RELACIONES PADRES – ADOLESCENTES Según Hendry (1999):

A further documentary that I did not include earlier in my discussion, but that deserves to be mentioned together with Bandite and Non ci è stato regalato niente, is Una stagione di dolore

armato72 (2005), directed by Riccardo Manfredi and Gian Marco Minardi. Like Esser’s work, the

documentary by the two Italian filmmakers focuses exclusively on former partisans from the province of Reggio Emilia, since they are both native of that area. However, differently from the two previous works, Una stagione di dolore armato reminds more of an amateur collection of interviews. While its main purpose is not the mere analysis of the wartime experience of the staffette, I believe that Manfredi and Minardi’s documentary is still interesting and helpful because most of the interviewees are women. Some of them are the same staffette that appear in the works by Proietti/Pellegrini and Esser, such as Pierina Bonilauri and the inevitable Annita Malavasi, but there are also additional female figures, like Francesca Del Rio (whose story is probably the most traumatic one among all those narrated in the three documentaries), and

Teresa Vergalli73 (whose clandestine name is Annuska).

In the first part of Una stagione di dolore armato, some of the interviewees, once again, concentrate more on the description of the paternal figures, rather than focusing on their mothers. Vergalli, for example, explains how difficult it was for her father to freely work, since he was an antifascist. For the same reason, Del Rio’s father was instead violently beaten up by a group of Fascists of his area.

72_‘

Unastagionedidolorearmato’is a verse of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s poem Vittoria, that appears in the volume

Poesia in forma di rosa (1964).

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In 2004 also Teresa Vergalli published her autobiography, Storie di una staffetta partigiana (Editori Riuniti).

Besides this aspect, that Una stagione di dolore armato shares with Non ci è stato regalato niente, I argue that what mostly enriches Manfredi and Minardi’s documentary is the presence of Del Rio herself. By opening up, and revealing the upsetting wartime experience that she had to go through when she was held prisoner, the former combatant casts light on the taboo of sexual abuse that Addis Saba and Venturoli discuss in Bandite. Del Rio was indeed victim of sexual tortures that left marks on her body.74 Nevertheless, the woman is not interviewed alone when she tries to talk about this traumatic episode of her past. Malavasi sits in fact next to her, and she is the one that animatedly encourages Del Rio to openly explain what she had to endure. After many years, it is still not easy for the ex-partisan to relive that experience, but Malavasi attempts to convince her that her story is necessary, in order to demonstrate how female fighters were usually treated once they were imprisoned. She urges Del Rio: “Non dobbiamo avere delle riservatezze, perché avere delle riservatezze significa nascondere una realtà che in definitiva mette in evidenza la brutalità con la quale siete state trattate” (Una stagione di dolore armato). Also in Manfredi and Minardi’s work therefore, the strong personality and determination of Malavasi are evident. As Salvini writes, the truth about Del Rio’s incarceration comes to light thanks to the insistence of Malavasi, “che vuole a tutti i costi che quella tragica esperienza possa diventare memoria” (137). Del Rio represents then one of those innumerable women of the underground movement, “vittime … non ascoltate dalla società civile e tanto meno dagli storici, convinti di dover scrivere una storia resistenziale a cui le donne non avevano preso parte attiva” (Salvini 138).

Lastly, I add that the documentary genre allows the audience to perceive the pain of the victims more directly, while in the case of writings, the author has the possibility to later edit the

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What emerges from Del Rio’s explanation is that, once she was captured, she was then mainly tortured by her Fascist enemies. However, the person responsible for the scars in question was a German soldier.

account, or to rearrange the terms that have been used at first. Consequently, the written record could turn out to be less spontaneous or authentic than oral history.

Conclusion

In one of the final scenes of Non ci è stato regalato niente, Malavasi sums up her life, claiming “Questa è stata la mia esistenza, un’esistenza abbastanza comune, credo”. Her words, that remind of those written by Capponi in the first pages of her autobiography (12), seem to diminish her brave existence. It should be kept in mind indeed, that Malavasi’s life was not a common one, especially for a woman born in Italy in the 1920s. We should also remember that the wartime experience of most of the staffette (as Laila was at first), may have not been as memorable as the ones of Oliva and Capponi, but they still represented the majority of the women involved in the Resistance, whose contribution was substantial. Lastly, it is interesting to notice how, in Italian, the word Resistenza is comprised of the term esistenza (existence). For many female combatants, the months, or the years, during which they were members of the clandestine movement, turned out to be the peak of their life, especially as emancipated women. Therefore, I argue that by not properly acknowledging their roles and their participation in the Resistance, historians have for long obscured the existence of these fighters.