Unearthing the Italian political and social documentary of the 60s and 70s.

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):