"Storia di Filomena e Antonio: gli anni'70 e la droga a Milano" (1/3) di Antonello Branca (1976)

A documentary on the drug epidemic in Milan in the 1970s. Antonello Branca was one of the most significant Italian documentary filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s. Born in Rome on May 15, 1935, but originally from Sardinia, he worked as a photographer in Kenya at the age of 24. He later became a London correspondent for the Agenzia Italia. The director began his career as a documentary filmmaker here. His films, besides being valuable historical documents, are also exemplary of an innovative method. His debut was a "different" reportage: Aria di Londra (1961), made with photographer Lorenzo Capellini. For four years, Antonello Branca collaborated with TV7, the second network's cult news program. His report on the Vajont disaster (1963) was the first to expose human responsibility for the disaster. The director was banned and banned from the program for a long time. In 1965, Mastroianni spoke to Antonello, who followed him for months in his activities. The portrait is completed by those who worked with him: Vasco Pratolini, Federico Fellini, Giulietta Masina, Valerio Zurlini, Pietro Germi, Luchino Visconti, Jeanne Moreau, and Sophia Loren. In 1966, Antonello moved to the United States, where he embarked on a rich documentary journey. In "What's Happening?" (1967), Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, Fred Mgubgub, and Marie Benois recount their America, Pop Art, and the Beat Generation. "What's Happening?" won the Agis Cup at the 1967 Festival dei Popoli in Florence. In 1968, Antonello filmed "California," a three-part documentary on the most dynamic state of the Union. Among these, "Il dissenso," which won two awards at the 1968 Este Film Festival. The song "Seize the Time" by Elaine Brown inspired the title of the film about the Black Panther Party (1970), a feature film made with the Black Panthers about the living conditions of black Americans, their repression, and the movement's organized resistance. "Seize the Time" won the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment Quality Award at the 1970 Pesaro Film Festival. In 1976, he documented the spread of drugs in Milan through the story "Filomena and Antonio." In 1977, he recounted the plagues of Naples. "Cartoline da Napoli" caused a small political earthquake, and the Hon. Gava himself took the stand against the program. In 1989, Antonello Branca began a four-year research project on the relationship between war and technology. Hundreds of interviews, the collaboration of scholars such as David S. Landes and Nathan Rosenberg, and the contributions of the scientists who built the A-bomb, have led to the creation of a trilogy, "War and Technology," which documents the relationship between the military and the economic development of the United States from the birth of the American state in the late 1700s to the Gulf War of 1991. In recent years, Antonello had begun working on an ambitious project: an "alternative" history of the United States, of which a detailed work on "The Great Depression" remains. The director's death interrupted this research path on June 25, 2002.