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Italy made worldwide news in July 2001 when one young man was killed and several hundred were injured during protests surrounding the G8 Summit in Genoa. While outside of Italy these events were fit within the tidy emplotment of escalating violence in the "anti-globalization" movement, inside Italy their meaning and significance extended to encompass a still unresolved history of fascism and state-sanctioned violence. This article examines the complexities of "narrating Genoa" within the political, ideological, personal and historical landscapes of contemporary Italy through close readings of documentaries that emerged in the wake of the Genoa protests. Although legal decisions have repeatedly ruled in favor of police and government forces, the memory and meaning of those events remain far from resolved and can be situated within a legacy of memoria divisa that has defined Italy throughout the postwar period.
On July 18-22, 2001, the Group of Eight (G8), the annual forum bringing together leaders from eight of the world's most powerful economies, convened in Genoa, Italy, against the backdrop of massive organized protests. Those four days in July left one young man dead, several hundred injured, and an entire country divided on the "meaning of Genoa." Despite numerous court decisions in favor of police and government forces and a ruling by the European Court on Human Rights that there had been "no disproportionate use of force" in the death of 23-year-old protestor Carlo Giuliani,1 the struggle over narrating Genoa and determining the meaning and memory of those events remains a raw and open wound. What should be remembered of Genoa? The death of Carlo Giuliani? Black-hooded protestors setting cars on fire? Abuse by police? A theater of war? Or perhaps the power and voice of collective action? So far, over thirty documentaries and one feature-length film dedicated to Genoa have emerged in an attempt to inform what will be remembered of these events. Some of these are the carefully crafted work of established auteurs, as is the case of Francesca Comencini's Carlo Giuliani: Ragazzo or Francesco Maselli's collective endeavor Un mondo diverso è possibile. Others could more accurately be defined as video testimonials: images captured through hand-held digital cameras by participants with limited professional training but with a great desire to serve as witnesses to...