«An emotional and fascinating story of Italy and the world through the extraordinary editions of the Rai news, from 1954 to today, in the world suspended by the pandemic». This is how Walter Veltroni summarizes the soul of his documentary, Extraordinary edition broadcast on Saturday 5 December at 9.45pm on Rai3. In an hour and a half – “like in a film” – the exact moments in which Italians learned of the great events that changed the course of contemporary history will be retraced, fixed by images from all over the world, through the circuits of international information, and for this reason they have become symbolic for the country and the Italians. There are pieces of impact such as when Fazio was interrupted to give the news of Ilaria Alpi’s death or when Frizzi gave up the line for the massacre of Nassiriya.
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The documentary starts in 1954, but the first real extraordinary edition dates back to 1963 and announces the death of John 23. As a sign of mourning, Rai suspended the programs: it seems light years have passed, today all the schedules would be upset to give every detail of the news.
“That is the real first extraordinary edition, and for that first time Rai chooses this apparent paradox. But the public service for a certain period played to take away. The case of Tenco, seventh news of the day given saying that the Festival would continue despite the singer’s suicide. It also happens for the murder of Ambrosoli which in the flow of news is preceded by the ACEA blackout in Rome. It is a Rai that tends to remove, leverage and smooth out if it can. Except for some glimpses of gigantic journalism such as Zavoli’s page on the Florence flood with Giannini making the sound of the Arno heard on the telephone from the open window ».
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shadow carousel
«Extraordinary edition», Veltroni’s documentary which tells about Italy and the world since 1954
This documentary is also a way to read against the light the way in which information has changed: first the reports, then the announcers, then the journalists until the extraordinary editions are diluted in the permanent flow of information on Rai. Frajese’s studio story on the meaning of the fall of the Berlin Wall it is manual.
«Frajese deserves to go down in history not only for the merit of having kicked the troublemaker Paolini … Today an editorial like this would be unthinkable, because we have gone back, we have returned to a depersonalization of management. The strength of the Mentana news in my opinion is precisely that which derives at the same time from the authority and the ability to sew fragments. After all, Mentana replaces the culture of the fragment – the sequence of services – with the culture of the story. And that’s what the Frajese, the Vespa, the Andrea Barbato, the Italo Moretti, the Ennio Mastrostefano, the Pastore, the Gruber, the Lorenza Foschini, the Busi, the Carmen Lasorella, the Mariolina Sattaninos did. We have reached the threshold of this millennium in this way ».
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Today it is different. Is it also a question of personality, of depth?
“Personality also depends on the degree of freedom that is granted to you. If your task is to tell the events of the day you change tone, if instead the task is to read the hunchback, the viewer perceives this distance ».
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The documentary is a long sequence, a chronological blob, never interrupted by commentary interviews, by interventions that “explain”. Why this choice?
“You could have taken the fairly traditional way of interviewing the journalist who made the report, but I thought that this would have also emotionally slowed down the pace of this story, which is basically the story of how Italians have known history in the succession of events. Because until the arrival of private televisions, it is by watching Rai that the Italians knew what was happening and experienced the consequent emotions. It seemed right to me to avoid an intervention that would temporarily shift the sequence of events to the present day, I wanted this thread to cross almost 70 years of history and also allow a game of memories and differences. The goal was to maintain a narrative tension that had an emotion and a balance inside at the same time ».
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The only face that does not give news is that of Biagi.
«I have tried to mention all those who have made the history of Rai and if I have forgotten someone, I’m sorry. I tried to tell those who told the Italians about Italy, and Enzo was certainly one of the most important figures. The film also has a dedication: to the journalists and Rai operators who fell while doing their job, and a particular thought is for Ilaria Alpi, a girl I knew because I was very good friends with her parents. ‘
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What are your personal extraordinary editions?
“I remember themurder of Bachelet, that image on the stairs struck me very much; obviously Moro with the extraordinary service of Frajese; but I consider the chronicle of Andrea Barbato on the attack a Robert Kennedy – practically without images – a masterpiece of journalism ».
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You have practically always chosen the documentary as a form of visual storytelling. What does the documentary have more than fictional cinema?
«I love making documentaries because you have an anchor that is given by an objective element – that is the object you are dealing with – and at the same time you have an infinite possibility of choice. To realize Extraordinary edition we have seen hundreds and hundreds of hours of programming ».
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Once the documentary was a niche, today it is an increasingly recognized genre. The Italian candidate for the Oscars is «Notturno» by Gianfranco Rosi, a diary in images along the border areas between Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Kurdistan.
«The documentary is one of the many forms of cinema, and if one wishes, cinema is one of the many forms of the documentary. How much documentary was there in neorealism? How much in certain American cinema that has told the Vietnam War? And, on the contrary, as much as there is imagination, fiction in documentaries … Rosi, the documentary on Totti, art documentaries, by now viewers are getting used to considering the documentary as one of the forms of expression of cinema”.
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Has been mayor of Rome, what special edition do you wish for your city?
“Since we are talking about the boundary between imagination and reality, we are talking about an immaterial fact: I would like an extraordinary edition in Fellinian style that would announce that Rome has recovered the pride of itself, the sense of community, the discovery of a public spirit”.
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The documentary is produced by Rai Storia. Rai, even in these days, is always under the wind of more or less strong gusts or storms.
«This documentary is also a sentimental journey for me. I have Rai in my heart for my father Vittorio who was director of the first news program in 1954. But this documentary is also a great act of love for Rai, which is a gigantic heritage of history, competence, ability and possibility. Danilo Rea rearranged the news in his own way for the opening and closing credits and I wanted to do everything only with internal Rai staff. It is an act of love for this offended and vilified company, upset by its own responsibilities, but a company that has been and is one of the most powerful realities in the Italian cultural industry. He taught reading and writing with the teacher Manzi, he taught to read novels, he taught cinema with Bertolucci, Rossellini and Fellini, to know how to laugh at oneself with Arbore. I would like those who work inside it to feel the pride of this story ».
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29 November 2020 (change November 29, 2020 | 22:43)
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