1° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Tematiche Giovanili 1982
Runaway America
by Silvano Agosti, Peter Amos
Country: Italy
Year: 1981
Duration: 100'
The film begins with a current sequence, which highlights the tools of subtle repression used on American youth: heavy drugs, religious hysteria, pornographic disengagement.
Then we go back to the 60s, when the movement for civil rights began and so from event to event, the movie, which is almost narrated by the songs of struggle, shows how the Vietnam war gradually moved in the streets and in the squares of the USA, up to an aware convergence of juvenile movements with the struggles of ethnic and American workers minorities.
The last sequence of the film, after a symbolic funeral to American democracy, ends with the arrest of 25.000 young people. While the lights of police cars fade into the night, there is the feeling that no repressive mechanism, even the most powerful one, can stop these huge movements of renewal and evolution of social forces. As it is happening, they might just force them to flow underground, invisible to the surface, but always there.
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala
Biography
film director
Silvano Agosti
Silvano Agosti (Brescia, 1938) enrolled in 1960 at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome; his graduation film in 1962 was entitled La veglia. In 1963 he went to Moscow to specialize in editing and to study the work of Ejzens tejn. In 1967 Agosti debuted with the full-length film Il giardino delle delizie, from which the censors cut 28 minutes. After numerous "militant" documentaries, Agosti founded 11 Marzo Cinematografica, a cooperative which has produced all his films. From 1976 to 1978 he taught editing at the Centro Sperimentale. His movie-theater Azzurro Scipioni, in the Prati district, became a point of reference for art films. In 1983 he finished D'amore si vive, a film which focuses on tenderness, sensuality and love, which was shot in Parma over a two year time span. In 1984 he published the novel L'uomo proiettile. This book was followed by Uova di garofano, Il giudice, La ragion pura, La vittima.
FILMOGRAFIA
Il giardino delle delizie (Gardens of Delights, 1967), Cinegiornali del movimento studentesco (1968), N. P. il segreto (1971), Altri seguiranno (1973), Scerscev (1973), Brescia 1974 ( 1974), Matti da slegare (Fit to Be Untied, coregia/codirectors Marco Bellocchio, Sandro Petraglia, Stefano
Rulli, 1975), Nel più alto dei cieli (In the Highest of Skies, 1977), La macchina cinema (1978), Album concerto (1979), Un incontro (1981), Il buffone di Dio (1981), Runaway America (1982), L’addio a Enrico Berlinguer (1984), D'amore si vive (1983), Quartiere (1987), Uova di Garofano (Sweet War, Farewell, 1992), Frammenti di vita clandestina (doc., 1993), L'uomo proiettile (1995), Trent'anni di oblio (1998), C'ero anch'io - Frammenti di lotte di strada (1998), La seconda ombra (2000), La ragion pura (The Sleeping Wife, 2001), Dario Fo - Un ritratto (2002), La conquista della vita (doc., 2008).
Peter Amos
Declaration
film director
Runaway America is above all an operation of selection and editing of priceless documentary material filmed during the period of the “great American revolution” that began with the struggle for civil rights and ended with the end of the Vietnam war.
We thought it was essential to recommend, in its direct truth, what was one of the most dynamic moments in recent American history. A proper revolutionary moment which involved the whole country at first, then the Western World and finally the political order of the entire planet.
Today, while the American political class is trying to build a cloak of restoration and repression, as well as its imperialist role in the world, we think it’s important to give, with this film, and unequivocal picture of the powerful forces of renewal that know how to come out when the time is right, in a place like the USA.
Silvano Agosti and Peter Amos
Traduzione in inglese Francesca Sala - English translation Francesca Sala
Cast
& Credits
Director: Silvano Agosti e Peter Amos.
Riprese: effettuate prevalentemente da cineoperatori del "Movement" e materiale di repertorio.
Production company: Coop. Centofiori.
Italian distribution: 11 marzo cinematografica, Roma.
Riprese: effettuate prevalentemente da cineoperatori del "Movement" e materiale di repertorio.
Production company: Coop. Centofiori.
Italian distribution: 11 marzo cinematografica, Roma.
