S60 years have passed since the Vajont massacre. October 9, 1963 260 million cubic meters of rock detach from Mount Toc and fall into the Vajont dam basin, causing a wave that erases Longaroneburying it under gravel, and five other towns from Friuli Venezia Giulia and Veneto.
An announced tragedy that caused 1910 deaths. 60 years after the Vajont disaster, Rai 5 presents it again at 9.15pm Civil Oration with the actor and director Marco Paolini broadcast live on Rai 2 in 1997 from the site of the catastrophe. Then, three and a half million viewers followed the story.
Vajont massacre: Marco Paolini’s Civil Oration on Rai 5
In two and a half hours Marco Paolini reconstructs the history of the Vajont dam and the circumstances that led to the disaster of the same name. It is a moving and passionate story, written together with Gabriele Vacis, with the contribution of those who witnessed the tragedy and mourn its victims. A report on how the facts happened and how those 1910 deaths are to be attributed not to nature but to those who planned and built the dam without listening to the voices of those who opposed it.
Vajont: Marco Paolini in one of the passages of the Civil Oration. (Handle)
Paolini, actor-author from Belluno, he decided to tell people about Vajont after reading the book On living skin Of Tina Merlin, journalist fromUnit who denounced the ongoing danger several times and who was defined as a “jackal” by journalists such as Indro Montanelli.
First taken to the homes of friends, then to the squares, cultural clubs, schools, hospitals, social centres, factories, on the radio, and to theaters and festivals, Marco Paolini’s work was broadcast on television for the first time on the occasion of the thirty-fourth anniversary of the disaster (9 October 1997). For the occasion, its own theater was set up near the disaster dam, precisely on the slope filled by the landslide and once the seat of the basin.
Soldiers dig through the rubble in Longarone, one of the towns destroyed in the Vajont tragedy. (Handle)
9 October 1963 Anniversary of the Vajont massacre: other programs on TV
On Focus the special will air in prime time Vajont, 9 October 1963 – the Mountain, the Dam, the Men. Curated by Luigi Bignami, the program shows for the first time on TV the inside of the dam and the service tunnels that were used for the maintenance and control of the reservoir.
In addition to the voices of some witnesses to the tragedy, there will be a memory of Mauro Coronathe interventions of engineers and geologists (Piero GianollaUniversity of Ferrara; Giovanni CrostaMilan Bicocca University; Emiliano OddoneDolomiti Project), and a visit to Longarone Vajont Museum et al Monumental Cemetery of the Victims of Vajont, where 1,464 victims rest. The missing bodies were never found.
The Vajont dam still standing. (Getty Images)
It will be broadcast on Rai 3, from 4.20pm to 4.50pm Vajont Special, 1963-2023 edited by the Regional Newspaper directed by Alessandro Casarin and created by the editorial team of Tgr Veneto, led by Elisa Billato. The special will be live from the Monumental Cemetery of the Victims of Vajont in Fortogna, a hamlet of Longarone.
Tgr Veneto will follow the celebrations with a visit from President of the Republic Sergio Mattarellawith the testimonies of survivors and rescuers. We will return to the places of memory, trying to understand, with the interventions of scientists and experts, the causes and responsibilities of a catastrophe that could and should have been avoided. There will also be a window on the present, with insights into the protection of the territory and new hydrogeological risks, also linked to climate change.
On RaiPlay Sound and on the web page of the Veneto Tgr there will be another special dedicated to the anniversary of the tragedy. A podcast that will offer new stories and testimonies so that the Vajont message remains engraved in the memory.
VajontS 23: the theater choir on Paolini’s story
The tragedy of Vajont goes from a civil oration to a choral story. VajontS 23 it is a widespread event that involves over one hundred theaters in Italy and Italians in Europe, to draw attention to what could happen. «The story of Vajont is the story of an event that starts slowly and then accelerates», he explained Marco Paolini.
«The signs were ignored and, when we became aware, it was too late. In times of climate crisis, inertia cannot be repeated, we cannot afford to calculate the risk with the least dangerous hypothesis among many. Among the many discarded because they were inconceivable, not because they were impossible.”
VajontS 23 it is a plot that everyone will read and interpret in their own way, representing it in its entirety or using it as a starting point to talk about the disasters that have happened to date or the fear of the future. Great and small actors from theater schools, permanent theaters and research companies, musicians and dancers, workers, theater staff, and spectators enlisted as readers will gather in different places. Everyone, however, will stop at 10.39pm, the time when the mountain collapsed into the dam.
iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED