In ‘The Red Brigades and the cinema’, professor Luis Veres picks up the echo of the terror and chaos during the ‘years of lead’

Red or black. Between the years 60 and 80, these two were not options for betting on roulette, which was invented by Blaise Pascal, but also the colour of two types of terrorism -rosso, of the extreme left; the nero, of the extreme right – that desquiciaron everyday life in the management of day-to-day in Italy. Hundreds of organisations emerged with the aim to destabilize a democracy is precarious and the balance of this crazed game were more than 14,500 attacks. “We’re at war,” said Aldo Moro following the placement of several bombs in Piazza Fontana, Milan. A contest in which almost all the dead were unarmed.

professor Luis Veres, of the University of Valencia, has been in The red brigades and the cinema (Ed. Tirant Humanities) a comprehensive review of the filmography of the time. “There is much talk of the French may, but the Italian was much more radical,” explains the author. “I had an intention to subvert the State that lasts until 80. In the 93, with Italy in the European Union, they could still stop you on the street for terrorism”.

The escalation of tension would rise up to the abduction and murder of a leading christian democrat Aldo Moro. As the three wounds of Miguel Hernandez -the love, the death and the life – president of the Christian Democracy is felt to die three times:”due to insufficient protection, by the rejection of the negotiation (with the Red Brigades) and by the policy useless.” Twelve years after the discovery of his corpse, with a bullet in the neck, in the trunk of a car, might be read this and other reflections febrile in a score of letters written from the dungeon.

In the landscape after the event which shocked a whole country, only had a place for the desolation to the consequences of the work itself. According to Luis Veres, there was no booty, because they could not be successful. For the terrorists, the situation was lose / lose:they are met with a resentful population that would prefer not to know anything of their rescuers.

however, on the social level, conquered it advances as “the position of women in the world;change the university, which was anchored to the old and where people came out as Deleuze, Foucault, Sartre… In Padua, the students took to the university and were organized in a commune,” says professor Veres.

with regard to the film, “very good quality”, in these years convulsive, and, unlike Spain with the domestic terrorism of ETA, was a faithful witness of reality. “In Italy was a comedy bit complacent. In Spain they were movies historiographical, without a critical look. It was not easy and there was a fear. During the franco years, ETA had a halo of heroism from 73, when they kill Carrero Blanco”, he argues.

There is a type of cinema, however, that the style of the films americans, and raises in any way that the fire is extinguished with more fire. The violence, with more violence. “They defended that the Police was too soft with the criminals. Then you would see the phenomenon with more realism, with a certain showiness. In the 80’s, just ten years later, there’s a film that imposes more distance, then examines the phenomenon with a critical perspective. That here in Spain it has always been so warm”.

The mass exodus of militants was general in the 80’s, although not definitive. The Red Brigades are reinventarían and even in 2003 the Police deal a serious blow to the terrorist group with the arrest of six of its members.

Two decades of slaughter that they were not anything

“After twenty years of terror in the streets, the Red Brigades did not get anything,” explains professor Luis Veres. “Nothing,” rivets. “It is true that the working demands were fulfilled, but more by the pressure from the trade union by the terrorist threat. What means of communication were dominated by the Christian Democracy and the attacks have criminalized to the left, we removed the Communist Party the leading role might have had. People afraid to vote what you think will be providing security: the government hard was the Christian Democracy, who was able to fill the streets and monetize”. The red brigades and the cinema, Luis veres. Publisher: Tirant Humanidades. 187 pages.

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