Before my current lead addiction I spend my days following my local hardcore punk community. This is true especially for the years 1988-1995. Before them I was a metal-head but of black and thrash fringe. As my most relevant activities of that period, I realised a couple of fanzines, was a regular writer for a magazine, and helped with a record label. Nowadays I still hear a lot of music: hardcore punk, oi!, black metal and power electronics. I was very involved with hardcore music. Well, it is more than music, it was my life, because hardcore is not a form of music but an aptitude. A young movement, but a strong one. You cannot understand it if you are used to mainstream music, it is a matter of live in a unconventional way hearing unconventional music. And “music” is not the right word, “noise” is better, because it is the sound of rage.

A couple of years ago, a young veteran of my local community (when I was around he was just an adolescent) thought to film a documentary on that world, realising various interviews with crucial people from Roma hardcore community of that years, with a focus on the 1989-1999 period. After a lot of time he edited the material and now it is a film.

I went to a modern art museum (!!!) to see this documentary, screened for two months during an art exhibition. It is weird to go to a museum to see a piece of your life! And it is an institutional art museum, as if my life and that of my mates were involved in some art project. I wasn’t interviewed but I hoped that some part of me or my work was present in the pit (the name of the place below the stage) among other faces. Nothing, I wasn’t there. Pity! I saw only some group photos that I took: I was the “official photographer” of the community, so I was always behind the objective! Those photos were in the official catalogue of the show too, obviously without my name. This is the sad way of the photographer…

This documentary is not for commerce. I didn’t repeat this nostalgia moment with another screening session. But I wish to buy a copy to search better my face among the crowd…

More informations about the film on the website www.rmhc-film.com.

Then a photographic book was edited about these years in the left fringe of the Roman skinhead community. This time I can find myself in the pit. But only by shoulder and a little of my face. However maybe it was the last live gig that I saw, a couple of years ago. Time flies.

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