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15 March1959
Civil Wedding
Author
Famiglia Meliconi
Format
8mm
Duration
01'30''
Credits
Music by Guglielmo Pagnozzi

15 March 1959 is a beautiful sunny day, although probably a little chilly. In Bologna's City Hall, Franco Meliconi and Elena Pedrini say their fateful 'yes' wrapped in their coats. Stepping out onto the piazza, the newlyweds, together with family members and guests, have their photo taken by their friend the tram driver Vincenzo Bazzani in front of the Partisan War Memorial. Among those faces fixed in the photo-ceramic and collected in the large reliquary is also Massimo, Franco's brother, who died at the age of 19 fighting against the fascists in Via Oberdan, on 15 July 1944. His battle name, 'Gianni', became that of his formation, the 7th GAP, protagonist, the following November, of the battle of Porta Lame and other actions engraved in the history of the Bolognese resistance. That mosaic of faces had formed spontaneously, on 21 April 1945: a few hours after the city's liberation, the Bolognese had begun to attach photographs of their loved ones on the wall of the Palazzo del Comune, where the shootings took place. Images taken out of wallets, removed from documents or frames, or even with the frame still around, as if that wall were a wall of the house. "The most extraordinary war memorial there is", according to Jean Giono. Fourteen years later, for the Meliconi family, that wall is home: although an arson attack a few years earlier destroyed the spontaneous memorial, this new one appears a little colder, but certainly more resistant.

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