Screening of the film "Processo politico" by Francesco Leonetti and Arnaldo Pomodoro at COX18

PROCESSO POLITICO 1971-2024

Around an experimental film by Francesco Leonetti and Arnaldo Pomodoro

4 December 2025, 6:00 PM
Archivio Primo Moroni – Calusca City Lights – CSOA COX18
Via Conchetta 18, Milano

A few days before the anniversary of the Piazza Fontana massacre and the death of Giuseppe Pinelli, the newly restored edition of the film Processo politico (1971) by Francesco Leonetti and Arnaldo Pomodoro will be screened at COX18. This will be followed by talks and a discussion on the history of the film and on the Calabresi–Lotta Continua trial.

In 1971, the collective of the journal “Che fare” — directed by Francesco Leonetti and Arnaldo Pomodoro — produced the film Processo politico, with the aim of analyzing the socio-political context of the 1969–1970 biennium in Italy, denouncing the death of the anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli, which occurred at the Milan Police Headquarters during an interrogation following the Piazza Fontana bombing, and documenting the defamation trial brought by Commissioner Luigi Calabresi against the weekly newspaper “Lotta Continua,” which had publicly accused him of being responsible for Pinelli’s death.

Combining genres and temporal perspectives, documentary and fiction, the film reflects the cultural and linguistic experimentalism characteristic of “Che fare”, and stands as a significant example of that “militant cinema” which, between the 1960s and 1970s, became an important tool of counter-information.

In 2024, on the occasion of the centenary of Leonetti’s birth, the Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation promoted the restoration and digitization of the film. The work on the original reels, carried out by the Home Movies Foundation – National Family Film Archive, now returns to public view a valuable testimony to that intense season of cultural and political engagement.