GOING UNDERGROUND

Italy | 2024 | 75 min | col.

Italian writer Enrico Brizzi, in his novel Bastogne, attempted to depict the city of Bologna at the turn of the 70s and 80s. An era of tumults, violence, ideals, and ideologies. Of drugs – too many – and good music – never too much. Lisa Bosi’s Going Underground tells all about this, or rather about Gaznevada, a band at the heart of a music scene which was punk in the soul even before the sounds. It was the artistic expression of a wave of rebellion to norms across the board, including the comics of Andrea Pazienza and Filippo Scozzari, prime movers of that revolution in behaviours and supporters of the band. The strictly biographical approach is avoided in favour of an unusual method that is more akin to the spirit of Gaznevada, leaving room for the tragedy of heroin and its deathly legacy and stretching to the disorientation of the nineties, when the band’s offshoot, Datura, ranked again high in the hit parade thanks to their dance music. (e.s.)