Sacco & Vanzetti (1971)

I am not sure why this post was not on time. Or, maybe I am: it is not the easiest thing on earth to write about social injustice, the shortcomings of Law as a social practice and the uptightness of the upper management (sic). Hierarchy is a wall more unbreakable than the Berliner wall -that had to fall, eventually.

To cut a long story short, as this post comes quite late -it was originally planned to glorify the successful event organised by Cinematheque de la Ville de Luxembourg with the opportunity of the screening of Sacco & Vanzetti (1971), the original feature film by Giuliano Montaldo- injustice is hard to cope with and even harder to digest. But we manage to live with it every single day, just as we manage to pretend we don't quite care.

The screening was a clear success, the venue almost sold out thanks to the Italians -I've noticed these bravissimi Italiani in Luxembourg, how they are sticking together and showing fraternity in every possible sense, whether it is to go and have a pizza or an aperitivo all'italiano, or to support a cultural event. And this was a big event indeed, as the director himself, now well at his eighties, was invited to present his film and take questions from the audience. 

The moving film was contrapuntal to the allegro director, who was lively and energetic and told us about his future plans to do a biographical documentary on Gian Maria Volonté, a leading Italian actor.

As for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, they were courageous and true to themselves and they deserve all our respect -I'm thankful to the film that acquainted me to their story. They stood for what they believed until the end and they died in the electric chair only because the "upper management" could not accept that they lived through vehemently xenophobe times and immigrants were not welcome at Massachusetts (or elsewhere, for that sake), let alone immigrants with anarcho-communistic tendencies.



If you want to know more on the Sacco and  Vanzetti case that made the whole world unite in protests and shout "Libertà per Nick e Bart", do watch the film by Montaldo, or the latest documentary Sacco and Vanzetti (2006) by Peter Miller. Alternatively, you can read the lengthy and detailed article by Felix Frankfurter that was written in time, but wasn't enough to save them. And, there's Joan Baez with her songs Here's to You, The Ballad and some more you can discover. With the hope of a world without hatred and discrimination of any kind. Amen (yep, that very last bit was ironic).