At dawn on 17 July 1988, a huge black cloud rose over Massa Carrara. A tank containing Rogor, a pesticide produced at the time by the company Farmoplant, exploded. But that event was merely the culmination of a long and troubled history that has now fallen into oblivion. Through eyewitness accounts and rediscovered archive material, Still this morning revisits that story, asking what remains of it today.
Country
ItaliaYear
2026Length
11'
Category
DocumentaryPremiere
Italian
Screenplay
Claudia BasteriCinematography
Clauia BasteriEditing
Claudia BasteriMusic
Trans alp - für drei Kalimbas, in F Moll (pubblished on phonocake.org net label), Techtheism Franco Trincale – I fatti di Massa e CarraraSound
Claudia Basteri Freesound.org — Creative Commons 0 (CC0)Academic and educational context in which the short film was developped
Accademia delle Belle Arti di CarraraSynopsis
Biography
Claudia Basteri studied Audiovisual Languages and Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara. Basteri’s work centres on research, audiovisual experimentation and the reuse of archive material, with a particular focus on the relationship between images, place and collective memory.
Statement
«Do you remember when Montedison blew up?»
This question often came up in my family’s conversations. That phrase gave rise to stories, reflections and anecdotes that I could only listen to. When Farmoplant – a pesticide company better known to the people of Massa as «Montedison» – blew up, I was three years old and I don’t remember a thing. As I grew up, however, that event took on an ever-greater hold on my imagination precisely through the stories told by others, sparking in me a desire to understand what had happened and to engage with a story that is part of the collective memory of the place where I grew up, but which over time has slipped into oblivion. And this morning’s piece, too, stems from that curiosity.
— Claudia Basteri
Archival materials
Excerpts from news programmes broadcast by the Antenna 3 television network
Photographs of the cloud, leaflets and posters from the Germinal Archive in Carrara
Excerpts from the documentary Il pericolo e l’attesa (1966) by Bruno Dell’Amico, Cineteca
Bruno Dell’Amico
Radio broadcasts from 1988 by Radio Radicale.
Private archives:
Photographs by Dino Fracchia
Photographs of the incinerator provided by Riccardo Canesi
Super 8 footage of a demonstration provided by Marcello Palagi
Aerial footage by Oreste Ciaccia
Aerial footage and footage of the demolition of the Farmoplant site by Mirco Lagomarsini
Amateur school footage by Riccardo Prosperi, with original sound
Footage of the demonstration on 18 July 1988 by Fabrizio Buffa.
