Month: December 2020

During his imprisonment, Aldo Moro speaks, remembers, writes, responds, questions, confesses, accuses, and takes his leave. He multiplies words on paper: he writes letters, addressing family members, friends, party colleagues, institutional representatives; he notes down brief testamentary provisions. In addition to that, he composes a long political, historical, personal statement - the so-called ‘memorial’ beginning with the questions posed by his jailers. The letters and the memorial, Moro’s last words, are a set of papers written during the 55 days of his imprisonment: those found - or, rather, those that have come down to us. An unstoppable river of words that people immediately tried to stem, silence, mystify, mock. Moro is not Moro, it was said. The press, almost unanimously, hammered at public opinion by disavowing his words, while Moro shouted his indignation from prison at this additional cruel torture. Forty years later, the fate of these papers has not changed much. Few people have actually read them; many have chosen to forget them. However, the bodies that we are unable to bury with dignity return periodically, to make their voices heard. Today, the letters and the memorial are two ghostly presences; Moro's body is the specter that still occupies the stage of our shadowy history. After working with the public and private writings of Carlo Emilio Gadda and Pier Paolo Pasolini in two poignant and ferocious shows, reconnecting them in a lacerating anti-biography of the nation,Fabrizio Gifuni, through painful and persistent dramaturgy, confronts the most scabrous and unvarnished writing about the history of Italy.

Turin, Inauguration of the 31° International Book Fair - 9 May 2018