It was 2008. The former Prime Minister Berlusconi designed a young woman as Minister of Education: Mariastella Gelmini. At first, some believed she would be closer to youngster’s needs and hoped for the best. The hope lasted short thou… Right after she took power, a new and anti-constitutional reform was approved straight as a decree: millions of Euro were dramatically cut to public education in favour of private schools.
It was a huge disappointment for the people struck by the reform: students, researchers, teachers.
The media regime owned by Berlusconi powerfully fought back all the demonstrations arisen across Italy minimising numbers, promoting the idea that students didn’t want to study or that teachers were threatening students to demonstrate against their will, while under-cover police infiltrated to pacific demos and started riots, so that their colleagues wearing uniform could beat the students and Tv’s could show how violent the movement was.
Unfortunately, it was a really interesting moment. Maybe the last one where young students experimented being against the system, as one of the high-school principal’s stated in one of our videos.
The movement was called Onda Anomala (Abnormal Wave).
Today, looking back, you can see where the wave stopped and rolled back.
Primi Piani shot five mini-docs between Trieste and Rome, trying to give a voice to those who wouldn’t find a space on any main stream media channel.
Many greetings to the crew: Simone and Francesco.