““Our things”the program in the late evening on Rai1, turns 10. Until today, he has dealt with stories of women and men involved in all mafias. A virtuous example of public service that now expands the investigation from the protagonists of crime to social conflicts. The intention is the same as always, to bring to light biographies that denounce a condition and tell the place to which they belong.
We met Emilia Brandi, a journalist with a long militancy in Rai who created him and leads him to take stock of this experience.
How did the passion for journalism come about?
I started very young with a collaboration a One day in the Pretura, I liked the common events and the cases of the crime news, the dry language and the study of legal devices. Then I went to We are the story by Giovanni Minoli. I thought that to tell stories we had to write them and for me it was an unprecedented effort, I am perfectionist, never happy with nothing. During this experience I understood that I could do it with a television project, with teamwork, images and audio: it was the turning point. For more than twenty years I was a Rai programmer, I lived an era without masters. The passion was there, but I soon understood that I would have to feed it with my commitment.
Our things turned 10, what effect does it have?
If a program lives for 10 years it means that it is fine. It is in the late evening on Rai 1, so he has a selected and loyal audience. Today I am happy. Over time, with the working group, we have acquired cohesion and skills, so much so that we have made some podcasts of the episodes that are now on Raiplay Sound.
In these years what are the stories that have impressed her most?
I am linked to all those I tell. I look for her for a long time, I study them around it, sometimes I have to wait for the right time to make them. Sardinia was an important experience, both for the story about the Soffiantini kidnapping, and for that on the feid of Mamoiada – an over -nentennial dispute of violence and sold between families of the country who never extinguishes – who made me meet the bandit Annino Mele just left the prison after 31 years.
Faced with the victims and guilty, do you feel a different feeling that determines its approach?
I am interested in the psychological mechanism and the reasons that lead to taking a path compared to another, the degree of awareness of individuals. There are characters for which I feel esteem and admiration, they are the ones who do not compromise: they perfectly knew the consequences they were encountering and went on. Like Ciaccio Montalto, deputy prosecutor in Trapani, killed by Cosa Nostra in 1983 for his commitment against the mafia. I was in his home with wonderful interiors, I read his letters and listened to his daughter Maria Irene who was only 12 years old when she lost it.
Tell me of the culprits.
There are people who suffer the fascination of evil and choose to kill. What pushes them to make that life and inflict pain? Some reply that they were soldiers in a war, others instead at a certain point get rid of. Luigi Diana, Casalesi killer, performing the orders of his bosses killed for more than ten years. When he was arrested he said enough, he became a collaborator of justice. His contribution was fundamental to dismantle that criminal world. It is difficult to do this type of interviews, you would like to experience empathy, but men like Diana have stained themselves with very serious crimes, We must go down to the dark and violent part of the human being, listen to the story of a man who will not have salvation, condemned to solitude and fear. At the end of these interviews, I always have very strong migraines.
Are there differences between men and women in the narrative of their lives?
Women express themselves better, not for language properties or schooling. They are more intense and authentic, they are less afraid to tell their fragility and the ability to confess terrible things in describing memories. I think of Marisa Merico, an exception in the ‘Ndrangheta where, normally, women play a marginal role. The daughter of the former boss Emilio di Giovine, when in ’92 his father was arrested, she wants to be like a male son. He has the example of his grandmother, Maria Serraino, heir to a powerful Calabrian gang that managed the trafficking of heroin who had invaded the “Milan to drink” in the 1980s. He thus becomes head of the gang, shows the father that she too can carry weapons and bring the collections of the shop. In the name of the father, it ruins his life and that of many victims.
Do you believe that the fact that you are a woman condition the interviews?
When I arrive on the spot, I leave the crew with the police who often escort us and go around: I always find someone wary who asks me what I am doing, but in general, a woman alone alarm less and therefore I have the time to ask the necessary questions. I believe that we women are more empathetic and more listening so people are most available. Instead, to stay on the subject, it makes me smile that, when we meet the police, they always turn to my colleague operator, never to me. It is difficult to conceive that the boss is a woman.
How is it in front of the pain of others?
It is not easy, I often have existential fragments, pieces of literally chewed life. People who have lost a child or a relative, freedom and dignity. So yes, it is bad because the relationship does not end with the airing, these people have entrusted you to you, they have physically opened the album of their lives. I try to do my job at best, always keeping the right distance. It is the only way I have to return value to that suffering and to give those who follow us from home a real testimony avoiding the sensationalism of the “pain TV”.
So don’t you happen to be on the side of one rather than another?
I always go by subtraction. To the authors with whom I write the program I say: “You don’t have to arouse emotions, they come from the story”. We avoid limestone the emotional aspect and the crimea word that is now very fashionable. People are fascinated by the dynamics on murders, but I prefer to leave them in the background even when they tell me how they killed. Shock, strong emotion leaves you nothing, burns quickly, instead the sedimentation is important and necessary. This is why we use many metaphors, broken glass, tunked doors, we try to make the episodes with many details: landscapes, animals, trees and plants, everything we find on the spot. There is a good dose of improvisation and a lot of craftsmanship. I like to insert the interviews in the context and dilute the story, to make it more usable, I think it is the peculiarity of Our things.
At this moment where everything seems to push us towards the future, attracted and frightened by artificial intelligence, on the contrary, works on memory.
I feel deeply rooted in the 1900s, much closer to my 1905 grandmother than to an 18 -year -old boy. I look at the past rather than in the future, the world has changed quickly and my generation has been catapulted into the present without understanding tools. In my program I do not actualize, I work on the archive, sift the Rai Teche, I like to study, browse the files, look for the photos, reconstruct the events, listen to the witnesses. The events we face belong to everyone are our history. I believe in the public service, I do not do novels, even when I reconstruct episodes such as that of Tony Chichiarelli, the architect of great sidetracks of Italian history of the last century, from press release number 7 of the red brigades to the robbery of the century.
How has journalism changed in these 10 years?
When the journalist becomes the protagonist of the stories he tells, there is something wrong. We were the country of the great mafias, but also that of a straight back journalism that has always reported. With the new millennium, the mafia wars have turned off, but not corruption: the same results are obtained with the deepest mix with politics, just read the acts of the anti -mafia commission. There is no longer the mafia with the lupara and the calms, the new protagonists are graduates, persuasion passes through more or less coded mechanisms. It is the new ferocity. We must find a way to tell it, putting the facts without protagonist back to the center.
And will his program change?
It could go on 10 or 20 years. There is no lack of cases. Now I widen my gaze on the protagonists of social conflicts. Like Paola Clemente, the laborer who died of fatigue in the fields in Puglia. I want to believe that the good exists and therefore through the program I try to give simple but essential readings and that is that Evil generates death and death generates rubble.
Those who have committed atrocious crimes are not happy and therefore, even in the darker stories, there is hope, the strength to get up, the search for redemption, the desire for reconciliation. © RESERVED REPRODUCTION