Guerra Nostra is a film about the First World War. Together with Il grande bianco. Transcendenza della Grande Guerra and together with Fronti, it is part of the Trilogia della Grande Guerra by Roberto Paci Dalò.

Guerra Nostra, as well as revealing new images of the Alpine front at the time of the First World War, reflects on the operations of historical revisionism that fascism put in place for its systematic propaganda during the years of the dictatorship of Mussolini’s government.

Guerra Nostra is the cinematic re-proposal of a documentary of the same name from 1927 (Guerra Nostra, 1927, ITA, 45′).
This documentary, realized in the Fascist period by editing some unpublished footage of the First World War front, was one of the first short films based on archival material.

The new Fascist editing had as its objective to present to the Italians a historical progression between the First World War and the advent of the Duce.

The Fascists’ misappropriation of footage from the Great War was a revisionist act and became part of Mussolini’s systematic propaganda plan.

After ninety years

The fascist documentary Guerra Nostra is projected and played live by Roberto Paci Dalò, for the first time in ninety years, at the San Filippo Neri Orator in Bologna.

The first historical screening of Guerra Nostra took place in Rome in Piazza Venezia in 1927, in front of a hundred thousand people. But every trace of that first version has been lost: not even the Luce Institute keeps a copy. Roberto Paci Dalò, on the other hand, found in Bologna, in the Home Movies archives, a reduced version, dated 1928, intended for family viewing in 9.5 mm, of Guerra Nostra, a filmic tale of the salient phases of the First World War with images taken from the battlefields by civilian and military cameramen. A single document, which Home Movies specialists have digitized, which will be screened on November 2 in Bologna at the oratory of San Filippo Neri. The projection is accompanied by live music by the eclectic artist Roberto Paci Dalò. The event is part of the rich calendar of Archivio Aperto, the initiative with which every year the association that deals with the rescue of amateur and family films presents its work.

A copy kept at Home Movies - Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia

Guerra nostra of 1927 responded to the objective of creating historical evidence of continuity between the First World War and the advent of Mussolini, (hence the name Guerra Nostra).

Guerra Nostra is not only a very interesting case of historical re-enactment of fascist propaganda, but it is also one of the first films on the Great War made with archival materials.

It was in fact the model to which many of the subsequent productions referred.

In 1928 a 9.5mm reduced version was distributed for widespread distribution in the homes of Italians. This version was digitized in 2K, the only one currently available, starting with a copy kept at Home Movies – Archivio Nazionale del Film di Famiglia. All this was carried out as part of a project by the Fondazione del Monte di Bologna e di Ravenna.