Bella Ciao, a documentary being screened at Cannes shows the Italian police starting the violence during last summer's G8 conference in Genoa which ended in the death of one young man. Derek Malcolm finds it compelling viewing
Wednesday May 22, 2002
If further proof were needed that the Italian riot police over-reacted, possibly on orders from above, when faced by 200,000 mostly peaceful demonstrators at Genoa's G8 summit last July, Marco Giusti and Roberto Torelli's reasonably even-handed documentary Bella Ciao supplies it. This feature-length compilation of footage culled from a number of independent sources and produced by Rai-2 may never be shown on that channel because of its political implications. But no one could say that it takes the demonstrators' part exclusively.
The directors edit together their footage with other less obvious sequences to show that when the protestors started burning cars before the march began, the Italian police seemed intimidated and did nothing. Then, when the demonstrators turned up in larger numbers, the police started the violence which ended with the death of the 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani as he attacked a police van and with the wounding of dozens of others.
Just as importantly, the film attempts to raise questions other than police violence during its 100 minutes, such as the possible effect of the demonstration on G8 decision-making and the likely implications for the Italian government of the way the whole fracas was handled. In this it is less successful than when it charts the actual events, such as the bloody evacuation of the school where many of the demonstrators were sleeping, and the dance of the rightwing "black blok" group who seemed determined to cause mayhem even when nothing very harmful was happening.
The editing is as edgy as the camerawork on display, giving the documentary an immediacy that still scares today, almost a year after the event. And Elena Giusti's appropriately chosen rock score adds to the impact of it all. If nothing else, Bella Ciao should survive as the record of a significant piece of history. Giusti and Torelli were not the only film-makers present during the appallingly violent contestation, but it is difficult to see how their film can be capped.
<http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2002/story/0,11895,720162,00.html> *****
Cf. Bella Ciao: <http://www.voiceoftheturtle.org/dictionary/dict_b1.shtml#bellaciao>, <http://www.grscotland.net/resources/o_bella_ciao.mp3>, <http://www.chumba.com/_download.htm#Anchor-The-45817>, & <http://www.chumbawamba.tv/media/Chumbawamba-Bella_Ciao.mp3>. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>