Last summer, tens of thousands of protestors from all over the world converged on Genoa, Italy, to rally against the annual G8 Summit. Leaders representing the world’s greatest economic powers, including President Bush, met in the small Italian city to discuss economic plans for the year ahead. Protestors felt that the summit was elitist and excluded the world’s poor and developing countries.
In an unprecedented collaborative effort, 33 highly respected Italian filmmakers armed themselves with digital cameras and headed to the summit. The directors wanted to film the magic of the global protest, but they did not foresee the brutal violence that broke out between the protestors and the police. The filmmakers shot 290 hours of film in total and then edited it down into a succinct two-hour protest film called “Un Mondo Diverso e’ Possibile” (“A Different World is Possible”).
One of the directors participating in the project was Massimo Sani. Born in Ferrara, Italy in 1929, Sani has made over 50 films in his long and illustrious career, including the award-winning “Italia in Guerra” (“Italy at War”). He primarily makes films about important historical events and is celebrated as a documentary and narrative filmmaker in Italy.
Sani is the vice president of the National Association of Film Directors, where he has served as an executive for over 20 years. He serves on the Executive Council of the European Federation of Audiovisual Directors and is the vice president of the International Association of Audiovisual Film Directors.
Sani’s films have earned him global recognition and respect, as well as many prestigious awards. He has collected top prizes at the Boston Film Festival and at Cannes. He was awarded the Medaglia D’Oro (Gold Medal) by the president of the Italian Republic for his outstanding documentary work.
Massimo Sani is in Madison tonight to present “A Different World is Possible” and to discuss the film with students. The print will be presented with English subtitles.
The filmmaker took a break from his busy lecture schedule to talk to The Badger Herald about the protest film and the experience of being a director in Italy for the last 50 years.
Badger Herald: For how many years have you been making films?
Massimo Sani: Since 1952. Alessandro Blasetti, who was my maestro, saw my first film, “An Encounter on the River,” and told me, “Massimo, this is a wonderful film. You should come to Rome as soon as possible to do films. But in the meantime, I want you to be my assistant on my next film, and this will be documentary.” I worked with Blasetti on a very difficult film on scientific matters. I was very involved in science at the time because my degree from my university is in chemistry.
But I did not come to Rome right away. I was on a scholarship to America, and after it ended I came back to Rome and I had a job offer from a Roman producer to do a series about the birth of Europe for Italian television, which was just beginning. I accepted this offer.
MS:My conception is always to write a script first. I do my research in documents, in photos and in interviews with witnesses. The witnesses are the most important part of historical documentation. They can tell you how terrible war is. They can tell you what it is like to be a prisoner. And the witnesses die, they are old; so you must catch them and speak to them in the moment when they are still able to tell the memory of the facts. Memory is more important now than ever before.
BH: What made you decide to work on “Un Mondo Diverso e’ Possibile?”
MS: The globalization problem is a big problem for the whole world. There is good globalization, there is worse globalization and there is a terrible globalization. These G8 ministers acted without consulting the population. The danger was that they did what they wanted to do but not in accord with the rest of the world. We felt that we had to do something about this. I worked on the film because I was convinced that we had to show what was happening there.
We all need good globalization–global movements against poverty. War must be condemned all over the world. Negotiation must be the first item when something happens between a state and another state–like the situation in Israel. If you are against this tendency towards imperialism from Israel’s side, from Sharon, it is said that you are anti-Semitic. On the contrary! I am Jewish. It has nothing to do with Semitism or anti-Semitism. In good globalization, this could never happen. So, this is why we went to [Genoa].
BH: Did you anticipate that the violence would be as bad as it was?
MS: It was the idea of this film from the beginning that we must take in the best of the magic atmosphere. The first half-hour of the film is based on that magic first day of the G8. We did not know that there would be provocations. We, of course, filmed these moments, including the death of 23-year-old Carlo Giuliani [who was shot by police in the head because they claimed he was vandalizing a car]. There are new reports about that now coming out recently–they found that he was two meters away from the car.
The actual G8 meeting was isolated by big fences, which were erected on the day that we came. That interested us because it completely isolated all the world from all of another world.
BH: What would you say is the message of this film?
MS: We [are] convinced that a different world is possible, as the title of the film says.
Not a world where the G8 meets and makes decisions without consulting all the other people. What happened with the Twin Towers is of course linked to the policy of the G8, and we don’t want this world. We don’t want any terrorism at all. We are convinced that a different world is possible.
