Roman Diary 2011

In a long, slow, silent procession, they pass by the viewer: the stone-hewn witnesses of a battle that took place more than a century and a half ago in Rome. In 1849 the city, where the advocates of the democratic republic had entrenched themselves, was besieged by French troops who wanted to restore the Papal States. Led by the legendary Giuseppe Garibaldi, the freedom fighters resisted for a long time. Film artist Michael Pilz shows the silent and tranquil remains in a Roman park, with music and sounds from the present in the background. Life around the statues goes in slow motion, but occasionally the noisy, warm, bubbling ‘present’ breaks through: people relaxing outside a restaurant, the remains of a meal. In between we see pictures of the city on which the heroes of yore looked out: a city filled with life in hard-fought freedom.