The docu-series on the victorious expedition in Chile is shown again in prime time
Chasing the long wave of high ratings recorded by tennis, Rai 2 continues to tell the story Davis Cup taking a leap back to 1976. It will be shown again on Thursday 30 November in prime time A team the six-episode docu-series that tells the story of the protagonists of that success. The six episodes are transformed into a single documentary film broadcast on TV tonight.
a team the film on TV tonight
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A team. The film by Domenico Procacci is written by Procacci himself with Sandro Veronesi, Lucio Biancatelli, Giogiò Franchini. Through archive images and unpublished interviews, the docufilm recounts the Italian victory in Davis Cup in 1976. Four athletes Adriano Panatta, Paolo Bertolucci, Corrado Barazzutti and Tonino Zugarelli, led by Nicola Pietrangeli conquered the world with their tennis. Beyond sport, that team also had to face the wave of political controversy. The final was in fact played in Santiago de Chile and in 1976 it was not so simple to go and play in a state governed by a dictatorship, like that of Pinochet born from a coup d’état facilitated by Kissinger’s USA, who died in these last hours.
the chaos of 1976
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Italian politics avoided making a decision, leaving the task of deciding what to do to the Italian Tennis Federation, suffering the consequences in both cases. In the end we played that final and won it. A team is not a documentary film just for tennis fans, but a story that intertwines humanity, politics, history and the life of a group of young athletes dragged into a controversy bigger than themselves and who made history. A formidable team who in those five years reached the final four times, winning only in ’76 against Chile (they lost the finals in ’77 against Australia, in ’79 against the USA and in ’80 against Czechoslovakia). In ’76 and ’77 the team had as non-playing captain a legend of Italian tennis, Nicola Pietrangeli, who retired from competitive activity only a few years ago. Pietrangeli was sacked by his players after the ’77 defeat in Australia.
production
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Domenico Procacci he said that the documentary was possible because everyone agreed to participate. “If just one of them had told me no I wouldn’t have done anything” admitted the director. In the end Davis’ story 1976 between laughter and long faces, jokes and teasing, arguments and reconciliations, drama and comedy, produced by Fandango, Sky, Luce Cinecittà saw the light giving the world of sport and TV the fresco of a unforgettable era.
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