Murge – The Cold War Front
Murge – The Cold War Front
On August the 10th, 1959 Italian government signed a treaty with the US providing that ten nuclear missile bases were installed on Italian territory. Those missiles were one hundred times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima. The bases were installed in the extremely poor zone called Murge, in between Bari and Matera provinces, Apulia region.
In February 1960 the first missiles arrived in Gioia del Colle, within a year they were ready to be launched. The bases kept being active until March 1963, when they dismantled following the agreement signed by Kennedy and Khrushchev after the Cuba missile crisis in October 1962. The documentary tells the meeting between two irreconcilable worlds: on one side the clay hills of Murge, a dry and difficult land peopled with poor and still peasants who felt no belonging to a distant Italian State; on the other side international geo-political global scenarios, the Cold War, in which Italy tried to play a role. Main characters of this strange meeting were the young and promising Italian air-force officers, trained in Nevada, proud to be the guardians of the West against the USSR threat but conscious to be the possible executors of a planetary catastrophe.
A Zenit Arti Audiovisive production in association with Rai 150, with the support of Media Programme of the European Union, Piemonte Doc Film Fund, Fondazione Apulia Film Commission
2012, HD 53'
Directed by: Fabrizio Galatea
Produced by: Massimo Arvat
Director of Photography: Francesco Di Pierro
Editor: Marco Duretti
Production manager: Emanuela De Giorgi
Sound: Vincenzo Urselli
Music: Fabio Viana
With Ettore Bernabei, Pasquale Bruno, Vita Maria Calia, Luciana Castellina, Piero Castoro, Renato Cecchetti, Giovanni Battista Cersosimo, Domenico Notarangelo, Leopoldo Nuti, Gianbattista Papangelo, Onofrio Petrara, Alfredo Reichlin, Nichi Vendola, Vladislov Zubok
Awards
Audience Award Documentary in Europe 2012
Premio Collino, Piemonte Movie 2013
PriMed 2014 - Prix INA MEMOIRE DE LA MEDITERRANEE e PRIX A LA DIFFUSION France Corse
Festivals
Bellaria Film Festival 2012
Est Film Festival 2012
Otranto Film Fund Festival
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