Abstract
The molecular revolution brought by local free radios in the late 1970s is considered as an incubation for anti-Mafia and No-global movements of the early 2000s. An overview of broadcasting experiments against the state monopolistic system is followed by an analysis of One Hundred Steps and Working Slowly, and the adaptation by Garrone of Saviano’s book Gomorrah. The book unfolds firsthand information to depict Naples’ organized crime operations within the globalized economy, which Garrone interprets in a documentary style, focusing on Camorra foot soldiers. In Diaz. Don’t Clean Up This Blood, Vicari reconstructs events of the 2001 G8 protests, embracing the hyperlink aesthetic characterized by overlapping narrative paths, with several protagonists linked in retrospect through active spectatorship, and mirroring the multimedia environment and convergence culture.
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Notes
- 1.
A few months earlier, Partinico had been the location of the anti-Mafia movie The Day of the Owl (1968). Director Damiano Damiani shot many sequences of the film in the central square of the small town, a few meters away from Dolci’s Study Center and Initiatives.
- 2.
At that time, in order to broadcast anywhere in Europe, it was necessary to occupy a frequency. In the late 1950s/early 1960s, rock music fans began broadcasting from the North Sea, originating a dozen of unlicensed offshore English, Dutch, and Scandinavian radios. The comedy The Boat that Rocked (Curtis 2009) is dedicated to the most enduring of them, Radio Caroline, and portrays the alternative lifestyles of its founders, and the ostracism the project received by the English government.
- 3.
The Ernesto De Martino Institute recorded the broadcasting on a vinyl record, which was later transferred on a digital support in the 35th anniversary of the initiative. The material is available at the archive of the Study Center and Initiatives in Partinico. More information about the project, its realization, and the transcriptions are available in the booklet La radio dei poveri cristi (2008).
- 4.
There were a few significant pioneering exceptions within the public broadcasting that influenced the style of the private radios, such as the grounding work of Renzo Arbore and Gianni Boncompagni in Alto gradimento (1970), which developed without a logical progression, with the hosts improvising and interrupting the music with surreal jokes. The program was also characterized by the invention of comic personalities such as the emeritus surgeon Anemo Carlone, the chef Léon, the sapper Colella, the feminist doctor Ada Venzolato, the Fascist Romolo Catenacci, the retired professor Aristogitone, the hippy Menuel, the apathetic high school student Verzo, and finally Pallottolino, disc jockey of the free radio Pirate Wave from Umbria. Such goliardic climate is often considered as the precursor of the free radios style of broadcasting . Other relevant programs were the fast-paced Supersonic (1971–1977), which broadcasted 31 commercial and underground songs every evening, with live concerts every Tuesday. Chiamate Roma 3131 was launched in 1969 and continued until 1974. This was the first tentative to create a direct contact with the audiences through the use of the live telephone call.
- 5.
The BBC documentary HyperNormalization (Curtis 2016) addresses the rise of individualized radicalism in the arts by featuring rock star Patti Smith (1946–), who appears walking around the streets of New York in the afterward of the 1975 financial crisis, experiencing urban decay rather than trying to change it.
- 6.
I am using this term deliberately, to emphasize the performative nature of the Movement and the media’s spectacularization of the dissent.
- 7.
Giordana’s To Love the Damned (1979) and The Fall of the Rebel Angels (1981) both address the issue of red terrorism, while Who Killed Pasolini? (1995) investigates the mysterious death of the titular character in the mid-1970s. Best of Youth (2003) reconstructs a family saga in which characters move on the background of 37 years of national history. These include the 1968 protests, the institutional abuse of mental health patients, Mafia, terrorism, and the end of the First Republic. Piazza Fontana: The Italian Conspiracy (2012) returns to the events surrounding the bombing that took place in Milan in 1969, while Nome di Donna (2018) deals with a case of sexual harassment in the workplace.
- 8.
For an extensive list of anti-Mafia films from the late 1940s to the present, see the “Filmography” at the end of Mafia Movies: A Reader. Mostly financed by the Italian State (RAI Cinema) or by European Community funds, Italian anti-Mafia films investigate the social and historical roots of the phenomenon, emphasizing the regional differences between the Mafia in the Southern regions where it manifests itself with different dynamics: Camorra in Naples, Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia, ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria, Cosa Nostra in Sicily.
- 9.
See Marcus (291–92); Small (44); Babini (244–45); and De Stefano (320).
- 10.
For another example of the climate of tension surrounding the free radios, one can look at the vicissitudes in which Radio Città Futura, close to the extra-parliamentary force Workers’ Avant-Garde, was involved. The morning of March 16, 1978, two listeners reported that Radio Città Futura broadcasted about the ambush to Moro 30 minutes before the actual kidnapping of the Christian Democrat . The radio manager Renzo Rossellini (son of the neorealist director) explained that broadcasters were talking about speculations that circulated within the 1977 Movement, and that revealed to be verisimilar, about a possible kidnapping of Moro . The second episode happened on January 9, 1979. When a program lead by feminist broadcasters was about to begin, three men wearing masks and weapons stormed into the studios. They burned the apparatus and severely wounded the hosts. The aggressors were militants of the Armed Revolutionary Core, a subversive extreme right-wing organization.
- 11.
Impastato’s black and white pictures are displayed in the closing credits with a technique similar to that of The Motorcycle Diaries.
- 12.
One Hundred Steps won the prize for the Best Screenplay at the 57th edition (September 2000) of the International Venice Film Festival, as well as four Donatello’s David awards (Rome 2001, 47th edition), for Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Luigi Lo Cascio), Best Supporting Actor (Toni Sperandeo, who plays Badalamenti but in his youth was one of the animators of the free Radio Pal, broadcasting live for the detainees of the Ucciardone prison in Palermo), Best Costumes (Elisabetta Montaldo) and a Silver Ribbon (Taormina, 2001, 56th edition) for Best Screenplay. The movie was also nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2001 Academy Awards.
- 13.
For a detailed documentation on the case and the developments of the investigation after the film, see Peppino Impastato: una vita contro la Mafia, written by his peer Salvo Vitale, who is played by Claudio Gioè in the film; and Peppino Impastato: ricordare per continuare, curated by the Sicilian center of documentation dedicated to Impastato.
- 14.
A significant part of the Italian Left cultivates strong connections with the Cuban revolution, as the numerous cultural and voluntary associations, cooperatives, travel agencies and specialized presses like Achab in Verona testify. This is also true for the rest of Latin America, whose relationship with Italy has been explored by journalists such as Saverio Tutino, Gianni Minà, or Italo Moretti. For several decades, writer and editor Roberto Massari has been dedicating his energies to the divulgation of the story and thoughts of Che Guevara (Wu Ming 1, 341).
- 15.
Crazy Wave went on air from February 1977 to May 1978. Peppino’s peers gave a copy of the material to the judge Rocco Cinnisi (who in turn was assassinated by a car bomb on July 29, 1983), as evidence regarding the political infiltrations of the Mafia in the Sicilian territory. A digital transfer of the recordings of the program and its transcriptions are available in the volumes Onda pazza: otto transmission satirico-schizofreniche and Onda pazza 2: sette nuove trasmissioni satirico-schizofreniche su Terrasini.
- 16.
The theme of a missed encounter with the hippie culture also returns in Best of Youth when Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio) interrupts his journey through Norway to go to Florence and work as a “mud angel” after the Arno River flood in 1966.
- 17.
For an example of a work about a musical radio, see Radiofreccia (1998). Directed by the rock star Luciano Ligabue, the film is inspired by the story of Radio King in Correggio and five of its coming to age promoters. The film’s soundtrack is a generational memoir that includes songs from the 1970s by David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Roxy Music, Lou Reed, the Weather Report, and the Italian songwriter Francesco Guccini, who also stars as the local café owner in the film. The protagonists of Ligabue’s film are not moved by any political motivation (whose removal is a curious choice for a film set in that period). They grew up and try to survive through daily pleasures and rituals (the riffs of Keith Richards, random dating at the local club, the feats of their favorite soccer player, and slacking around with each other) to a difficult provincial environment made of unfaithful mothers, incestuous fathers, attempted homicides, robberies, exploitative supervisors, and drug addiction. Like One Hundred Steps , Radiofreccia concludes with a funeral of the radio animator played by Stefano Accorsi. However, this circumstance, the celebration of the memory of the defunct, is not in the name of a leftist ideal, but in that of rock music, with Freccia’s peers tapping an Elvis song rhythm on the hearse that transports his body.
- 18.
Later, during a theatrical demonstration in front of City Hall, Impastato complains about the numerous curves on the highway Palermo-Mazara del Vallo, which avoids passing through the properties of the Mafia bosses and in turn extends its run by several kilometers.
- 19.
Anthony also appears at the beginning of the film, when he marries a Sicilian woman and at the funerals of Luigi and Peppino Impastato. His presence can be put in relation with actual aspects of Impastato’s life collected from relatives and friends. See “Realtà e fiction ne I cento passi.”
- 20.
The significance of this is highlighted by the tragic end of Peppino’s uncle, the Mafia boss Cesare Manzella, who is murdered in a car ambush. The persistence of the past in the Sicilian present is rapidly disappearing (or reduced to a façade, as in Badalamenti’s case) and will soon be remembered as local folklore. Manzella’s way of thinking is too old fashioned to survive the abrupt modernization brought by the economic miracle, to which Badalamenti quickly responds, and for this reason he becomes the new leader of the local organized crime.
- 21.
The Italian Communist Party decided to forego its revolutionary credo in favor of governmental participation with the Christian Democrats (known as the “historical compromise”), and this is why Impastato chooses Proletarian Democracy, once again in contrast with the beliefs of his substitute father figure Venuti.
- 22.
We see black and white images of a camera panning on the door of a white car marked by bullets and on the hand of one of the dead guards. The images require explanation, but the explanation given is insufficient and the redundant voice of the journalist covering Moro’s kidnapping invites his audiences to look at the bullets on the ground. The credibility attributed to this way of providing information comes from the on-location shooting and the framing of the images with a larger, overriding discourse that will happen in the studios and political talk shows.
- 23.
The Sicilian journal Antimafia 2000 cited 27 inaccuracies, ranging from minor (Peppino is shown driving a car but he didn’t know how to drive) to significant (Luigi Impastato didn’t owe his livelihood to Badalamenti; in fact, the latter often sought help from Impastato , an established Mafioso before he became an associate of Badalamenti). Andrea Bartolotta, a comrade of Peppino’s and one of the members of the Radio Aut group, criticizes One Hundred Steps for offering a “heavily romanticized and distorted” version of Peppino’s life (De Stefano, 324).
- 24.
“Aut” can simultaneously stand for the Italian pronunciation of the English word “out,” but also for the Latin word “or else,” “otherwise.”
- 25.
The casting of an eccentric TV personality as Massimo Coppola is intriguing, since between 2003 and 2004 he was the host of MTV programs such as Brand: New (1999–2010) and Pavlov (2003). The first went on air in the middle of the night and was dedicated to alternative and electronic music (Ben Harper, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Snow Patrol, Massive Attack etc.). The second was an “anti-reality” show about politics, society, and music, set in a studio flat inhabited by the veejay and his dog (named after the Russian physiologist), secretly monitored by a group of scientists. Coppola’s presence shows the ambivalence of the free radio heritage . It is both an allusion to the fact that the creativity ignited by Alice kept manifesting itself in different forms, and that at times the protagonist’s free radio seasons today participate to commercial media and institutional political parties (on this purpose, see the volume Effe Emme; a collection of articles written by celebrities who started their careers within the free radios, among them Fabrizio Frizzi, Tiberio Timperi, Walter Veltroni, Anna Pettinelli, Lamberto Giorgi, Mauro Pica, Ilona Staller, Massimiliano Bordin). The TV series 1992 and 1993, set at the end of the First Republic during the “Clean Hands” investigation, show a cynical take on this issue. The protagonist, Leonardo Notte (played by Stefano Accorsi, the protagonist of Radiofreccia), was part of the student extra-parliamentary left in 1977 in Bologna, but has adapted his creativity and revolutionary ideals to the reflux, becoming a pivotal figure within the advertisement agency Publitalia and a consultant of Silvio Berlusconi and Marcello Dell’Utri for the foundation of the new center-right-wing political party Forza Italia.
- 26.
For an insightful analysis of A/traverso see Falciola (95–99).
- 27.
Although the Chiesa openly denounces the responsibilities of the Carabinieri for Lorusso’s murder, he is careful not to individualize the conflicts it depicts, and not to flatten human beings with the social function they absolve. One of the key characters of Working Slowly is Lieutenant Lippolis (Valerio Mastandrea), downgraded after a mistake he made due to a misleading tip he received from an informant. Through overheard telephone calls with his wife and the pictures in his office, we learn that his disabled son is struggling at school and would need to attend institutions that he could barely afford to pay. In a dialogue with his supervisor, Lippolis separates the radio phenomenon from terrorism. “Terrorism has no roots in Bologna. Radio Alice has several followers between the extremists, a muddier line is catching on between them. Four lazy and drug addicted students from morning to evening.” However, he receives psychological pressure to react energetically against the Movement from his Captain, who reminds Lippolis that his much-coveted promotion is at stake, stating: “Terrorists wallow in factory strikes and at university, this is not the moment to lower the guard.” The thesis that the low ranks of the institutions were not to blame for the repressions emerges again if one looks at the figure of Antonio Lionello, a Carabiniere from a small Calabrian village in charge of monitoring Radio Alice’s broadcasting and of reporting to Lippolis potentially subversive contents. He has proletarian origins as Pelo and Sgualo (his father is a truck driver) and appears to be as alienated as them. Alice’s transgressive and creative broadcasting brings a momentary sparkle to his gray existence and ignites his fantasy, and in the end he sympathizes with the cause of the folks he was supposed to watch over.
- 28.
For articles specifically focused on the death of Giuliani and the tortures in Bolzaneto, see Caffarena and Stiaccini; and Zamperini and Menegatto.
- 29.
Despite the aggression, the station continued broadcasting on the sequences of the network radios and online, following the international events in which the no-global Movement participated in subsequent years.
- 30.
Another World distinguishes itself from other documentaries on the same topic because some of its creators directly experienced World War II, Italian Fascism, and partisan Resistance.
Thus, “in the hands of Maselli and his collaborators, the events of the Genoa protests are absorbed within the narratives and mythology of resistance that have permeated the Italian collective consciousness since the early postwar period” (Niwot, 3). Vicari himself confronted with such tradition earlier in his career, when he shot the documentary Partigiani (1997), together with Chiesa , Davide Ferrario, and others.
- 31.
In 1992, the launching of Popolare Network allowed many historical free radios of the 1970s to survive the new challenges brought by the broadcasting industry. The original founders of Popolare Network are Radio Popolare (Milano), Radio BBS (Roma), Controradio (Florence), Radio Città del Capo (Bologna), Radio Popolare (Verona), and today the syndication has expanded to 20 radios spread over the national territory.
- 32.
He stands for Lorenzo Guadagnucci of Il Resto del Carlino, who co-authored with Vittorio Agnoletto, spokesman for the GSF, the book L’eclisse della democrazia.
- 33.
See, for example, the Tute Bianche (White Overalls) group, whose strategies openly recall those of the 1977 Movement.
- 34.
In “Junkspace” Koolhaas establishes a parallel between architectural decay and that of human bodies, who gradually lose their flesh and transform into monstrous creatures. “Like radioactive waste, Junkspace has an insidious half-life. Aging in Junkspace is nonexistent or catastrophic; sometimes an entire Junkspace … turns into a slum overnight without warning: wattage diminishes imperceptibly, letters drop out of signs, air-conditioning units starts dripping, cracks appears as if from otherwise unregistered earthquakes; sections rot, are no longer viable, but remain joined to the flesh of the main body via gangrenous passages” (180).
- 35.
For the narrative relevance of the interior and exterior locations (which are instrumental in defining the characters as agents) of the TV series and their intertextual connections with other domains such as Romanzo criminale: la serie (2008–2010) and The Wire (2002–2008), see Noto, pp. 298–303.
- 36.
The academic approach of Kings of Crime is a fruit of the experience that Saviano had at Princeton University in 2014, where he conducted a seminar on Economic Politics and Organized Crime as a long-term visiting fellow.
- 37.
In Gomorrah Saviano pays tribute to Pasolini with a solitary visit to his tomb in the cemetery of Casarsa: “I felt like finding a place where it was still possible to reflect without shame on the possibility of the word. The possibility of writing about the mechanisms of power, beyond the stories and the details. To reflect on whether it is still possible to name names, one by one, to point out the faces, strip the bodies of their crimes, and reveal them as elements of the architecture of authority. To reflect on whether it is still possible to sniff out, like the truffle pigs, the dynamics of the real, the affirmation of powers, without metaphors, without mediations, with nothing but the cutting edge of the world” (212). For a parallel between the literary techniques used by Pasolini in Petrolio, published posthumously in 1992, and Gomorrah , see Castagnino (157–166).
- 38.
“Felicia carried her son’s memory with her until, twenty-four years later, a sentence was finally handed down and a successful film was made out of the story. One Hundred Steps is a memorial and homage to the boy who did not leave town, who wanted to fight Cosa Nostra by telling people over Radio Aut and with a few photocopied flyers how they operated. His was a solitary and constant battle that had to be fought ‘before it’s too late to tell the difference’” (The Beauty and Inferno, 137).
- 39.
In particular The Player (1992) is characterized by a rich intertextuality and a dystopic view of Hollywood’s generic conventions. Throughout the film, Altman quotes the opening shot of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958), and renders homage to film noir icons such as Humphrey Bogart (who appears on one of the menacing postcards directed to the greedy studio executive Griffin Mill).
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Cilento, F. (2018). Unidentified Narrative Objects: The Anti-Mafia and No-Global Films as Transmedia Adaptations. In: An Investigative Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92681-0_6
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