25.04.16 – Special Screening: Signorina F

25.04.16 – 19:30

Film screening “Signorina F” (Wilma Labate, Italy 2007)

Presentation and comments by Davide Lombardo (NYU Florence)

Turin 1980, the last great strike of factory workers in Italy. The 35-days-long factory strike and occupation will mark the conclusion of 20th century style industrial relations in Italy. It provoked a shock and a symbolic watershed not dissimilar from that of the miners’ strike of 1984-85 for British politics and society. In Italy, the bitter conclusion of the strike, is marked by a counter-march of white collar employees in favour of FIAT policy of mass dismissal

Signorina F (Miss F, Italy 2007) where F stands for FIAT, inquires in those fateful days, attempting to connect the private life of workers and employees to their public engagement. The movie opens and closes with images of the Lingotto FIAT factory, a landmark of futurist industrial architecture, framing its evolution from vanguard car manufacturing site in the 1930s to a shopping centre in the 2000s. At the centre of the movie, the lives and dreams of students and workers, of men and women,of families of different social classes, as they cross each other, in the mild autumn of 1980, in front of the gates of the giant Mirafiori FIAT factory, then the industrial heart of the country.”