THE GIARRE CRIME / IL DELITTO DI GIARRE
On the occasion of Pride Month, the Consulate General of Italy, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, presents The Giarre Crime (Il delitto di Giarre), the documentary by Sky Crime and History Channel on the double homophobic murder that changed the history of the movement LGBT+ in Italy. Francesco Lepore, narrator and production supervisor, will be in attendance and present the documentary.
June 17, 2024 | 6.30pm
Italian Cultural Institute @INNOVIT
710 Sansome St, San Francisco
31 October 1980. In the Sicilian municipality of Giarre, Giorgio Agatino Giammona (25 years old) and Toni Galatola (15 years old) are found lifeless, one next to the other, among brambles and brushwood. Having disappeared into thin air sixteen days earlier, the two were known in the village as the “ziti” (engaged in Sicilian) and referred to as “puppi”, a derogatory term corresponding to the Italian fagots. The police immediately think of a case of double suicide, therefore of murder-suicide, also because the right hand of what is identified as Giorgio’s corpse is clutching a muddy envelope: inside a letter, of which they can barely read the words: “Toni and I have found peace… Mom, forgive us”. Suddenly, the mysterious confession of a thirteen-year-old who denounces himself as directly responsible appeared, only to immediately recant. But that’s not how things really happened.
Thanks to meticulous research and unpublished details on the story of Giorgio and Toni, the documentary IL DELITTO DI GIARRE tells the truth about a case that remained unsolved for a long time and is among the most controversial in Italian history of the last 40 years. In 89 minutes the journalist and writer Francesco Lepore, author of the investigative essay Il delitto di Giarre. 1980: an “unsolved case” and the battles of the LGBT+ movement in Italy (Rizzoli 2021; BUR Rizzoli 2023) accompanies us in an accurate reconstruction of the facts. And, through exclusive interviews, new elements, photos and video material of the time, it finally sheds light, for the first time, on the case that sparked the protest of the militants of the first homosexual liberation movement, FUORI!, which contributed to changing public opinion significantly, faced for the first time with the tragic reality of two boys killed for the sole fact of loving each other, and accelerated the birth in Palermo of a historic association, Arcigay, with which the second and new phase of the current LGBT+ movement: a fundamental stage of a long journey that in our country has yet to be completed, for full acceptance and protection of civil rights.
The people interviewed by Francesco Lepore are Enza and Rosita Galatola, Toni’s sister and cousin respectively; Father Diego Sorbello, the Capuchin priest who celebrated the funeral of the two boys; Attilio Bolzoni, anti-mafia journalist, with whom the alleged thirteen-year-old murderer recanted his confession; Angela Bottari, former PCI deputy and first parliamentarian to make known the story of the “ziti” of Giarre; Paolo Patanè, former president of national Arcigay and acquaintance of Giorgio and Toni; Lia D’Urso, lesbian activist and co-founder of FUORI! of Catania; Vincenzo Scimonelli, co-founder of the first Arcigay nucleus; Franco Grillini, historic leader of the Italian LGBT+ movement, first president of the national Arcigay and former parliamentarian; Pina Bonanno, trans activist and founder of MIT – Italian Transsexual Movement.
IL DELITTO DI GIARRE is an original Sky Crime and HISTORY Channel production, created by B&B Film, directed by Simone Manetti, screenplay by Gino Clemente and Lorenzo Avola, supervised by Francesco Lepore, who is also the narrator.
FRANCESCO LEPORE
Journalist, writer and activist for the rights of LGBT+ people, Francesco Lepore (Benevento, 1976) was a papal Latinist at the Secretariat of State and then a minute clerk at the Vatican Apostolic Library. Ordained a priest in 2000, he abandoned the priesthood in 2006 to live his homosexuality openly: Frédéric Martel dedicated an entire chapter to his priestly experience and his coming out in the bestseller In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy (Bloomsbury 2019).
Graduated in Dogmatic Theology and graduated in Ancient Literature, he was editor-in-chief of Gaynews.it, the first Italian LGBT+ online newspaper, for four years. Since 2019 he has written on the newspaper Linkiesta.it about civil rights, culture, the Vatican as well as editing the daily Latin column O tempora, o mores, to which the New York Times dedicated an extensive article in 2021. In 2022 he collaborated in the drafting of the first four volumes of the Latino per Passion series, published by the newspaper La Repubblica.
Among the numerous publications, it is worth mentioning the Sermone In festivitate sanctae Mariae Reginae Caeli by Davide di Benevento (8th century ex.), Vatican 2003; The Purgatory Reasoned by Francesco Longano (1729-1796). History and edition of an Enlightenment-Masonic treatise on otherworldly purification (Vat. lat. 15366), in “Miscellanea Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae” (2014); The Giarre Crime. 1980: an “unsolved case” and the battles of the LGBT+ movement in Italy (Rizzoli 2021; BUR Rizzoli2 2023). With Yuri Guiana, activist and member of the ILGA-World board, in 2019 he edited the volume Stonewall. Memory and future of a revolt 50 years after the Stonewall Riots.