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07 November1979
Parade of the Russian Revolution
Author
Gabriele Ventura
Format
16mm
Duration
3'23''
Credits
Music and sound design by Laura Agnusdei

Moscow, 7 November 1979, snowy day. Gabriele Ventura films in Super8 the big parade dedicated to the 62nd anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. As is well known, the date mismatch is due to the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars in force at the time of the revolution with a 13-day delay. Whether it is one month or the other makes little difference, the cold is there and you can feel it, just look at the shivering people taking part in this event of the Soviet Union's late empire. Indeed, the parade takes place on the eve of the Soviet deployment in Afghanistan (plans for which were already in the pipeline at the time of the parade), a conflict in which the Soviets would be involved for almost ten years, from December 1979 to February 1989. And then came the fall of the Wall and everything else: if not the 'end of history', the end of a great history whose symbols once again unfold in this parade, the same as they have been for decades, yet also different, always reaffirming the power of one of the two pillars of the Cold War. As the pictures show, it is not easy to 'bring into focus' a moment like this, and more than the Red Army soldiers and the tired stage sets, it is better to film the hooded children and their balloons. And if anyone has any doubts that 'the Russians also love their children', to quote a pop song in vogue in a West that is second to none in terms of decadence, we can reply that after all, the Revolution was also made for them, despite the fact that it now belongs to the distant past and its consequences were dramatic. Who knows what these children will think, perhaps that it is time to go home, difficult for them to ask questions right now about the revolution and what tomorrow and the day after tomorrow might be.

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