Having said this, we must also add that surviving in the Senate with such a small margin of support as the Prodi government had would have required the stamina of a Stalinist leadership endowed with a very firm sense of discipline. Instead, the coalition was made up of a series of undisciplined and fractious parties, which had never given their alliance a proper test-run or forged a common political strategy. They were intent in running the government with a purposely vague political programme.

We all knew this was happening. The only way to shift the difficult equilibrium that the coalition established between such different powers was to give greater weight to that section of society which veered towards the left. This could have been achieved only if we had had the courage to invest in the attempts to achieve unity over the last couple of years, and letting go of jealousies affecting the organisation and identity of parties, which politicians held onto just to preserve their small and traditional electoral strongholds.

Most of all, we must understand (and act accordingly) that the majority of Leftist powers are outside of the four parties making up the ‘Sinistra Arcobaleno’ coalition. To make a difference we would have had to create something truly new, the famous ‘cosa rossa’ (Red Thing – a proposed coalition between the four left parties in the governing coalition – the PRC, PdCI, SD and the Greens – and a broader range of social actors).

Unfortunately, following an assembly meeting that took place in December, which raised the hopes of many, almost nothing was done. The list that has been prepared recently is a good thing, but we must also admit that it isn’t very appetising. Furthermore, little progress was made on the issue of participation by non-members in the coalition of the four parties, the finalisation of its programme and the choice of candidates.

Secondly, it should be mentioned that, even thought the Prodi government wasn’t a pretty sight, Italian society itself has turned rather ugly in the last few years. The government didn’t exactly betray a population that was pushing for social or political change. Unfortunately, people have increasingly lost hope in democracy as a tool for change and have turned to petty, localised and corporate rebellions instead, as well as collectively losing their common values. Essentially, a serious social regression and impoverishment has taken place.

One reason for this, is that Left parties themselves, not to mention the DS, have abandoned social action as a cause (or what was once referred to as ‘foundation work’), deciding instead to hide behind institutions and television.

This way, left-wing associations have gradually lost their grip upon and roots within their territories, leading to the impoverishment we witness today. We lost with the people a long time before we lost at the Senate.

Making up for the mistakes we made in these years won’t be easy. It will take some time. However, we must recognise that there won’t be any shortcuts to take if we wish to regain any hope for a decent government.

For the reasons I have mentioned above, we are approaching the election in a very bad state. We have witnessed the majority of powers making up the Unione take yet another step towards the right and a fracture between the new Democratic Party and the left.

So what hopes do we have to win against Berlusconi? The fact that Casini’s Unione dei Democratici Cristiani e Democratici di Centro (UDC) split from Forza Italia has reduced the strictly bipolar character of the political framework. There is a possibility that, if Veltroni’s Democratic Party (DP) has some degree of success, it might govern by forming alliances with other powers. And there are only two options: they can either form an alliance with Casini on the right, or with La Sinistra Arcobleno on the left. I think it is worth aiming for the latter option, because the level of political degradation is serious and a Berlusconi government would be very dangerous.

Obviously the Sinistra Arcobaleno has to present itself as a very different entity to the DP and very critical of it as well. But this should not mean singling out the DP as their number one enemy and excluding, a priori, a future collaboration with them.

Furthermore the only way to counteract the otherwise inevitable demise of the left by means of a “voto utile” (tactical vote) in favour of the DP – as the only party who has a winning chance against Berlusconi – is to prove that only a strong left will be able to stop the DS from slipping further towards the right in the future. Hence, voting for the Arcobaleno now might prove very useful later.

Luciana Castellina, a journalist and writer, is one the founders of Il Manifesto. She was MP in Italian and EU parliament.

Following years of stagnation, Italian cinema is making a remarkable comeback with the emergence of new and talented film directors, as well as the reapperance of a generation of notorious directors who are now in their forties. Statistics reflect this trend. Italian films had become an insignificant niche within Italy’s film industry. Now, in 2007, they have conquered 30 per cent of the market, returning to a level of popularity that was last witnessed in 1987.

These figures are not simply the result of the regular ‘Christmas films’ – awful productions designed for the family, which are regularly box office hits. We have seen a series of quality films emerging from an intermediate generation, like Tornatore’s La Sconosciuta (The Stranger) or Giorni e Nuvole (Days and Clouds) by Soldini, as well as, most significantly, a wave of productions by young directors aimed at a young audience. ‘Italian-style comedies’ are being revived, and although they may not be comparable to those of the 1960s and 1970s (by Monicelli, Risi, De Sica, Scola, and many others who belong to that golden age), they are not at all bad. I am referring to films including Mio Fratello è Figlio Unico (My Brother is an Only Child) by Lucchetti, La Notte Prima Degli Esami by Brizzi, Zanasi’s Non ci Pensare and L’Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio.

Historical films are also worth mentioning. Foremost, due to its political resonance, is I Vicerè by Roberto Faenza, based on a famous 17th-century novel describing Sicily on the eve of Garibaldi’s arrival on the island. What strikes the audience is the analogy between the Italian ruling class at this historical moment and at the present time.

Moreover, it is interesting to note the increased focus in contemporary film on the sphere of work. This trend is led by women directors. In both Wilma Labate’s fiction, Signorina F (F stands for Fiat), and in Francesca Comencini’s documentary, In Fabbrica, factories and workers – which had become invisible in recent decades – come to the fore. These films also reflect workers’ consciousness and needs and their expression in terms of trade unionism. This is a sign of a revived form of communication between cinema and society, after several years of reciprocal neglect.

Who will watch them?

But why should one hope for an English release of these films? Who will watch them? There is a very low likelihood that a German, French, Pole, Swede or any other European ever will. European movies hardly reach beyond their own country, where already only a low proportion of domestic films are watched, in comparison with American films. Audiences for non-national European movies barely reach 10 per cent of the market – and the UK’s 3 per cent is by far the worst.

The truth is that Europeans have a shared knowledge on the basis of American culture, with most people recognising US actors and images to a far greater extent than those from their own continent. Indeed, it can be said that Europeans communicate with each other through the American culture.

So although newly developed communication technologies have the potential of guaranteeing an extraordinary enrichment through cultural exchanges, we have become the victims of massive monoculturalism, whereby the multiplication of means of communication has gone hand in hand with a drastic reduction of sources from which content is generated. In Europe, for example, the whole of African, Asian and Latin American cinema is filtered through a hole as tiny as 1 per cent of the total market.

To make matters worse, 95 per cent of US movies are produced domestically in the US, with the result that my young nephew is likely to know more about Texas than about France. Meanwhile, an American kid his same age may not even be aware that Europe exists. One of the saddest images of the early days of the Iraq War was that of a young Yankee soldier, holding a gun and looking utterly lost upon his arrival in the ancient city of Babylon during the first days of the invasion.

Hollywood’s dominance

This is an old and painful story that has its roots in deeply entrenched structures. European cinema stopped being the leader in this field following the first world war, when the region was devastated by conflict and famous studios, including the French Pathé, were converted into weapons’ factories. In the post-war era, Europe witnessed a massive invasion of foreign films, increasingly popular with the advent of sound, while European productions weakened due to language differences.

From this moment onwards, Hollywood began to dominate the market. A lack of language barriers guaranteed domestic success, and films were distributed abroad only once production costs had been at least partially covered. As a result, distribution margins grew and with massive marketing capacities, thousands of copies were being circulated compared to a meagre number of local films.

To this day, the fractured European market cannot stand the competition. To make matters worse, Americans dub their movies to have a better chance at infiltrating the European market, but then refuse to dub European films, claiming their audience at home is too sophisticated to accept this method. Hence the use of subtitles becomes necessary but this fatally reduces audience numbers.

US dominance of the film industry has always been underpinned by strong government support. It is indicative, for example, that in the first mission sent by Washington to Europe immediately after the end of the second world war the Motion Pictures Association of America already had a notable presence; and that, subsequently, when it came to signing the Marshall Plan, the White House imposed a condition that countries would not receive aid unless their film industries granted complete access to American movies. These issues of the market versus the defence of cultural diversity re-emerged in the course of the GATS negotiations (General Agreement on Trade and Services) and are still open today.

Hegemony, ‘protectionism’ and diversity

The positions taken by some European countries towards their domestic film industries has often been disdainfully labelled ‘protectionist’. Such an accusation is ridiculous, when the figures reveal that American cinema dominates approximately 80 per cent of the worldwide audio-visual market, and benefits massively from the hegemonic influence that the United States exerts as a global superpower.

It is true that this cultural hegemony is the hegemony of a major cinematographic industry, Hollywood, which enjoys a form of extraterritoriality as the ‘fatherland of cinema’, or the ‘Detroit of feelings’. But the question is whether this attraction has purely cultural roots, or as a well-known New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, once maliciously wrote: ‘McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas.’

Even if we were ready to accept market notions such as competition encouraging innovation and the related principle of ‘comparative advantage’ – meaning that it is more efficient to produce where levels of productivity are highest – in many spheres, these formulae cannot be applied to cultural products. A fridge or a car made in Los Angeles is more or less similar to a fridge and a car made in Beijing, Rome or Buenos Aires, but the same cannot be said for the movie industry. Films are about shared memories, the dreams, values and traditions of people within the culture into which they are born. They nourish our sense of social identity. To treat the film industry like any other industry would be passively to shrug off a terrible loss of cultural richness.

Following decades of struggle to assert the importance of a fair and varied film industry, these basic values have finally been introduced in Unesco’s recent Convention on the Defence of Cultural Diversity. They were approved unanimously, expect for two votes: those of the United States and Israel.

Unfortunately, unlike the WTO, UN institutions have no power to impose such reforms. The difficulty lies in making the convention prevail over the GATS agreements, which push towards a potentially devastating liberalisation even in the audio-visual sector. But if we want a chance to watch an Italian film (or a French or a Hungarian one, for that matter), we have to overcome this hurdle. It would be an illusion to think that now, thanks to the internet, we are able to watch whatever we wish. That freedom only exists if we are in the position to choose, both technically and culturally. This would require the net to remain truly free, which is an increasingly unlikely prospect.