Director Daniele Segre dies, films about workers' struggles in Sulcis and Villacidro
He was 71 years old, in 1994 in “Dinamite – Nuraxi Figus Italia” he launched the cry of pain for the declining mining civilization
Daniele Segre and the poster of the film about the Sulcis miners
Daniele Segre, who died at the age of 71, always loved reality cinema. Witness and staunch defender, armed with the tools of his trade, of just causes in factories, squares and spaces of increasingly precarious work. From North to South, including islands. In 1994 the Turin director and screenwriter also approached the revolt of the miners of Sulcis Iglesiente. In the film “Dinamite – Nuraxi Figus Italia” he launched a cry of pain for a civilisation, the mining one, in its decline. Pieces of culture and economy shattered. At the center of attention is the last coal mine still in operation in Italy and one of the harshest workers' struggles after the Second World War. With the camera Segre descended into the bowels of the earth to follow and film the phases of the occupation of the site and to collect the requests of the miners who also brought dynamite underground. The film was presented at the 51st international cinematographic art exhibition in Venice in the 'Window on images' section and subsequently in the prestigious showcase of the Real Film Festival in Paris at the Center Pompidou.
In Villacidro
Daniele Segre returned to Sardinia in 2000 to film “Asuba de su tanku” (on the tank), about the history of Nuova Scaini in Villacidro, a car battery factory. Workers are forced to occupy propane gas tanks to defend their jobs. “I slept with the workers – the director later explained – on propane cylinders, an explosive substance, to understand that extreme gesture that pushed six of them to chain themselves to those infernal cylinders. I slept with them together with my operator Franco Robust. I chose to work and sleep there to understand, but not only that, above all to make them feel less alone. In this sense a camera helps solidarity. Many of them are family men, in families where only one income comes in, theirs. One can understand why the often unheard voice must be filmed, filmed, documented, because it is the voice of those who often have no voice." In these words his experience as a sharp, free and coherent director and screenwriter and his idea of cinema. In addition to the works on the Sardinian struggles, there are "Dying at work", "Crotone-Italia", "Stadium boys forty years later", "Lisetta Carmi a soul on the move", "Nom de guerre: woman" and many other extraordinary memories that help to better understand the Italy of yesterday and today.
