by Valerio Cappelli
The documentary by Tony Saccucci loosely inspired by the book by Aldo Cazzullo. Archival footage and interviews with Erri De Luca, Giampiero Mughini, Paolo Liguori, Marco Boato…
TURIN Raise your fists, comrades. The demonstrations, the clashes with the police, the megaphones, the slogans, the red flags, the meetings, the arrests. In those years – says the writer Erri De Luca – I did the right thing, along with the majority of my generation, exposing myself and bearing the consequences, with total loyalty to the reasons that brought us together, to take part in this revolutionary movement that the world since.
Lotta Continua, at the Turin Film Festival and on January 12th on Rai3, produced by Publispei by Verdiana Bixio with Luce Cinecitt (in collaboration with Rai Documentari and Rai Play), the romantic documentary by Tony Saccucci, loosely adapted from the book The boys who wanted die Make Revolution by Aldo Cazzullo. the reinterpretation (with films and interviews) of a crucial period in Italian history.
Here are the former militants of Lotta Continua (LC), the political movement that brought together workers and students, factories and universities, feminism rode between a thousand misunderstandings, became a newspaper. The sociologist Donatella Barazzetti: For me it was the encounter with happiness and I must say that I was not politicized. It started (all) in 1969 and ended (all) in 1976 with the dissolution at the Rimini Congress. When I came back from there, I said to myself: what do I do now? says Gad Lerner. Saccucci (born 1970, professor of philosophy at the Mamiani in Rome) recalls the heterogeneous soul of Lc: there was the worker, the intellectual, the son of the bourgeoisie, and they quarreled among themselves because they believed that the pursuit of happiness was only in the community. I want today’s children to regain that spirit of change. Suddenly, a touch of freedom and belonging are world-changing concepts.
We have to go to Turin. In the old town, not in the suburbs, the immigrants from the south lived in houses without heating and without toilets. We came from abroad to get better and we are worse off. At Fiat’s impressive pace, one worker had to paint 60 cars an hour, one a minute. We worked like chimpanzees. That’s where the change happened. As a result of the strikes and sabotage in the workshops, 20 million working hours were lost and more than 270 million cars were not produced, said lawyer Agnelli. Lotta Continua said solidarity is more important than money. The leader Adriano Sofri. I’ve never seen such pomposity in my life, I say this as a scruple of truth, not in a negative sense, says Giampiero Mughini (he wasn’t from Lc), speaking out in the video about the haughty attitude of Gad Lerner , who replies, I was the last wheel in the cart, a novice, I want to reassure Mughini. The two agree on one thing: Sofri was arrogant.
There is the reconstruction of the actor Gian Maria Volont, who with other actors (he says) reconstructs the three-day interrogation of the anarchist Pinelli at the police station without a judge being notified, without involving a lawyer; a kidnapping by the state, not an arrest, says Erri De Luca. Pinelli dies and the one whom the blinded comrades blame for the incident, Inspector Calabresi, is killed.
It was the generation, the flip tabs, rites and myths, everything was possible. Up to a certain point: Lotta Continua presented herself with a voting cartel in the 1976 elections, they reckoned with 10 percent, it was just under 2 percent. Marco Boato: A huge disappointment.
It is said that there is something Franciscan about being called Companions, Mughini objects that Lotta Continua had nothing to do with St. Francis. There is a free canteen for the children of the proletariat (applause for the people’s control of basic needs), and there is much violence as a method of struggle. But it seemed like only words, even the most ominous, says Marino Sinibaldi, spokesman for the radio. The Red Brigades drift was near.
Feminism gave the last push at the Rimini congress: workers, for women, had sexist traits. Mughini: The women insulted the male militants by saying they didn’t know how to make love, one of the most spectacular things in the last act. Paolo Liguori: It was feminism that dissolved Lotta Continua. Well, nice title. The question of gender – says Saccucci – set a psychodrama in motion. Erri De Luca: I haven’t signed up for anything anymore, not even a bowling alley.
December 3, 2022 (change December 3, 2022 | 08:45)
© REPRODUCTION RESERVED