Leon Cakoff, from Venice, for Jornal da Mostra

Edited by Renata de Almeida and Leon Cakoff

The gallery of genius from a glorious past in Italian cinema has not, for a long time, provided inspiration for the new film makers. In the midst of accusations of censorship from the Berlusconi era, and of bureaucracy and dictatorial practices in television, the new Italian cinema present at the 62nd Venice Film Festival does all it can to call attention. And the press, parochial as ever, invariably venting the same complaints, is face to face with yet another year without the main prize awarded by the festival.

In the midst of this long-term crisis, another festival has been announced with the same Auditorium di Roma for a stage that was the setting for libel for the satyrical document Viva Zapatero!, by Sabina Guzzanti. Sabina's documentary is the greatest witness to the lack of freedom of expression in contemporary Italy that ranks Italy in an absurd 63rd place among the countries with the highest degree of censorship in the world today. The Rome Film Festival, programmed for November 2006, is a reason for concern, to the Venice Biennial Foundation organizing the film festival.

Viva Zapatero! was presented in Venice as a surprise film under the responsibility of the Associazone degli Autori, most certainly to prevent censorship ahead of time. The film was produced as from the day the RaiOt program of political satire was banned when it should have been presented on Italian television by humorist Sabina Guzzanti herself. As a protest, she enacted the program planned for TV as a theater play, with the Rome Auditorium completely sold out, and close on one hundred thousand protesting viewers in the square outside, watching the program on a giant screen.

Sabina presents an alarming panorama of how censorship gradually wormed its way in and ultimately imposed itself on the Italian press under the domination of the Berlusconi multimedia government. Those interviewed in the film call for a reaction on the part of the journalists. The documentary carries out a survey on how the press was gradually silenced at the onset of fascism, includes a manifesto from intelectuals who cannot conform, and instances of escapism from the politicians who today control Italian telecommunication.

In another touching documentary at the 62nd Venice Film Festival, Kill Gil (Part 1) was made by Gil Rosselini when he himself lay between life and death. Gil is the adopted son of Roberto Rosselini, master of Italian neo-realism. From one year to the next, we see Gil first of all at the 2004 Venice Film Festival, in his prime, welcomed as a prestigious producer. A few months later, he was in coma in a hospital in Sweden, in the grip of a terrible bacterial infection. Gil Rosselini returned to Venice in a wheel chair. His documentary, that he promises to lend continuity to with more parts, is a courageous manifesto for life, the struggle the film maker and producer underwent in undergoing mutilation by 20 surgical interventions, holding out in a rehabilitation center in Switzerland. "It was the will to live, to withstand with all my might, to broadcast my example, that saved me", says Gil Rosselini. His film is staggering, many a time with images that are difficult to distinguish, but of rare feeling, regenerating. The film takes viewers to the limits with fine instances of resistance.

Translation into English: Clare Elizabeth Charity (clarecharity@uol.com.br)