TOGLIATTI(GRAD) A film by Federico Schiavi and Gian Piero Palombini

Transcription

1 TOGLIATTI(GRAD) A film by Federico Schiavi and Gian Piero Palombini Togliatti(grad) will reconstruct the birth of the city of Togliatti, founded in the Samara region, a thousand miles east of Moscow as the result of an agreement between the Soviet Union president Breznev and the Fiat owner Giovanni Agnelli. In the 60 s this unnatural couple planned to create a global hub of the cars in the heart of Communist Russia and, all around, a new town having the name of Palmiro Togliatti, the carismatic leader of the Italian Communist Party, may be the worst enemy of the Italian capitalism after the 2 nd world war. It was an economic, strategic and diplomatic deal that compared two worlds and two opposite ideas of progress. At the same time it was one of the largest urban and industrial enterprises of the twentieth century: in a few years, a city of one million residents was born around the plants of "ziguly", the Soviet car derived from Fiat 124. Togliatti was built between 1967 and 1973 thanks to the fundamental contribution of hundreds of western workers, coming mostly from Turin-Mirafiori plants and from Germany, but also, on the other side, thanks to the Soviet workers coming from all over the Union. Italians were sent to Russia by Fiat for the first phase of the project; among them there were technicians, skilled workers, economists, managers, cooks, and one priest. Through the direct experiences of the protagonists, and through a formidable historical footage, the documentary will tell this special experience using a powerful instrument: the detailed diary of the italian priest, Father Galasso and he one of the director of the Factory (found by one of hies relatives last year). The diaries and the direct testimonies describe every aspect of life of that unusual community: the marriages between Italians and Russians, the failed romantic relationships, the parties held on Saturday at the gym of "ziguly" hotel, the transformation of it in a secret church every Sunday. Also it s the testimony of a some personal disillusions about socialims. Galasso and the others are indeed careful narrators of the rhythms and dynamics of work, the cases of depression and alcoholism, the difficult adaptation to the climate and the necessity to solve and overcome problems.

2 Out of the assembly line the western workers experienced the Russian Christmas, the trips on the Volga river, many moments of friendship with the Soviet workers. Many home movies and some Russian archive images tell these moments. Also the relations with the religious authorities and believers of the Orthodox Church (which, in Breznev's Russia, continued to operate under very special conditions: the liturgies were tolerated but were strictly prohibited from proselytizing) gave rise to moments of real sharing of experiences as well as ambiguous and dangerous situations with the agents of the KGB. Togliatti(grad) wants to evoke the difficult and fascinating saga of the birth of a city in the heart of the Soviet empire, but also the experimental creation of a group of workers related to this story because of ideological, professional or sentimental reasons. In Togliatti, in a few years, cinemas, theaters, public parks were created, and also an embryonic market economy started attracting the attention of the international community and the intellectual world; the writer and chemist Primo Levi went there and found inspiration for his literary work, and even the actor Alberto Sordi, popular in the USSR, decided to shoot with Cesare Zavattini a film in Togliatti. The construction of the plant was finished in 1973 generating much criticism, both east and west of the Iron Curtain, for the unusual organizational and management model, too socialist for some and too capitalist for others. But all this, despite the controversy surrounding the loss of FIAT revenues in subsequent years, continued to be defended by Giovanni Agnelli, the prince of the Italian capitalists, for its symbolic content. It s a fact that most of the cars produced in the USSR in the following years came from Togliatti. In Europe and in Italy this is a forgotten story. The name of the town, among the communist ones, survived the USSR dissolution, may be because Togliatti is a name that doesn t remember anything to many Russians or may be because it remembers a very special moment in Russian history for others. The plants are still working even after the crisis caused by the dissolution of the Soviet empire, and recently some brands, including Chrysler, Lada and Renault, have signed partnership agreements with the company which took over the plant to renovate the production; Togliattigrad is still one of the main producer of cars in the world.

3 The town was for many years the youngest metropolis in the world (26 years, average age), a genuine international unprecedented laboratory-community that was able to self-organize between two ideologies and two powerful propaganda machines, so even after 40 years this story is alive. Director's notes To tell the foundation of Togliatti, represents a complex challenge: a story full of thoroughly extraordinary historical, political and human elements. We chose to tell that adventure through the sole tale of the direct witnesses, the impressive film archive and the landscape of the cities of Togliatti and Turin.

4 It will, therefore, be essential to let the protagonists see themselves in the archive footage from 40 years ago, as well as creating such a confidential thread with them as to make their storytelling completely natural. Our interest is that the camera could be a witness of the re-emerging of their long lost memories, even those that appear less significant; through this method we want to assemble a mosaic of facts and situations that can take the viewer into the atmosphere of those months and the many moments of human, technical and political effort which characterized it. The re-encounter, after many years, of people who worked in Togliatti, will be a useful tool in order to re-discover collective memories and emotions. We will render some of the elements that are feature to this episode, through classical cinematographic language, archive footage, aside of a description of the locations and collection of testimony. And the elements are: 1_ The contrast between an overwhelming nature, even hostile, connoted by wide spaces and extreme climate conditions; and the hectic action of humans, with their accelerated rhythms, their world made of geometric, machines and straight lines. A landscape that real Socialism stressed to its extreme consequences, but that also belongs to the city of Turin itself. The same contrast of pictures is also present, even in a more direct and powerful way, in the sounds of the two different environments. 2_ The ideological power of the two different political and industrial systems that collided in Togliatti: a conflict that's clearly identifiable in the two different types of iconography, in the way, often alternative, to organize spaces, time and method of work. Togliatti was maybe, in this sense, the first place where, in one spot and for a short time, the Berlin wall fell. 3_ The relation between memory and present that, in the view of the protagonists, after 40 years, allows us to read the life of today with a special point of view, sober and sometimes bitter. Even just to match the locations of the past to those of today, which we will often fill with the same women and men, strongly gives the idea of the huge transformations that occurred during these decades. Clearly such matching describes the deep disillusion that's proper of Russian and Western societies during the time of de-industrialization, but it also describes the pride of who still states today that it was the greatest adventure of their lives. We want to collect our protagonists' testimony during their everyday life activities. Therefore the many personal stories will be told in many different locations: the significant places of our interviewees' lives. This will be only possible through a long and respectful work, together with our characters. We need to create such confidence to turn the camera into a non invasive object, in order to allow each one's memory to flow in the most natural way. The use of the testimony from the two original diaries that we have, will be of great importance we count on the fact that their words can generate a strong emotional and historical contrast with the ones that are filtered by the memory of the witnesses who are still alive. The complementarity of the points of view, will be fundamental: the western children who fraternized with their Russian coetaneous will be the other face of Italian and Russian managers who projected the city. Priest Don Galasso's diary will be a counterpoint to former workers of the assembly lines. The sight of western technicians who looked at Russian women at work on their lines and often fell in love with them, will be reported by the same women with irony and tenderness. Finally, a description of the city today, made in a dry way, without comments, observing the inhabitants who lived there since the first day, will show to us locations that may seem ordinary, with completely different eyes; eventually the spaces of the city will be seen as the product of an exceptional historical moment.

5 SUTTVUESS VIA SANNIO 61, ROMA P.IVA TEL