One hundred years ago the Communist Party of Italy was born: for the occasion, the Cineteca di Bologna restores and puts online an extraordinary period document, a living chronicle of the days of January 1921 when the XVII Congress of the Socialist Party was held in Livorno, concluded with the split of the communists.
'Men and voices of the Socialist Congress of Livorno', kept by the Cineteca di Bologna thanks to the copy deposited by the documentary maker Cecilia Mangini and restored by the L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory with music by Daniele Furlati, will be online from 18 January on the 'Il Cinema Ritrovato' platform out of the room ', presented by the Livorno-based director Paolo Virzì, by professor Paolo Capuzzo, director of the History Department of the University of Bologna, and by the director of the Cineteca di Bologna Gian Luca Farinelli.
The film will be available until February 17, together with the other titles of the Il Cinema Ritrovato fuori sala platform, a project created by the Cineteca di Bologna for online viewing - in collaboration with MYmovies - of restored classics and rarities from the history of cinema, with a program which is renewed every 30 days.
"The film in two reels, shot in 35mm, lasting 30 minutes, has no information on the production or who directed it and never had a censorship visa", explains Farinelli.
"Although it is a documentary, it is a real experiment because it tries to offer the range of the many positions and important personalities that animated those days, despite not having the sound available, but only captions, and an insensitive film, which made it almost impossible filming inside the theater. Representatives of the Socialist International, Turati and Terracini, Bordiga and Bombacci, Argentina Altobelli and Francesco Misiano, who escaped to the USSR gave life to the Mezrapom production company, for a decade the most innovative studio of the Soviet cinema. To summarize the works of the congress, the author often resorts to the symbolic language of images (such as the stormy sea or animated parts) and the story of those days that had to decide the future of Italy ends, without clarifying the results of the Congress and the split, on a red flag and on the hope of a bright future. In the elections of November 16, 1919, Par
tito Socialista had been the most voted party, with 32% of the votes and 156 seats, in those of May 15 it obtained 24% of the votes and 123 seats, the Communist Party of Italy 4% and 15 parliamentarians.
The wind had turned, the march on Rome was almost upon us ".