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08 August1941
Swimming in the Po river
Author
Ermenegildo Boccafogli
Format
16mm
Duration
1'33''
Credits
Music by Lorenzo Valdesalici

Today's sequence conceals a little mystery. It is a sequence taken from a 16mm film showing the leading lady, filmed on several occasions, in the summer of this year and the year before, doing more or less the same things and in exactly the same place. Along the banks of the Po in the Ferrara area, in costume or wearing a summer dress, we see her posing standing or sitting, reading news magazines, listening to the gramophone, looking in the mirror, bathing in the river. Almost like a filmed ritual or an audition. In the excerpt dated 8 August 1943, the only one in colour in the series, our protagonist reads the latest issue of Signal, in the dual-language edition, Italian and German. Signal is a wartime news magazine, or rather propaganda magazine, in which we find a sweetened narration of the progress of the war, certainly optimistic for the Axis powers. The colourful military maps are reassuring and peace apparently reigns on the Po, but in these very days, following the Fall of Fascism and the change of government (from Mussolini to Badoglio), the Allies intensively bombard the cities of the North to force Italy to surrender. And a month later there will be the Armistice.

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