By Luisa Terzulli
We were expecting to see an audience composed mainly by Italians at the Odeon screening of Viva Zapatero! but, instead, the majority of the people were “foreigners”. Is this a sign that the Italians are increasingly less interested to what happens in their own country? Maybe in other European countries there is more interest in trying to understand the particular conditions in which the “Bel Paese” lies?
Viva Zapatero! – the title is a celebration of the progressive reforms passed by the Spanish Prime Minister – is a 2005 satirical documentary directed by the brilliant actress/comedian Sabina Guzzanti.
The birth of the film was triggered by the suing for defamation, for the amount of 20 millions of Euros, by Berlusconi – at that time the Italian Prime Minister – against Sabina Guzzanti’s satirical television performance in the programme Raiot. After the first show of the series, on air on 16th of November 2003, the programme was immediately censored.
The case was successively archived as the charge was declared groundless: the programme was, indeed, satirical – and thus authorised to use paradox – and the content of the comedy was, indeed, true.
In Viva Zapatero! Sabina goes out in the street and faces directly those who have banned her programme from the Italian television; she interviews those who have been banned before her and condemns the Italian post-modern ostracism. The idea behind the film is also that of confronting the Italian system of media and information with that of other countries and the resulting conclusions are indeed quite surprising: if in countries like France and the United Kingdom satirical programmes are considered a healthy and successful informative tool, in Italy everything that is not in line with a political strand is always fought against to the cries of “Defamation!”.
An artist like Sabina Guzzanti, who has constructed her career as an actress and a comedian on satire, has to respond to the accusations of trying to do pseudo-journalism without knowing what satire is and how much independent from politics is.
The intervention in the film of Luciano Canfora – professor of Classical Philology at the University of Bari – reveals the ridiculous nature of the accusations, clarifying that politics was the object of satire since ancient Greece:
“Aristofane includes in his comedies entire political discourses” explains the professor – “it used to be called parabasi; the corifeo used to stand aside from the rest of the chorus and say: “Now I speak to the people” and starting with this would then address any present-day topic such as war, politics, customs and so on…”.
Sabina Guzzanti presents things the way they are, she poses some questions and she then looks for the answers; there is no commonplace or easy accusations in her film, but only documented facts, and opinions reported from both the parties involved in the case of television banning. The film is a journey towards the unveiling of truth. The truth is to be unveiled in fact, and not researched, because the heart of the documentary is the fight for freedom of information and expression, and the independence from political games and interests.
And as Sabina Guzzanti has written in her presentation of the film regarding freedom, “let’s take our freedom back, and since we are here let’s try to take a bit more, it was not enough anyway”.
We have interviewed on purpose a foreigner spectator soon after the film. This was her comment: “I have decided to come to watch Viva Zapatero! because I already had interest for this case, I knew that in Italy there are not many satirical programmes, but I could not imagine the reason. What has really surprised me was the ban of Sabina Guzzanti’s programme: in this country something like this would be unthinkable, because it would be considered straight away a breaking of the freedom of expression. Even though I am not Italian, it was easy to understand the general contest of the film, and I think that the documentary has been presented in a very objective way, giving space to all the parties involved. And apart from the political side of the film, I find Sabina Guzzanti a very funny actress!”.
Copyright 2006 GIORGIOSTUDIO – All rights reserved |
