Narrating Genoa: Documentaries of the Italian G8 Protests of 2001 and the Persistence and Politics of Memory

Italy made worldwide news in July 2001 when one young man was killed and several hundred were injured during protests surrounding the G8 Summit in Genoa. While outside of Italy these events were fit within the tidy emplotment of escalating violence in the "anti-globalization" movement, inside Italy their meaning and significance extended to encompass a still unresolved history of fascism and state-sanctioned violence. This article examines the complexities of "narrating Genoa" within the political, ideological, personal and historical landscapes of contemporary Italy through close readings of documentaries that emerged in the wake of the Genoa protests. Although legal decisions have repeatedly ruled in favor of police and government forces, the memory and meaning of those events remain far from resolved and can be situated within a legacy of memoria divisa that has defined Italy throughout the postwar period.