the boss, so that the first
Christian virtue in our nature
Is to allow ourselves be offended and oppressed.
My son, I was who humble
Gave you the love of power.
From the onion was born the honey
Which tempts fledgling sons
The last born to our wretchedness.
The humility of us servants is respect
For the will of the owner:
All that which seemed extraordinary to him
To he who possesses, alone, in his breast
A naked sub proletarian’s heart.
My son, I who was honest
Gave you a love for treachery.
From the cloud was born the wind
Which- invisible - assails the forest
Bringing death and unraveling.
Honesty, for servants, is a struggle
With oneself, so as not to die on the gallows.
An award for their good conduct
Is the blessing from a corrupt hand
In the celestial haze of the thurible.
My son, I who was life alone
Gave you a love for death.
That fate from pre-history
Upturning history fulfilled
Borne from the rage of insurgent masses.
Because the raw life of us slaves
Is a force which in itself is not dominant:
Source of unpredictable destinies
You sucked in from my breast,
The milk of heroisms and assassinations.
My son, how many women in the world
Still bear sons like you,
in Asia, in Europe, in Africa, wherever there is
a land of slaves, of bandits and thieves,
that dream of some thing deep inside themselves.
Mothers in which innocence is a guilt,
Meekness rancour, power humility,
honesty treachery: and whose life gives
a thirst for death: one needs to be conscious of this,
In my previous post on social and political documentary film of the 1970s I mentioned the name of Paolo Pietrangeli who made a documentary on the Italian neo-fascist movement Bianco e Nero. Pietrangeli in fact worked with some very well-known directors such as Mauro Bolognini for the film L'Assoluto Naturale (1969), Lucchino Visconti in Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice) (1971) Federico Fellini for the film Roma (1972). Two years later he worked with Paul Morrissey in two films inspired by Andy Warhol : Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula. (This was the same year he made his documentary expose of the world of Italian neo-fascism). In 1977 he films Porci con le ali (Pigs Have Wings) entered into the Berlin Film festival but sequestered by Italian censors. And yet Pietrangeli is not mainly known for his films but certain songs of his which became symbols of the revolts and rebellions of the 1970s. Perhaps the most symbolic song was his Contessa (Countess). The song begins with the words of someone (her friend?) telling the countess of how some workers started a strike to increase their pay and were bloodily beaten by the police. He or she laments that the workers' blood has dirtied the doors and the courtyard and who knows how long it will take to clean up. At which point the song turns into a call to arms for those exploited:
Compagni, dai campi e dalle officine prendete la falce, portate il martello, scendete giù in piazza, picchiate con quello, scendete giù in piazza, affossate il sistema. Comrades from the fields and the shopfloors Take up your sickle, bring your hammers Go down to the squares, fight with them Go down to the square, bury the system.
The next lines are directed to the countess from the workers telling them that if this is the price they expect the exploited to pay then they will have no peace. If this is the price, they say, we want war and wish to see you below ground. If this is the price that we've paid then no one shall be exploited ever again. The next verse returns to the countess and her friend speaking with social disgust at the sons of workers with ideas above their station and how during the occupation (of the university?) people are practising free love. People have no morals anymore, Countess is the lament. We then hear the next rousing verse directed towards the rebels: Se il vento fischiava ora fischia più forte le idee di rivolta non sono mai morte; se c'è chi lo afferma non state a sentire, è uno che vuole soltanto tradire; se c'è chi lo afferma sputategli addosso, la bandiera rossa ha gettato in un fosso. If the wind whistled, now it whistles even stronger (a reference to a Partisans' song based on the Soviet war song Katiusha) The ideas of revolt have never died If someone tells you so, don't listen to him He wants only to betray us; If someone tells you so spit at him he has thrown the red flag in a ditch.
We return once more to the verse telling the countess that at this price they will have no peace etc. More recently Modena City Ramblers have made a new version of this symbolic song (inspired partly by music from The Pogues as well as Pietrangeli's lyrics). Pietrangeli was well-known for other songs. One is his song about the demonstration in Via Giulia in 1968. Pier Paolo Pasolini was to shock the Italian Left by stating his empathy for (what he saw as) the working class police rather than the sons of bourgeois students. Pietrangeli, however, sees this event as a simple matter of state repression against students who held their own.
Some of Pietrangeli's songs are radical (and some might say extremist) in a way that one would find it hard to imagine today. One of these (from 1969) is entitled Mio Caro Padrone Domani Ti Sparo (My Dear Boss. Tomorrow I'm Going to Shoot You) with some wonderfully (or outrageously?) grotesque lines of what he intends to do with his boss - one of them states "I'll make donkey's soap from your skin". Here's the song:
Another has Pietrangeli imagining a certain herb (la lallera) which would change street names so that Corso Umberto would turn into Karl Marx Strasse and the biggest street there was would turn into Lenin Allee.
One of the directions that a reappraisal of Pasolini can take is by recalling a film not directed by him but springing from an idea of his. The film is a documentary entitled 12 Dicembre (December 12th) which refers to the Piazza Fontana bombing in 1969 which killed seventeen and wounded over 80 people. One of those events linked to the Strategy of Tension which would be repeated throughout the 1970s and would culminate in the bombing of Bologna railway station in August 1980. The 1960s and 1970s would see a number of political and social documentaries whose significance for an understanding of Italian cinema can not be overestimated.
12 December- the documentary made by Lotta Continua inspired by an idea from Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The idea of a 'militant cinema' which this example represented can be traced back at least to an experiment in 1962 by Paolo and Carlo Gobetti with their idea of following with their camera the strikes at the Turin Lancia factory in their film Scioperi a Torino (Strikes in Turin). The text was by the celebrated poet Franco Fortini who had written a text to an earlier documentary (1961) on fascism All'armi siam fascisti (To arms, we're fascists) - a film which was subject to ferocious censorship unveiling as it did the collaboration between the Catholic Church with the fascist authorities.
The last sixties would see a return to the 'workers question' with films inspired by the resurgence of worker militancy in the Hot Autumn of 1969. One name associated with these documentaries is Ugo Gregoretti (associated with the name of Pier Paolo Pasolini due to the collective film Ro.Go.Pa.G. - made by Rossellini, Godard, Pasolini and Gregoretti). Gregoretti made two documentaries on the 'worker question'. A 1969 film entitled Apollon: Una Fabbrica Occupata (Apollon: An Occupied Factory)
and another film made one year later entitled Contratto (The Contract).
Other big names in Italian cinema were associated with 'militant cinema'. Bernardo and Giuseppe Bertolucci were part of a group of filmmakers to make the film I poveri muoiono prima (The Poor Die First) in 1971- a film inquest which was partly shot in the district in Rome where Pasolini's Accattone was located.
Italian militant cinema would rarely break out from its own borders but on occasions it did so. A joint Italian-Palestinian film Tall al Za'tar would be made in 1977 between film-makers Mustafa Abu Ali, Pino Adriano and Jean Chamoun with an attempt to recount the massacre in a Palestinian refugee camp in north-east Beirut.
Other subjects covered by this militant cinema included student struggles (and there were indeed a number of student films made by a group of film-makers at Rome's La Sapienza). Sometimes the student films would include a Godardian search for a new cinematic language. Alessandra Bocchetti's Della Conoscenza (On Knowledge) is an example of this:
Finally the subject of fascism and anti-fascism was another central theme in the 1970s and there are few more interesting examples than Paolo Pietrangeli's documentary excursion in to the world of Italian neo-fascism Bianco e Nero (Black and White, 1974):
Here are some images of Pier Paolo Pasolini's funeral as well as Alberto Moravia's speech at the funeral.
Alberto Moravia begins talking about those who killed Pasolini saying that did not know who Pasolini was. He then goes on to explain what Italy lost with Pasolini's atrocious death. First Italy had lost a person who was deeply kind, good and peaceful, a man who had the best and purest of emotions- someone who hated violence. It would be difficult that someone with the qualities of Pasolini would return to earth very soon. For Moravia, Italy had lost someone who was different (il diverso) and yet someone who was also similar to others (un simile): a precious element for any society. In what sense, Moravia asks, was Pasolini different?. His difference consisted in his courage (Pasolini was much more courageous than many others because of his insistence in speaking the truth).We have lost a witness, Moravia adds. Pasolini's difference also consisted in his attempt to provoke active and beneficial effects in Italy's inert and passive society. His beneficial provocations were different from normal provocations in his absolute lack of calculation and caution. He was different in his completely disinterested nature.
Yet also Italians had lost someone who was like them (reflected them) in that he came from Italian culture and could be compared with the best writers and best directors. Pasolini was a precious element for any society and any society would be happy to have Pasolini as one of them. Italy, Moravia states, has lost a poet (and real poets are rare in any society). Only three or four poets are born every century and for Moravia Pasolini was one of these three or four. When this century ends, Moravia states, Pasolini will be one of the very few who still count. A poet should be sacred and we have lost this extraordinary poet. Pasolini created something unique in Italy: a civic poetry of the Left and so doing managed something that no-one had succeeded in doing before him.
It was very interesting for me to observe how a Russian audience watching a foreign film (in this case an Italian film by Silvia Giralucci entitled Sfiorando il Muro) reacted to this film. Since I have been at two distinct showings of the film,I think that it is right to point out that the reception of the film was very different at the two showings. The film was first shown at a small festival of Italian cinema (devoted to Italian films shown at the Venice Film Festival) at the Khudozhestvenniy cinema near the Arbat in Moscow. Here the director was present and the question and answer session generated a very lively discussion. This first showing took place last March. Almost a year later Moscow's Museum of Cinema decided to represent this film at the offices of Memorial. This showing led to a very passionate discussion. In many ways the Russian audience highlighted and were curious about certain scenes whose meaning to an Italian might seem obvious. It was also a film that showed how connected Italian events in the 1970s were to events in Russian history as well as to what is now happening in contemporary Russia. But connected in complicated ways.
To give a brief description of the film. It is both an intensely personal film about the tragic death of Silvia Giralucci's father, Graziano, at the hands of the Red Brigades on June 17th 1974. Her father- a militant in the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement- was one of the first victims of the Red Brigades.Yet as well as a reflection on this personal history it is also a film about political violence in Padua in the 1970s. There is a narrative which is focused not so much on the Red Brigades but on the autonomists who were an influential radical force in the Padua of the 1970s. Padua in the 1970s was the epicentre of much political violence on what seemed an almost daily level. The narrative begins with graffiti on the wall and footage of Toni Negri at a meeting. Negri is heard stating that professors at Padua were given a 'few slaps' like in the rest of the world in 1968. (At this point it is important to note that Toni Negri refused to be interviewed or take part in the film as did many others in the Paduan autonomous movement). Then a series of accounts are given by actors in the events. First, one of the Professors attacked, Guido Petter, gives his account and this leads on to other accounts by Antonio Romito (the first person to denounce his former comrades in Autonomia and Potere Operaio) and Pietro Calogero as well as a member of Autonomia, Raul Franceschi, who now lives in France (leaving Padua to escape the wave of arrests ordered by Calogero which broke the back of the autonomia movement). Finally towards the end of the film Stefania Paterno'- a former 'camerata' of Silvia Giralucci's father- gives her account of the 1970s as a time when a brutal game was played which should never happen again. These interviews are interspersed with further scenes. For example, a demonstration in memory of a worker from Genua, Guido Rossa, who had denounced the Red Brigades cell in his factory and was himself to become a fatal victim of the Red Brigades as a reprisal. Another scene in the film is the final one of Giralucci looking on at young fascist 'camerati' paying 'homage' to her father and the other missino shot in June 1974. She looks alienated from this group of neo-fascists intent on renewing this brutal game.
I hope to write about this film elsewhere though what was interesting was how it was received by those who watched it at the offices of Мемориал (Memorial). Those on the panel were Adriano dell'Asta of the Italian Cultural Institute; Olga Gurievich, a Russian Italianist; Vlad Tupikin, a Russian anti-fascist and libertarian anarchist; and Alexander Cherkasov, the chairman of Memorial. Moreover, there were some others in the room such as Yaroslav Leontiev who made an important contribution to the debate about the film.
The film was introduced by the director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Adriano dell'Asta, who wished to make some introductory remarks. He talked about the biography of the director and the fact that Italy wasn't living through a period of civil war at the time although the amount of violence was unprecedented. He emphasised what in his view was the essential point of the film: that some people looked upon others as non-people.
The discussion brought up a number of themes. A long part of the discussion was devoted to whether the Italian 1970s represented something like the Moscow of today. There has definitely been violence between fascists and anti-fa in Russia. Though in Russia the violence is mainly carried out by one side (that of the neo nazis) though there have been two cases where anti-fa killed, both times it was clear that this was self defence when their own lives were at stake. Of course, there were different emphases on how much this was also an 'ugly game',as Stefania Paterno' described it. Other periods of history were brought up and compared. For Yaroslav Leontiev, the pre-revolutionary period in Russia was of similar ferocity: he recalled the atmosphere that surrounded the assassination during the time of Nikolay Bauman.
Olga Gurievich, an Italianist, attempted to explain to the audience the historical context of the film. She tried to explain the paradox of how these events could happen between Italians who she characterised as a completely non-belligerent people. She drew attention to the hidden civil war of the 1940s and how the wounds of this civil war always smouldered and then exploded once again during the 1970s. She talks about the symbolism of the final scene where the neo-fascists meet to honour their dead shouting out "Presente" at the names of Graziano Giralucci and Giuseppe Mazzola. This fascist ceremony was indicative, for Gurievich, about the significance of memory and how to construct a memory in which the wounds and traumas can be healed and not renewed with a new spiral of violence. Interestingly she quoted Silvia Giralucci about how in Padua 'everyone in our city see themselves as victims' contrasting it to Russia where "we allsee ourselves as victors." Adding the question: "Which is worse?". Here, I think, Gurievich's paradoxical assertion is important in realizing how this film for a Russian audience is both close to, and yet distant from, their own experience.
Adriano del Asta emphasised how for an Italian to watch such a film is a painful experience for an Italian. He stated that this is not a political film and if we watch this film as a political film we understood almost nothing about the film. The film tries to answer a personal question for the director: what does this murder, what does this violence mean for me. Del Asta then talked about the moment when Silvia Giralucci asks herself the question: what would have happened if they hadn't killed my father. Who would my father have become? So for Del Asta the central axis of the film is not about comparing the situation in Italy in the 1970s to other situations but to answer the question: "What would I have done myself in such a situation?". For this reason the film touches such a sensitive point.
During the discussion among members of the audience the final scene was discussed a lot. For the first speaker this scene didn't bring out the same feelings of revulsion that Gurievich spoke out. All members of the panel explained in their own way why this scene did produce revulsion. Cherkasov stated that the final scene was about a ceremony in which neo-fascists mobilized their forces and Tupikin contrasted the scene with the demonstrations in memory of Stas Markelov and Nastya Baburova which take place every January 19th in which there are no militarized gestures. Yaroslav Leontiev in a long replica tried to find more exact comparisons with the film. He also remembered the young children of Stas Markelov and how their perspective (as probably the true victims of Markelov's assassination) differed from his own (Leontiev was a friend of the murdered Markelov's: they volunteered together, for example, for the Voloshin Medical Brigade which saved the lives of people on both sides of the clashes in October 1993). Alexander Cherkasov mentioned that there is a novel which gives some idea of the clashes between fascists and anti-fa in Russia in recent years. This novel by 'DJ Stalingrad' (now a political exile) has,in fact, been translated into Italian by Enzo Striano under the title Esodo (Exodus). Alexander Cherkasov then went on to contrast the role of the state in Russia and Italy. For Cherkasov the state in Russia is a strong one whereas in the Padua of the 1970s it was a weak one in which two opposing groups could literally control sectors of a city. Instead in Russia there is a strong state which in many ways uses Neo-Nazi groups to establish greater control over the territory. Again he emphasizes how nationalist groups have two types of groups - illegal groups carrying out terror and legal groups infiltrating opposition centres and mentalities. In this sense it is the Russian nationalists who replace the Red Brigades and ultra leftists of autonomia that Giralucci's film talks about.
Gurievich didn't accept the historical parallels stating that if there are to be comparisons with Italian history then Russia is now living in a period of 'developed fascism' where squadristi etc are used by power to attack the state's enemeies. For Gurievich there was another point regarding how the years of lead (or blood as she put it) turned in to the years of mud in the 1980s. She emphasized the role of the trade unions and others on the Left in revolting against the terror of the Red Brigades. For Gurievich there is almost no hope that even this will happen in Russia. Adriano del Asta emphasized the repulsion that most Italians would have about the final scene (but he compared the torches of the neo-fascists as symbolic equivalents to the so-called Stalin bars described in the film).
The discussion moved on to people involved in these groups. Why asked one were they depicted as pure fanatics and monsters (was this a reference to Toni Negri? it seemed to me that Raul Franceschi in the film at least showed someattempt to avoid this). This led to a discussion of terrorist in pre -revolutionary times. Cherkasov stating that films in Russia do take a tack of completely demonising those involved in the terror campaigns. It is necessary to read the literature, though, to get a better picture.
Olga Gurievich then fixed people's attention to the plaque and how there was resistance for many years to the idea that such a plaque in memory of these victims of terror could be placed on the wall of the apartment. Gurievich stated that for Giralucci this was a moment when she could become reconciled with her own city. Gurievich talked about how there is a certain parallel with the campaign by the Memorial to put up plaques in Russia to all the victims of political terror and repression (even for those executioners who then fell victim to the same terror). Another questioner wondered where 'civil society' was in all this and why there was no real civil society which reacted. (Again in the film there are scenes of demonstrations against the assassination of Guido Rossa, and Olga Gurievich mentioned the case of someone like Romito who denounced the violence of his former comrades to Calogero).
My own concern regarded what I would say was the fact that the state itself in the 1970s didn't play a neutral role. The role of figures like Calogero weren't not undisputed at the time and arguably overplayed their hand (and I think here the film watched by an Italian and a Russian audience differs precisely because there are different levels of background knowledge making this lack of background problematic for a reading of the political context of the film). The facts of Brescia were, of course, mentioned in passing in the film but these allusions would not have meant much to a Russian audience (whereas to an educated Italian audience they would already be part of their historical memory). The film had, I thought, much to offer a Russian regarding the personal story of Silvia Giralucci and her reaction as a victim of the history of political violence. As to the history of Italian in the 1970s, the political context and so on the film would perhaps give a Russian unacquainted with the Italian 70s a reading of the political situation which also needed some more contextualisation.
There was another discussion as to why a democratic government put up with this violence and that a democratic government has the right to repress such violence (he gave further examples of Northern Ireland and the hard stance of Thatcher against Irish hunger strikers which he thought justified. Alexander Cherkasov explained the origin of western democracies after the second world war and how, while there was a kind of democratic superstructure, the elites had remained the same as they were during periods of fascist and authoritarian rule and that this was very important to take into account. So that there was a similar situation here with Russia where Russia had turned from Soviet to Post Soviet -the elites had not changed and one could see that transformations and transitions were not as real as they appeared. Cherkasov in a wonderful way of characterizing this film talked of how the film had not only sound and visuals but also a smell of its own. Just as according to Cherkasov there is an unbearable reek in contemporary Russia, there was some similar reek to the whole social order of 1970s Padua.
Yaroslav Leontiev returned to the question of the difference in the typology of terror. Stating that there are surely differences between the assassination of Aldo Moro and the placing of the bomb in Bologna stationand how certain terrorists in pre-revolutionary Russia avoided throwing bombs if women and children were nearby or more recent examples in the 1990s when bombs at symbolic objects and buildings were detonated with the 'terrorists' making sure that there would be no human victims.
Another intervention from the floor regarded the kind of role that the state had in all this. For example, the woman in question explained how in the case of Germany the origin of Left radicals who would then become part of the Rote Armee Fraktion. It was in many ways through government repression (the assassination of a peaceful demonstrator) and the prevalence of violence in international politics (the speaker spoke of the fact that the Vietnam War played a large part in forming the mentality of left terror groups) which must be seen as the context for the emergence of such groups (but obviously not to justify them). She saw far Right terror emerging in a different optic in which whole groups of categories of citizens are excluded whereas Left terror groups are an answer to the frustrations and blocking of collective action.
After a polemic regarding an intervention from a woman who said that she didn't understand any positions or any differences between left and right (which led to Vlad Tupikin suggesting that people who didn't think or remember anything were the reason why people end up killing each other), Alexander Cherkasov explained that Russians, perhaps, see the film from different perspectives from Italians because of their own history as a nation. Russians with their history of the 20th century where state terror in the name of social justice left millions of victims and then many more millions lost their lives in an invasion by those with an opposite ideology (one could also add the Russian experience of World War One which arguably set off the tragic concatenation of events in 20th century Russia) meant that is truly difficult for Russians to grasp the political facts and context in the film. Apologizing for the fact that people on the whole wanted to speak about Russian history and Russian contemporary reality, he said that, at least, it showed how the film conjured up for Russians such passionate emotions.
This discussion, and the reaction to the film, demonstrated the multiple readings and misreadings that a film may have in it coming to another country. It is certainly the case that Russians (and this was also the case in the discussion generated at the first showing of the film in Moscow last year) felt this to be a film that spoke directly to them. What it said, of course, was complex. Certain scenes (and especially the final one) were read in diametrically opposed ways among different people in the audience. Many of the more political moments were emphasized over the more personal ones (although some interventions did emphasize these aspects too). The roles played by Left and Right in Russia were in very many ways subtly and not subtly different to those played in Italy, at least in recent times (where right wing, neo Nazi terror is, along with Chechen groups, the single most important threat today). The role of the state once more, like in Italy in the 60s and 70s complicates things - playing not a neutral role of judgement but often making situations grow more radicalised and even conniving in terror (a factor that was long argued over in 1970s Italy). It is harder to gauge the personal reaction to the film. I believe that many had their beliefs challenged in some ways. For me I'd add that it was indeed in many ways a film I am still in dialogue with. Not having lived in 1970s Italy it was, however, a strong part of my political imagination. My previous reading of the situation of autonomia, the April 7th case and even the role of Toni Negri etc didn't fit with those of the film (and so I felt a certain resistance at some of the historical judgments) but I'd argue that whatever one's political judgment of the 1970s, the kind of journey in self-understanding as well as the ethical rigour of the director full of doubt and lacking rancour point to one of the very rare films in which politics is overcome by a deep personal reflection. My final consideration here is the strange absence of any reference to a period in Russian history which, I personally, feel left has a similar wound on the Russian political psyche. This is the mini Civil War in Moscow in October 1993. While the clashes were much more restricted in time (and they were clashes between Red-Brown demonstrators supporting the legislative power and, mainly, organs of the Presidential executive power), the trauma of the many hundreds of deaths was never really healed in the body politic. A similar silence has fallen over these events (and the rather bloody decade of the 1990s while often referred to as a trauma to escape from discussion is all too often replaced by dogma). Maybe this film also was a contribution to an unconscious reflection on this period too.
