Cinema remembers Maurizio Valenzi, at the Mod «La Giunta» by Sandro Scippa

“La Giunta” will be presented in Naples on January 20 at 9 pm at the Modernissimo cinema with a preview event with director and producers, with the patronage of the Municipality of Naples, and will be scheduled in the same cinema from 21 January.

Already successfully presented at the 40th Torino Film GestivalScippa’s work will be screened on January 17 at the cinema Sacher cake of Rome presented by Nanni Moretti together with director and producers.

Maurizio Valenzi he was the first communist mayor in the history of Naples and ruled from 1975 to 1983, amid enormous problems ranging from unemployment to earthquake emergencies, from crime to terrorism. Those were the years when Europe was divided into two blocks before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Those were years of strong political participation, commitment and social ferment that profoundly changed the face of the city and shaped its future, with decisive urban planning choices and initiatives resulting from a cultural vision aimed at keeping the entire city community together. The “Red Mayor”, as he was defined, was the spokesperson for a new vision of the city, to which dignity and international visibility should be restored.

Through interviews with the protagonists of the time and unpublished archive material“La Giunta” is the story of a group of women and men who tried to make the dream of a policy close to the people. A charismatic mayor and a team of high-profile aldermen planted the seeds for a new idea of ​​the city, at that time still marked by war wounds and a recent cholera epidemic. However, with the terrible earthquake of 1980 and the economic interests of the reconstruction, the political and criminal balances changed profoundly, and the fate of Naples will be marked by new forms of organization of the camorra which today, as then, continues to influence the life of the city.

«The fractures that arose after the earthquake in the Giunte Valenzi – says Alessandro Scippa – were the mirror of a national situation which shortly thereafter would forever mark the fate of Italian political history. But within the intricate meshes of that public story, I felt that it would above all be a story of parents and children. And I, son of Antonio Scippaone of the councilors of those councils, Lucia Valenzi and Marco, her brother, and Federico Geremicca, son of Andrea, like Antonella Di Nocera herself and her father, a former Italsider worker, we should all have had to get involved, because that was and remains a story that concerns us and still speaks to us. The documentary tries to restore the memory of those who were nnot only years of lead but also of hopewhen really a radical change seemed at hand and in the light of the current and profound crisis of the left, more than ever it is necessary to return to interrogate that pastwhen Berlinguer’s PCI succeeded in intercepting the country’s requests».

And Antonella DiNocera: «La Giunta is an independent production, made with funds from the Ministry of Culture and the Regional Law for cinema, which has also guaranteed support for the distribution with which we will curate screenings-event in Italy. In the twentieth anniversary of Parallelo 41, this documentary, after the many made, also acquires the sense of a tribute to our city and its history. And it’s nice to hear the many people who recognize themselves in the film for how significant those years of Valenzi were. A film of conversations in which the witnesses make nostalgia, hope and memories coexist which represent glimpses of the future and above all which allow us to understand how individual stories are composed and refracted within the history of the country itself».

With the participation of Renato Carpentersso they tell Lucia Valenzi and Marco Valenzi, Frederick Jeremicca, Antonio Scippa and Floriana Mazzuca, Aldo and Antonella Di Nocera. With them Eleonora Puntillo, Emma Maida, Eugenio Donise, Aldo Cennamo, Antonio Bassolino, Mimmo Jodice, Luciano Ferrara, Gianni Fiorito, Roberto De Simone, Berardo Impegno, Alessandro Sodano, Antonio Sodano, Giulio Baffi, Marco Demarco, Nino Ferraiuolo, Francesco Iorio, Franco Courteous, Benito Visca and many other witnesses, among which Vittoria Arpaia, Aniello Borrelli, Osvaldo Cammarota, Gloria Chianese, Ermanno Corsi, Nino Daniele, Salvatore Di Maio, Giustino Fabrizio, Mario Franco, Pietro Gargano, Giovanni Ghidini Citro, Peppe Morra and Gianni Pinto who contributed research and writing for the film.

In 1984 Maurizio Valenzi was elected to the European Parliament remaining in office until 1989. Francois Mitterrand in 1984 he awarded him the Legion of honour. On the occasion of his 90th birthday, in 1999, in Naples, a large anthological exhibition was organized at the Maschio Angioino. Maurizio Valenzi passed away in 2009 at the age of 99.