Uomini e voci del Congresso Socialista di Livorno is the synthesis of an extraordinary and previously unreleased film of the 1921 congress where the split between revolutionaries and reformists led to the formation of the Italian Communist Party. We are at the eve of the march on Rome, three years before the assassination of Matteotti, four years before the liberticidal laws of 1925. Three quarters of a century later, Uomini e voci (Men and Voices) not only narrates a key event in Italian history, it also presents us with a series of head-on debates that defined the DNA of today’s leftwing. An “incipit” of fundamental importance today that is certainly worth revisiting.

Cecilia Mangini