Do You Remember Revolution
"In
Italy, in the mid-seventies, Adriana, Barbara, Nadia and Susanna were 20 years
old when they decided to join the armed struggle and leave behind their social
life and their families in order to make the revolution the centre and the aim
of their existence.Today they reappear, after many years in prison, and they
try, each of them, to recount their own experiences. They speak about the
political reasons which initially sustained them, the conflicts, the doubts,
and the moments of being torn apart, which marked out their lives as women caught
up in the vortex of war. A course of events which ended in the condemnation of
the armed struggle and the pain of the lives that were destroyed - their
victims' lives and their own."
Loredana Bianconi
In her documentary Do You Remember
Revolution, the Italian director Loredana Bianconi interviewed at length four
women who actively participated in the Leftist Armed Struggle in the Italy of the
70ies. All of them were leading figures in the Red Brigades. One of them,
Susanna, left the Brigades in '75 to found Prima Linea.
Bianconi opens her poignant film with a
personal note, recalling the revolutionary years: "We participated in the
same revolt. Utopia invaded the streets...." Then she cuts to archival
images shot by Italian State TV. We see the four protagonists at their trial.
Bianconi stripped the images of their incriminating sound-track. It's clear.
She has no intention to judge their actions, nor their lives. Instead she has
decided to listen. So for the rest of the film she will stay manifestly absent.
Consequently we hear no sensational -- and
very few anecdotal aspects of these women's revolutionary lives. Instead, we
listen to answers on questions no judge ever asked them. Answers on questions
they were dealing with, individually, for many years.
They evoke the Italy of the beginning of the
70ies, in the aftermath of 68. The times of serious social unrest and
rebellion. The days of the class-struggle, of the fight against Capital, of the
workers and student-demonstrations, of the anti-fascist movement, of the
proletarian counter-power. The years of the IRA and ETA, of Angola, Vietnam,
and Chile,
of Che and Mao. In short: the days of the events that marked a whole
generation.
Then, Barbara, Nadia, Adriana and Susanna talk
about their decision to join the armed struggle. A decision that was
all-demanding. A radical choice that required not only giving up most of what
they had, but also put at risk their very existence. They bring up issues they
simply could not afford to talk about while living in clandestinity, in the
"eternal present". They talk about the use of violence. Although the
political discourse on the issue was crystal-clear, there's a huge difference
between consenting with a strategy, and actually carrying out that strategy. As
Susanna points out: politics can demand and justify actions, which are not
necessarily ethically justified. Urban guerrilla required that the border
between politics and morality remained closed. As a matter of self-defence.
They talk about the mistakes, the crisis of the movement, their imprisonment,
their pain.
Do You Remember Revolution shows us how
four exceptional women look back at their common cause. This is not a mythic,
sloganesque, nor apologetic discourse, but a personal one. We hear four
different ways of remembering, and living with, a common past. A past which
today, everybody tells us to renounce, to reject, to forget.
Loredana Bianconi, and the four women in
her film, remind us to have the courage to remember.
directed by: Loredana Bianconi; photography and camera:
Alain Marcoen; sound: Thierry de Halleux; editor: Karine Pourtaud; sound
mix: Thierry de Halleux and Michel Goossen; producer: Veronique Marit;
Delegated producer: Jean-Pierre Dardenne; production: DERIVES;
coproduction: ZDF, Wallonie Image Production, RTBF Liege; with the
support of: Fonds Televisuel de la Communaute Francaise de Belgique et
de la Region Wallone
Organised by City of Women in collaboration with Slovenian Cinematheque
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20th October at 5pm - Cankarjev dom:
Round table WOMEN IN THE ARMED STRUGGLE
Loredana Bianconi (director of the documentary), Adriana Faranda and Susanna Ronconi (two of the four protagonists in Do You Remember Revolution in talk wirth journalist Mojca Drčar-Murko (Delo corespondent)-
Organised by City of Women in collaboration with Cankarjev dom
