Porto Marghera: the last firebrands

Film documentary and booklet on Workers' autonomy in the Veneto, Italy in the 1970s

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The title of the documentary has various meanings: the Italian word 'fuoco' means 'fire', and also a 'shootout'. In this case, the word also means the flames of the petrochemical works that make the industrial zone visible from miles around. Its future is uncertain. The environmental damage that it has caused cannot be overlooked. The hundreds of deaths from cancer can never be undone. The most polluting parts of the industry have since been outsourced to East Asia, but Italy is still among the largest PVC producers.

In the film, the fire in the industrial wasteland where the illegal immigrants warm themselves is a symbol for the new class composition which has turned an emigration country into an immigration one.

But the phrase 'the last firebrands' also refers to the heat waves of class struggles that swept across this industrial zone in the 1950s, 60s and 70s; struggles that characterised the area and left a lasting impact upon it. Sometimes history takes a violent leap: in 1968 inexperienced peasants from the countryside were catapulted into the centre of the worldwide revolution. No working class had previously identified the factory as a trigger of fatal diseases and as a destroyer of life as clearly as they did in this struggle. The union expelled the organisers of the struggles. Those who were expelled found their own organisational forms. Porto Marghera's Autonomous Assembly in the early 1970s not only co-ordinated the struggles in the factories of the industrial zone, but also squatted houses, formed neighbourhood committees, organised price reductions in the supermarkets, and together with thousands of workers burned their electricity bills. The unions and the government could only react.

On the DVD you can find ...

The film Porto Marghera - gli ultimi fuochi, created by Manuela Pellarin in 2004. Intended as a document on the history of the industrial area, the project was funded by the Province of Venice, amongst others. But the resulting film features the workers themselves talking about their struggles since the 1950s. The main focus is the big strikes of 1968/69 and the struggles against the deadly working conditions.

Subtitles in German, English, French, Spanish, Romanian, Polish, Slovakian, Serbo-Croat, Russian and Turkish.

Portrait of Augusto Finzi (26 min.)

(Finzi was one of the protagonists of the struggles at the petrochemical factory. Shortly before his death he takes stock of his political activities in a very personal way.) German and English subtitles

The DVD comes with a three-coloured cover, each with a German and an English booklet. We need subscriptions in order to finance to pressing cost. 10 DVDs plus cover plus German and English booklet inclusive of postal charges: €30 (about £20). Of course you could also order 20 ... packets...

Comrades have also begun to translate the booklet into Polish and Slovakian. For them and others for whom a German or English booklet is of no use we can offer the DVDs "naked": 100 DVDs are around €120 (= £82) + postage. Of course you must order before the end of the subscription period.

Order at: redaktion@wildcat-www.de

Subscription period ends 15th of june 2007. Afterwards price per piece will double. Order at: redaktion@wildcat-www.de

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