12° FESTIVAL INTERNAZIONALE CINEMA GIOVANI
Proposal 1994

PANE PACE LIBERTÀ 1943/1945

BREAD PEACE LIBERTY 1943/1945

Country: Italy
Year: 1994
Duration: 40'


Passionate testimony is still flowing out of the memory of the resistance. This film, made with the union movement, gathers together several witnesses to deepen the history of the workers' participation to the liberation of Italy from Nazifascist domination. It is a struggle that already came to the surface in 1943, when fascism was still in power, when at 10:am of March 5 the FIAT workers of Turin went on strike. The demands had to do with wages, but also with an increase in the bread ration and then with peace and freedom. Starting off from those stories, memories evoke other struggles. One year later the general strike spread over all of northern and central Italy controlled by the Nazis and their fascists allies of the Republic of Salò. The voices of the witnesses tell the story with inflections that are Piedmontese, Ligurian, Lombard, Venetian, Emilian, and Tuscan. They cite the historical places of the workers' struggle: Mirafiori, Lingotto, RV and Carello in Turin; Breda and Caproni in Sesto S.Giovanni; San Giorgio shipyards in Genoa; and Manifattura tabacchi in Florence. The extremely harsh repression of the Nazi-fascists comes out of the testimony: the arrests, deportations to German concentration camps, and the shootings. The hard struggle continued with the workers, peasants, and partisans together in the mountains until April, 1945, until the liberation in the hope of a different kind of country. The witnesses all appearing for the first time alternate with significant stock film material, objects and photographs.

Biography

film director

Mimmo Calopresti

(Polistena, Reggio Calabria; 1955) is a director and screenwriter. His films have been presented at numerous national and international festivals, including those in Salsomaggiore, Montbéliard, Munich, Stuttgart, Turin, Barcelona, Madrid, Florence, Ferrara, and Cannes. He wrote a screenplay that won the 1994 Solinas award, which he used in the making of his first feature film, La seconda volta. The film premiered in competition at Cannes in 1995, just like the following La parole amore esiste (1998). He later continued his career by creating several other feature films - Preferisco il rumore del mare (1999), La felicità non costa niente (2002), L'abbuffata (2007), La fabbrica dei tedeschi (2008), Aspromonte - La terra degli ultimi (2019) - and more than twenty documentaries, many of which were presented at the Torino Film Festival.

FILMOGRAFIA

A proposito di sbavature (video, 1985), Ripresi (cm, 1987), Fratelli minori (cm, 1987), Paolo ha un lavoro (doc., 1991), Paco e Francesca (doc., 1992), Remzjia (doc., 1992), 1943 La scelta (doc., 1994), 43-45 Pace e libertà (doc., 1994), Alla Fiat era così (doc., 1990), La seconda volta (1994), La parola amore esiste (1998), Tutto era la Fiat (doc., 1999), Preferisco il rumore del mare (1999), La felicità non costa niente (2002), Una bellissima bambina (cm, 2004), Dov’è Auschwitz (doc., 2005), Volevo solo vivere (2006), Torino è la mia città (doc, 2007), L'abbuffata (2007), La fabbrica dei tedeschi (2008), L'Aquila 2009 - Cinque registi tra le macerie (ep, doc, cm, 2009), La maglietta rossa (doc, 2009), 1960 I ribelli (doc, cm, 2010), Uno al giorno (doc, cm, 2012), Madre di pietà (doc, cm, 2013), Socrates uno di noi (doc, 2014), Uno per tutti (2015), La fabbrica fantasma (doc, 2016), Immondezza - La bellezza salverà il mondo (doc, 2017), Aspromonte - La terra degli ultimi (2019), Romanzo radicale (2022), Gianni Versace, l’imperatore dei sogni (doc, 2023).

Cast

& Credits

Director: Mimmo Calopresti.
Collaborazione: Giovanna Boursier, Paolo Di Nicola.
Consulenza musicale: Riccardo Giugni.
Editor: Ruggero Patrizi.
Production company: Archivio audiovisivo del movimento operaio e democratico, via F.S. Sparvieri 14, 00152 Roma, tel. +39-06-5896698, fax +39-06-58331365.
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