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27 July1957
The arrival in Moscow
Author
Enzo Pasi
Format
8mm
Credits
Music by Francesco Serra

In July 1957, a group of friends from the Romagna region of Alfonsine, former partisans and militant communists, comprising Sauro Ravaglia, Ilario Zaniboni, Luigi Pattuelli "E' Profes" Domenico Folicaldi "Pizzerda", Giovanni Tarroni "Gianastri", Riccardo Ballardini "Brisulina" and Enzo Pasi, left by train for Moscow, together with hundreds of young Italians full of enthusiasm for the socialist future of humanity. In the Soviet capital, the sixth World Festival of Youth and Students was being held, offering the opportunity to meet young people from all over the world and, above all, to see the city that was the symbol of the economic, social and political construction that many had dreamed of, even for the capitalist West. It is the first time that the USSR has reopened its borders after the war. Pasi, the doyen of the Alphonsinians being already a thirty-something, brings with him an 8mm film camera and 40 reels to impress in order to film the trip and collect a very precious documentation to show to his comrades back home. The journey lasts five days, with stops in Venice, Vienna and Budapest, where the train finally crosses the border of the Soviet Union. 27 July is the date of arrival in Moscow, at the Kievskaya station packed with jubilant people, culminating in a celebratory visit to the statue of Lenin, where bouquets of flowers brought especially from Alfonsine are laid. An impressive procession of buses transports the visitors through the city, on whose streets the crowds are thronged to welcome delegations from all over the world. Thus began 'the most intense, unexpected, innovative two weeks that the cultural history of the Soviet Union had ever known' (Gian Piero Piretto). Thirty-four thousand people from 131 foreign countries participated, who for three weeks danced, attended sports events, concerts, and political meetings under the banner of world peace, well represented by the dove drawn by Picasso and symbol of the event. For Pasi and the people of Alfonsinos, these will be indelible weeks. Just as the last verse of the festival's symbolic song 'Podmoskovnye večera' says: 'the dawn makes everything clearer, you too will never forget these summer nights in Moscow'.

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