Lucia Festival \ Events
TALK and LISTENINGS
Saturday 14 December, 2024
Amerigo Gomez, Victor De Santis, Dina Luce
Focus reportage
"Firenze 1944" and "Il viaggio della turbonave Galileo Galilei"
THIS SESSION IS IN ITALIAN ONLY
This year, Lucia’s usual focus on the history of radio in Italy, turns its ears to two seminal reportage-pieces.
Accompanied by Marta Perrotta and Rodolfo Sacchettini, we will listen to Amerigo Gomez and Victor De Santis’s incredible 1944 account of the battle for the liberation of Florence in its 80th anniversary.
We will also rediscover the unique voice of Dina Luce, author and RAI journalist who in 1968 embarked on the turbo-ship Galileo Galilei bound for Australia to follow a group of Italian emigrants. Over the course of a journey lasting more than a month, Dina Luce collects in a series of snapshots the voices and stories of a popular Italy seeking new opportunities and better living and working conditions.
Firenze 1944 – Amerigo Gomez e Victor De Santis
The documentary ‘Firenze Agosto 1944’ recounts the last days of the city’s liberation from Nazi-Fascism, which took place on 11 August 1944. Through unpublished sound recordings made in Florence between 31 July and 30 September 1944, the authors, Amerigo Gomez and Victor De Santis, provide an important historical and human testimony of the Italian resistance during the Second World War. Ten years after the events, the narrating voice of Amerigo Gomez evokes the crucial moments of Florence’s moving history during those terrible and sunny days of war.
The form of the radio narrative is articulated on different narrative levels highlighting the serious situation in the city during the German occupation. The original soundtrack recorded on the records kept by Gomez, recounts the contingent events experienced by the protagonists: the population, the Allies and the partisans interviewed by De Santis.
Il giornale delle donne: Il viaggio della turbonave Galileo Galilei – Dina Luce
Listening to an episode of the Giornale delle donne (Women’s Newspaper) returns a melodious and extremely fluent voice, greeting listeners with a leery pen pal tone.
It is the voice of Dina Luce, an author and RAI journalist who left in 1968 to carry out a real investigation, embarking on the turbo-ship Galileo Galilei bound for Australia to follow a group of Italian emigrants.
It was a journey lasting over a month, followed by days of interviews and the production of three or four episodes for her programme, where she included reports with the stories of people who had left to seek their fortune. The power of these snapshots, a cross-section of a working-class Italy seeking new opportunities and better living and working conditions, is unchanged in spite of the passage of time. Delicate testimonies of the women and men who populate the ship, with their stories, anxieties about where they will go to live and what job they will find, the fear of being far from their affections, the need to talk to their families through the radio links possible on the ship.
Marta Perrotta is an associate professor at the Department of Philosophy, Communication and Entertainment at the University of Roma Tre. She deals with radio and TV with particular attention to the historical, productive, technological and gender dimensions. Among her publications, Pioneers of the airwaves. Dieci donne che hanno fatto la radio(Carocci, 2025), Che cos’è un podcast (Carocci 2023, with Tiziano Bonini). Together with Tiziano Bonini he edited La radio in Italia. History, industry, languages. He directs Roma Tre Radio, the web radio of Roma Tre University. He is one of the founding partners of WePod.
Rodolfo Sacchettini has published three volumes on the history of Italian radio drama (La radiofonica arte invisibile ,Titivillus, 2011, Scrittori alla radio, FUP, 2018, Letteratura per sola voce, Anthology Digital Publishing, 2022). He edited with Ascanio Celestini Storie da legare (Edizione della Meridiana, 2006) and, together with other scholars, Memorie, autobiografie, diari nella letteratura italiana dell’Ottocento e del Novecento (ETS, 2008); Il teatro salvato dai ragazzini (Edizioni dell’Asino, 2011); Cento storie sul filo della memoria. Il ‘Nuovo Teatro’ in Italia negli anni ‘70(Titivillus, 2017); Arcipelago teatro ragazzi (Cue press, 2022). He collaborates with the Enciclopedia Treccani, with Radio 3 Rai for Il teatro di Radio 3 and Wikiradio and with Rete Toscana Classica where he has had a bi-monthly column on theatre since 2004. He teaches ‘Modern and Contemporary Italian Literature’ at the University of Florence, ‘Audio Documentary’ at the New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and ‘Music, Media and Technology’ at the Conservatory of Bologna.
All the LUCIA festival events are free entry.
The festival venue is accessible to people with reduced mobility and wheelchair users.