Diaz: Don’t Clean Up This Blood

Director Daniele Vicari, on his film Diaz, Non Pulire Questo Sangue (Don’t Clean Up This Blood).

“I’ve made a lot of documentaries before this”, said Vicari, “but this was the first time I realized I made a movie based on facts that were actually real”. During the G8 summit in 2001, police raided the Diaz school in Genoa, Italy, searching and beating the protesters who were staying there for more than two hours. Over 3000 hours of personal video and photos of events outside the school were released to the press and can be seen on YoutTube, and the events inside the school were reconstructed from first hand testimoney from hundreds of victims.

Vicari said, “As soon as I started reading about the acts and meeting the victims, I started feeling nauseous”, and he transferred that feeling to the screen. The movie is very hard to watch, and with bits of actual footage mixed in it is easy to forget that it’s not all the real thing. The morning after having watched it my stomach still hurts, not just for the blood and the violence depicted, but for the brutality, callousness, and viciousness of the police attack on a bunch of protestors, hippies, journalists, and other random people just there because there was nowhere else to sleep. As they were getting ready to go to bed the night before the Summit the police decided to raid the school, beating virtually everyone in it to a pulp.

I admit that I watched the film with my laptop at my side, constantly checking the facts and looking up terms that I was unfamiliar with. How did all this happen in 2001 and I knew so little about it? Maybe I’m not the only one that could have used a little more background information from Vicari in the movie; apparently by the time the truth came out, no one seemed to care very much and there was little in the media to set the record straight. The movie needed to be made, but a little Black Block For Dummies would have been appreciated.

This movie is the opposite of a “feel good” film and a lot of viewers will be (and have been) offended by the non-stop violence, even if it is, according to everyone, an authentic account of what actually happened. But it can’t exactly be thought of gratuitous if it’s the facts; can it?

This movie is available for European and region free DVD players with English subtitles and stars Claudio Santamaria, Jennifer Ulrich and Elio Germano.