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04 February1928
Milano, at the public gardens
Author
Guglielmo Baldassini
Format
9,5mm
Duration
03'09''
Credits
Music by Guglielmo Pagnozzi

Milan, at the Giardini di Porta Venezia, on 2 February 1928, the atmosphere is placid. The film opens on a swan in the pond of that much-loved place, frequented and filmed by Guglielmo Baldassini, an artist who used film both to film his affections - magnificent portraits of his loved ones - and to document places and the landscape, producing moving images that would also serve him as a studio for his work as an etcher. The 9.5 mm camera here immediately focuses on the family. His wife Laura playing with their son Luciano. The youngest sister, Marisa, in the arms of the wet nurse. Then the close-ups of the children in front of the Natural History Museum and in the small forest next to the museum. The portraits are beautiful and Marisa seems satisfied with her first steps into the world. The filming continues nearby with a portrait of the family of friends, the Guizzettis. A group of children play with toy guns, one of them then points the gun at the camera. In those very days of February, while the Baldassini's life runs quietly in Milan with their toy guns, Italian army colonel Rodolfo Graziani is engaged in the reconquest of Libya with the aim of welding Tripolitania to Cyrenaica, seizing the desert still in guerrilla hands with the support of the local population. Arriving at the oasis line of the 29th parallel, where no European soldier has ever arrived, is the goal of the moment. However, another four years will pass before the resistance in Libya is completely crushed, amidst massacres and deportations.

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