LIDF

Gianfranco Pannone’s Red Sunrise was bound to be controversial in Italy. Considered offensive by the Italy’s Berlusconian Minister of Culture, the film had a little distribution so far.  In this interview the director talks to Kamila Kuc about the Red Brigades and why he decided to make this film now.

Kamila Kuc: Red Sunrise is an extremely fascinating and important documentary about one of the most dangerous terrorist organisations in the European history – Red Brigade, founded in 1969 by Renato Curcio and Roberto Franceschini in Reggio Emilia (Italy’s reddest district). Why did you decide to make this film now?

Gianfranco Pannone: For a long time Giovanni Fasanella, with whom I share the credits of Red Sunrise, and myself wanted to make this film. The reason cannot be easily explained but basically, we believe that there is still much to be told about the origins of the Red Brigades. In Italy, for too long we have been led to believe they came from Mars, while, alas, they are part of our left-wing family picture book. That’s why we thought of Reggio Emilia, the reddest city of Italy, the city of Communism, with a human face and the one that resisted Nazism. To us making this film meant breaking a taboo.

KK: How long did it take you to research the material for the film and shoot?

GP: The work on the film has taken very long, as we wanted to do proper research, look for appropriate witnesses and approach them one by one. This was the most time-consuming part, as we believe that a documentary only begins to live its own life when you gain the trust of your subjects. And of course, not all Reggio militants and former militants were waiting for us with open arms. People were not sure whether we were really doing what we claimed we were and until the very end we were not certain we could begin shooting.

The shooting took just over four weeks all together. The editing, however, lasted a few months, perhaps a little more than expected. We wanted to make sure that we are understood and so are our subjects, who often talk about their fathers and other family members. So we experimented with the form until Erika Manoni, the editor, Giovanni and myself, found a way to present it all, which we hope does not affect the truth of the testimonies.

KK: Most of men represented in the film now hold safe positions working for local councils etc. Some of them, on the other hand, ‘suffer’ from some kind of amnesia and ‘really cannot remember’ what happened then. These also remain anonymous in your film…

GP: Yes, in Italy most of the 70s generation seems to be suffering from amnesia. Or rather, prefers not to remember. On the other hand, many young and active in those years, or close to the ’68, are now occupying positions of power in politics, press, culture, cinema… and prefer to forget what’s most unspeakable about those years… Why unspeakable? Because around the Red Brigades there was much more consensus  than they want us to believe there was. A dear friend of mine, who was no terrorist, told me that the day of the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, he toasted and drank champagne with some of his companions, even though five policemen had been killed in the ambush!

KK: Next to films such as Baerbet Schroder’s Terror’s Advocate (2007), Red Sunrise constitutes a great contribution to our understanding of one of the most complicated moments in European history. I feel that the complexities of the 60s and 70s terrorist groups, such as Red Brigade or Baader-Meinhoff are yet to be fully unravelled. Would you agree?

GP: The truth is that in Italy many wounds dating back to the 70s are still bleeding.   And the ones who tried to heal these wounds were isolated, marginalised within the limits of bullying. Terrorism in Italy is a complex story, but this shouldn’t cause us to give up. On the contrary, I think that my generation, who are now forty, and those who follow, should rebel against this regime of silence which is common to the right and the left.

KK: The period between the late 1960s and 1980s was a dark period in Italian history, with many bombings and murders, later attributed to far-right, far-left and secret services’ actions. At that time, in 1975, one of the most prolific Italian filmmakers and a socio-political activist, Pier Paolo Pasolini, was brutally murdered for being a ‘dirty Communist.’ I recently found out that three years ago Pasolini’s murder case had been re-opened as there has been new evidence discovered. It seems that this part of history is very much still alive in Italy…

GP: Much has been said on Pasolini, perhaps too much, but one thing is certain, he was not killed by a single person, namely the young Pelosi, but by a group. Why was this truth kept hidden? Pasolini’s statements were uncomfortable for many, a recently published book insinuates a connection between his death and his last unfinished novel Petrolio (Oil), where he refers clearly to men of power in “flesh and blood”. Weather it is true or not, the death of Pasolini, the most unconventional of our intellectuals, remains one of the many, too many, mysteries of the 70s, like Piazza Fontana massacre in Milan in 1969, or the railway station of Bologna in 1980, which have a  fascist matrix. But generally, there was a terror climate, a civil war violence and not knowing what really happened, I think that is simply unbearable!

KK: The Red Brigade members represented in the film were imprisoned for almost 20 years and most of them have not visited Reggio Emilia since the 70s. For some of them, like Tonino, this brings back bad memories, as after 30 years he still finds it difficult to deal with the consequences of the armed struggle he was involved in…This moment in the film seems quite uncomfortable for the rest of the group as well as the viewer…

GP: The bitter tears of Tonino Loris Paroli, a former Red brigadist who has given his testimony, seem selfish, because he weeps for a battle companion who was killed by his mates for being a traitor. In fact, I think that his crying is also the defeat of a whole generation who believed in armed struggle. Yes, this crying embarrasses all comrades at the table, both the former terrorists and those who were not involved in any undergoround activities, because it weighs on their conscience, as they have not yet come to terms with those years. And what has disturbed some conformists is simply that all five of the diners seem to be in the same boat, revolutionaries or reformists it does not matter. One day a friend told me that Red Sunrise is the funeral of the entire left, not only of the Red Brigades. Perhaps so… And I say this with regret.

KK: Can you tell us more about the band that features in the film?

GP: The Offlaga Disco Pax is a group from Reggio Emilia, this is also why I have chosen them; they are loved by young people, from both the north and the south of Italy. One day a young friend suggested them and, once contacted, it seemed interesting to give the group the role of chorus. The chorus of a generation who, like me, just barely brushed the seventies or heard about those years from older brothers. An affectionate chorus, but distant from the myth of “The Red Sunrise”.

KK: These black and white photos at the end of the film are very powerful… I pressume these are of victims murdered by the Red Brigade…

GP: Indded. The photos that follow one another at the end of the film portray lawyers, journalists, workers, politicians murdered by the Red Brigade. To Fasanella and myself it seemed necessary to establish our distance from some of the witnesses that we interviewed during the shooting and that sometimes justified their choice to be violent. We did it by choosing a limited but highly representative number of those killed from the seventies til the present day by the hands of leftist terrorism.

KK: Have you screened the documentary in Italy yet and if so, what was the government and general public’s reaction?  Are you afraid of any reactions from the Italian authorities?

GP: In Italy, Red Sunrise was distributed as a limited number of copies both theatrically as well as on home video. We paid a high price! After the intervention of the Minister of Culture, a Berlusconian, on the eve of the Locarno film festival, little by little we lost all the distribution opportunities, many theatres in the official circuit, and the public TV deal… You know why? Nobody wanted to annoy the Minister, who   considered our film offensive and against the memory of the victims of terrorism and their families. As you know, Italian cinema survives largely with public funding. The fact is that most of the critics and the audience, especially that of the province, reacted well and the film is still circulating in the theatres, in particular in the art-house cinemas, often with the participation of Fasanella and/or myself.

No, I am not afraid, although I admit that at present I feel somewhat ‘isolated’, bewildered. And not only because of the interference of politics, but due to the silence of some colleagues, that have not shown any solidarity towards Fasanella and myself. In the world of Italian cinema there is a lot of frustration that surprises many people, as censorship has been replaced by self-censorship. Before making a courageous film, many directors ask themselves whether it is convenient or not. They chose a subject, think it over and often decide to explore more innocuous themes. In short, there is little courage and it is a real miracle that a film like Gomorra has been made. Don’t you think?

To read what Roberto Purvis, independent filmmaker and documentarist, says about Red Sunrise, click here.