Era Roma

Directed by Mario Canale

Era Roma is about a magic moment in the city’s history – from 1963, with the founding of Gruppo ’63, and 1979, when the Poets’ Festival was held at Castelporziano – when the Italian capital exerted a magnetic pull on artists who were independent, underground, and freewheeling. It would not come around again. They were artists who sought each other out and used politics to engage with society and change lives, in a season that started with the post-war economic boom and ended in a reaction against the upheaval of the 1968 protests. Stock footage, film clips, and interviews with the leading figures of the day, all collected over the years, make Era Roma the distillation of an amazing, turbulent era when the arts blurred the borders with real life and tried to turn reality into a work of art.