Genoa 2001, the Death of Carlo Giuliani and the Making of Berlusconi’s Mousetrap
Here’s something which Eamonn Crudden passed on to me today to mark the anniversary of the death 10 years ago of Carlo Giuliani, a young anarchist who was shot dead by Italian Police in Genoa during the Anti-Globalisation protests against the G8 meeting in the city.
Below is his 2002 documentary Berlusconi’s Mousetrap, and a 12,000 word account of the events surrounding the filming of the documentary in Genoa, his and those 10 other Irish people who formed the nascent “Indymedia Ireland” group response to the tactics of the Italian police and afterwards as Eamonn worked on the documentary over the next year. Because the account, Irishvidheads in Genoa, is very long I’ve embedded it in Issuu, but can also be downloaded.
The following is taken from Eamonn’s post today on Dublin Opinion, which he posted to mark the event.
The making of it took up pretty much one whole year of my life. Quite a lot of the material was shot by a bunch of ten of us who traveled to the protests in Genoa with the intention of working in an organised way on a documentary. We were also intent on working with Indymedia in Genoa. Indymedia Italy was just getting off the ground at the time and we, as a group, had a certain familiarity with and interest in the Indymedia model. It was spreading like wildfire in Europe in the aftermath of the protests against the IMF and World Bank in Prague in September of 2000. We did work closely with Indymedia while there and the film draws heavily on an archive that was produced by those who worked in and around the Indymedia centre in Genoa. Most of our little Irish subgroup of ten people ended up being involved in the formation of an Irish Indymedia collective in late 2001.
I think the documentary stands the test of time reasonably well. I got quite a bit of stick when it was first screened and distributed for what some saw as its overly conspiratorial tone. This exchange of views is quite typical of a lot of conversations I had around the time. I don’t regret that tone. Things like this remind me that Italy has a habit of living up to your worst imaginings when it comes to dirty and conspiratorial politics. A viewing of a really excellent and very forensic documentary made by the Genoa Legal Forum – OP Genova also served to emphasise for me the strangeness of the police tactics in the hours leading up to the death of Carlo Guiliani.
Berlusconi’s Mousetrap from aaronrip on Vimeo
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