A documentary for Franco Basaglia 100 years after his birth

What is a social enterprise? The answer seems easy today. It is enough to quote the legislation which since 2017 regulates “private entities engaged on a stable and principal basis in a business activity of general interest, non-profit and for civic, solidarity and socially useful purposes”. Fifty years ago, however, social enterprise did not exist in Italy, much less any perception of its disruptive function. The first Italian social enterprise, probably the first in the world, was born in 1972: in the Trieste of Franco Basaglia called to direct the city psychiatric hospital.

With his team Basaglia had begun to dismantle the oppressive rules that governed the lives of patients, to start a process of social re-integration and restore to each person the full dignity of a citizen. But the difficult road to the psychosocial rehabilitation of the inmates in the psychiatric hospital also passed, and above all, through the recognition of full worker rights: thus, on 16 December 1972, after a difficult bureaucratic process and a complex confrontation with the institutions and the court, the first social cooperative in the world was officially born in Trieste, CLU Franco Basaglia United Workers Cooperative, made up of 28 members: alongside 16 patients of the psychiatric hospital, who as such were deprived of civil and political rights, there was a group of doctors, nurses, sociologists and psychologists. Since then, in thousands of places in Italy, thousands of social cooperatives – over 20,450, according to estimates from October 2023 – do business, every day, to bring together work, dignity and relationships between people.

In 2024, which celebrates the centenary of the birth of Franco Basaglia, CLU Cooperativa Lavoratori Uniti Franco Basaglia tells his story for the first time in a documentary directed by the director Erika Rossi, 50 years of CLU, which presents its absolute premiere at Trieste Film Festival Saturday 20 January, at 4pm at the Miela Theatre. Written with the journalist and author Massimo Cirri – who in the film is the exceptional Cicerone to the adventure of CLU – the documentary projects us between the roaring years of the foundation of the Cooperativa Lavoratori Unti and a present that has fully taken up the legacy and expectations of the birth of CLU, in Trieste and all over Italy.

Produced by Ghirigori, with photography by Daniel Mazza and editing by Beppe Leonetti and with music by Max Maber Orkestar50 years of CLU retraces the history of the Cooperative from its birth to today, condensing its 50 years of activity and its mission to restore dignity to suffering and non-linear life paths, giving its members the concrete opportunity to reintegrate as active citizens in society through work. Also speaking gradually in the documentary are Augusto Debernardi, Giovanna Del Giudice, Peppe Dell’Acqua, Franco Rotelli, Michele Zanetti, Gigi Bettoli, Fabio Pitucco, Roberto Colapietro, Ivan Brajnik, Luis Carlos Candelo, Franco Zanin, Sabrina Domanelli, Garina Oprea, Gioia Poffo, Francesco Trombetta, Mario Cerne, Carmen Roll, Donatelle Grizon, Alessandro Martellos, Luisa Russo, Gianluca Rampini, Marco Nicola, Genziana Polacco, Dagmar Trinajstic, Maria Marian, Mario Stanovich, Diego Doronzo, Alberto Pecorari, Pasqualino Galdo and Gian Luigi Ramos .

Already director of Trieste tells Basaglia (2009), The journey of Marco Cavallo (2014) e The city that heals (2012). With this film, Erika Rossi signs the story of one of the most interesting and least known realities born within Franco Basaglia’s Trieste, in that «forge of freedom, possibilities and new ideas that was the former psychiatric hospital starting from the Seventies. Not only did the sick 50 years ago rediscover their identity as people – explains the director – but they claimed the most sacrosanct of rights: that of work, which contributes most to defining people in the social context”.

An attentive witness to this great story of change, Massimo Cirri observes that «the history of the CLU concerns us all, in a world that never seems to consider the least fortunate as a resource. It is a story that is not over yet, with protagonists to know and listen to, because they demonstrate that changing the world is still possible, little by little, day by day.” Ivan Brajnik, president of the CLU Copperativa Lavoratori Uniti, recalls: «at the beginning of the 80s, CLU integrated its name with the name of its promoter, Franco Basaglia. The Cooperative grows and develops by experimenting with the opening of new sectors, new opportunities for social and work inclusion for vulnerable people. Over time CLU becomes a “company”, “proud of a professionalism built and defended with tenacity over these long years, and continues to pursue the same objectives of democracy, mutuality and fight against inequality as when it was founded: restoring a role of workers to people in difficulty, promoting their social inclusion. Being a social cooperative and at the same time a company subject to market rules is a complex challenge, which CLU faces daily, where the economy intertwines the objective of quality of life with local development. Giving trust in the potential of every single individual, without discrimination and prejudice, brings great results.”