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25 June1978
Argentina World Cup
Author
Giuseppe Stefani
Format
8mm
Credits
Musica & mix audio by Pasquale Savignano | Biennio di Sound Design del Conservatorio di Musica di Bologna

Buenos Aires, 25 June 1978. Looking at these images taken by one of the many Argentinians of Italian origin, Giuseppe Stefani, you would think there was an entire people celebrating the victory of the national football team at the World Cup. Because, you know, sporting feats unite and everyone takes to the streets to celebrate together under one flag. But this is 1978 Argentina, led by General Videla and his military junta after the 1976 coup, and that Mundial is bloody. Many will only find out about it later, especially abroad, but it is unthinkable that so many do not already know. A few hundred metres from the stadiums are the sites of torture, someone will later tell that the torturers take a break during matches and even the victims celebrate at Argentina's goals. It will then turn out that among the many desaparecidos, disappeared boys and young opponents of the regime whose bodies will never even be found, there are also football promises, even in the odour of the national team. 'An entire generation of 20- and 30-year-olds was wiped out during the Mundial,' Cordolcini wrote. The players of the Argentine team will claim they neither saw nor heard. Coach César Luis Menotti, politically left-wing, declared that he was playing to 'alleviate the pain of the people'. Certainly that World Cup, organised with international support, and that victory, also achieved with refereeing help, are powerful instruments in the hands of the military junta that will fall five years later. And these images still pose many questions, precisely because they are spontaneous, joyful and filmed from below. Sequences, filmed in the street and in front of the television, that mark both the memory and the collective oblivion of that World Cup of Shame.

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