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Fiume o Morte! Fascism's stranger-than-fiction poet-led first state

history arts about 1 hour ago For his latest blending of documentary and fiction, filmmaker Igor Bezinovic has turned the camera on a stranger-than-fiction story from the history of his own port city on the Adriatic coast, Rijecka. For Fiume o Morte! which appears in the Whanau Marama New Zealand International Film Festival in Poneke Wellington this week, Bezinovic enlisted 100s of members of his city's own community to reenact their occupation by a fascist poet for 16 months after the first world war. Rijecka is now part of Croatia, but when Igor was born the city was part of socialist Yugoslavia. Strategically located, not far from Venice and Trieste, the city had previously been part of Italy, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Austria-Hungarian empire, and at several times has been its own free state, known as Fiume. But in 1919 there was a rather unorthodox attempt to reclaim the former Roman province of Dalmatia for the new state of Italy, without Italy's actual own backing. Fiume became the Italian Regency of Carnaro An aristocrat, war hero, poet and playwright of the decadent literary movement, Gabriele D'Annunzio led disgruntled Italian army legionnaires in a convoy of trucks to occupy the city of Fiume. Schools, streets and squares were susbeqeuntly named after him. The action was to greatly inspire Mussolini and his fascist movement. Indeed, already very famous as a writer in Italy, D'Annuzio's first visit to Fiume was as playwright to see a production of a play of his about the rise in power of Venice. And to fit his romantic propagandist ideals with his action the occupation was filmed and photographed obsessivel. This has provided Bezinovic and his community much to represent and reenact for this film. This is Igor Bezinovic's third feature length film. His debut The Blockade won best Croatian documentary in 2012 and his second A Brief Excursion won Best Croatian feature in 2017. From Croatia, he joined Mark Amery on Culture 101. Tags: arts history politics film To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.