Television documentary, history and memory. An analysis of Sergio Zavoli's The Gardens of Abel

Abstract

This article examines a celebrated documentary made for Italian state TV in 1968 and transmitted in 1969 to an audience of millions. The programme – The Gardens of Abel – looked at changes introduced by the radical psychiatrist Franco Basaglia in an asylum in the north-east of Italy (Gorizia). The article examines the content of this programme for the first time, questions some of the claims that have been made for it, and outlines the sources used by the director, Sergio Zavoli. The article argues that the film was as much an expression of Zavoli's vision and ideas as it was linked to those of Franco Basaglia himself. Finally, the article highlights the way that this programme has become part of historical discourse and popular memory.

Keywords::

• Documentary
• Italian television
• Sergio Zavoli
• Franco Basaglia
• psychiatry

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Wellcome Trust under Grant a Two year fully funded Research Leave award. 092690/Z/10/Z, ‘Franco Basaglia and Mental Health Reform in Italy, 1960-2009’, (£114,271).

Notes

¹ The full version of the film can be seen online at http://www.deistituzionalizzazione-trieste.it/videogallery/VideoSourceITA.html. This article is based on the original transmission version, obtained from the RAI archive. There are numerous truncated versions available on the web. Copyright issues often mean that the opening scene has been cut.

² There are various published versions of the script for I giardini di Abele, many of which differ from that which was actually transmitted in 1969. The quotes in this article are based, unless otherwise stated, on the film itself (Archivio RAI, Teca D4245/B). See, for edited versions of the script, Zavoli (1969, 237–248, 2002, 363–378. 2005).

³ These were not terms widely used by the Basaglians themselves.

⁴ See the documentary Un giorno al manicomio (1961) shot in Rome's asylum (http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-5bb346cc-4926-417c-a066-d31d37ff720f.html) and the comparison made with I giardini di Abele in a recent TV history programme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = gYxiwe7QpRs).

⁵ This citation appeared on the back cover of the first collective book produced by the équipe about Gorizia, Che cos'è la psichiatria? (Basaglia 1967).

⁶ The dramatic clip of a patient being forcibly restrained by two nurses was taken from Riccardo Napolitano's (1967) documentary, 1904, n. 36. It is not clear if this was a real incident, however, or a ‘reconstruction’ using actors.

⁷ The preparations would appear to have been going on for a long time. There are signs that journalists from TV7 were in Gorizia in 1966. Zavoli got to know Basaglia well, and was a visitor to his flat in Gorizia and to the hospital itself in 1967–1968. The script was seen by Basaglia before transmission, and it is clear that extensive negotiation took place over its content.

⁸ Archivio Basaglia (no date, but 1968).

⁹ For a taste of this chaos, see the film shot by a Finnish documentary crew in 1968, La favola del serpente (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = tkm4rXqjWIs and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 8No0yr0NsLM).

¹⁰ Symphony n. 1 ‘Titan’, II movement.

¹¹ One photo from the film was taken by Berengo Gardin, but did not appear in Morire di Classe, so it is clear that Zavoli was given access to the range of photos from which the selection was made by the Basaglias for that book.