LUCIANO DEL CASTILLO, ‘PESTO ALLA GENOVESE’ (Tempesta publisher. Page 117, Euro 22.00) – The precious gift of invisibility, as Filippo Ceccarelli tells well in the preface, allows Luciano Del Castillo ” to stop time, seize the moment, depict the symbol. In Genoa he gives the public from all over the world a sort of monument of revolt and revolt, an icon without time and without a face, reinforced, hypnotic, formidable, frightening ”.
That symbol is obviously a dramatic and eloquent photo, then a photo of the Year that became a symbol of those dramatic days, which now stands in ” Pesto alla Genovese. Between tear gas, Molotov cocktails and blood: the direct testimony of a reporter 20 years after the G8 ”, just published by Tempesta publisher.
According to Maurizio Caprara, Del Castillo is a journalist for ” the desire to see how the disorder of the world goes, to try to describe the inequalities between the living conditions of human beings in the hope of contributing in a small part to reducing them ”. It all begins when Roberta, her half in life, listens to her name on the radio among those affected, she who also has a policeman brother and a demonstrator brother at the G8. A symbol of a situation that is difficult to understand, of which Del Castillo speaks for the first time in this exciting story and which still has many knots to untie. The images remain, strong, eloquent, beautiful in their drama, which we find in this book in which history becomes a tale.
He left as a reporter for the ANSA Agency on July 18, 2001 in the sultry heat of an Italian summer, crossing the Aurelia, in his cinematic surreality. We are two months away from the Twin Towers and there have been no violent street demonstrations in Italy for decades. So despite the tense climate on the eve, no one expects what will happen to happen, not even Del Castillo who thinks rather of going to follow the official demonstration of the great of the earth. But this will not be the case. From the day after July 19, the photographic coverage of the official event will last the space of a greeting and the situation will immediately be out of control, in the streets.
He in an orange T-shirt, hat, sunglasses like a tourist, while his colleagues are wearing a helmet and written in giant letters’ ‘PRESS’. He accuses them of delusions of protagonism. But when he sees masked boys walking past with screwdrivers and clearly trained to extract the porphyry blocks of the road to throw them at the officers in riot gear, he understands that it will not be a day like any other. The bottles of the bells used as bombs, the shopping carts to quickly carry the ” weapons ”, the changes of clothes to not be identifiable. The attack is systematic, organized, and Del Castillo documents it minute by minute as a living thing that he sees growing before his eyes, full of violence.
In the beautiful photos dynamic bodies silhouetted in the smoke, dancers of a dance whose meaning is difficult to grasp, with the violence that triggers that of the police who here put in handcuffs and drag these boys. With the ghost of fear and the oblivion of what happens at Diaz, where they will do things that still await answers. In the midst of the death of a boy, whom Del Castillo went to download the photos, he only catches the cries of “ murderers, murderers ” and at that moment no one can tell him more. It is Carlo Giuliani (but he will discover the name later) struck by another boy, Mario Placanica. Meanwhile, he sees less and less due to his swollen eyes due to tear gas, he has lost a card and photographers are being beaten on all sides. A dramatic day in which he is ” full of ferocity ”, in front of which he would like to retreat but remains there to do his duty, trying to be invisible, with his orange shirt. The streets are stained with blood, fear, shots.
” The scene is apocalyptic – writes Del Castillo – because during the clash, however heavy it may be, the adrenaline makes you hold on and sometimes you don’t realize the gravity of what is happening ”. Until he himself is hit by a gas discharge, taken with a thousand resistances to the hospital, stripped and left there with an injury to his right eye.
” It’s been 20 years but it seems like yesterday. Because what we experienced in those days of July in Genoa nothing and no one will ever be able to erase ”, writes Fiorenza Sarzanini who was the first to rescue Del Castillo as she tells in this beautiful book that brings together many lives – some dramatically interrupted – and to which is added the testimony of Massimo Percossi, also a photographer and companion of those days.
(ANSA).
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Source From: Ansa
I have been working in the news industry for over 10 years now and I have worked for some of the biggest news websites in the world. My focus has always been on entertainment news, but I also cover a range of other topics. I am currently an author at Global happenings and I love writing about all things pop-culture related.
