This interview is part of a series of seven interviews on Fuori! (including this one, as well as those with Angelo Pezzana, founder of Fuori!, Maurizio Gelatti, Vice President of the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori!, and the activists of Fuori!, Enzo Cucco, Anna Cuculo, Vera Fraboni and Riccardo Rosso). These interviews were collected during summer 2024 thanks to a Scholarship Catalyst Program grant from Texas Tech University (Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Office of the Vice President for Research) and are to be considered as dedicated to Angelo Pezzana.
Maurizio Cagliuso is Archivist and Librarian of the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori!
Thank you for this interview, Maurizio. Would you like to talk about how you encountered the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori!, that until 2023 was Fondazione Sandro Penna-Fuori!?
My introduction to the Foundation dates to spring 1995. I approached the Foundation because it included Informagay, the group managing it at the time. I was looking for a support group during my first approaches to the homosexual world, seeking others who could explain this world to me. I immediately fell in love with this place because I have always loved history and archives. I began working, together with my partner at the time, with the Foundation, particularly on cataloging books. I organized the archive, including the press review and newspaper library. My commitment began there and continues to this day, increasing with many initiatives. I have also met many of the historic figures that constituted Fuori!, of which the Foundation is the heir: first and foremost, Angelo Pezzana, then, Enzo Cucco, who was very active at the time, Enzo Francone, Marco Silombria, and a little later, Riccardo Rosso, as well as Anna Cuculo.
What are the fundamental moments of the history of the magazine and the movement Fuori!?
My knowledge of the history of the movement obviously comes from the sources and my work as an “archivist,” as it is obvious that I have not lived through those years: I was a child then; we can even say that I am almost the same age as the movement since I was born in 1972. Fuori! started the year before, and in 1972 the Sanremo demonstration against the Congresso Internazionale di Sessuologia took place. The previous year, on April 15, the infamous article that initiated everything was published in La Stampa: it was a review by Romero of the Mauriziano Hospital in Turin of a book by D’Aquino, a psychologist and author of Diario di un omosessuale, who wrote about curing a homosexual with psychological techniques.
This outrages Angelo Pezzana and a group of his friends, who intervene, decide to react and write to the newspaper, but La Stampa does not allow them to respond to the article. Their indignation grows and they form connections with people in other cities, particularly Rome and Milan, leading to the creation of what will become the Fuori! movement. They begin meeting frequently, decide to create a magazine also called Fuori!, with issue number zero coming out in December 1971, and continue at this pace. They start with their first actions, such as defacing walls around the city.
Enzo Francone remembers it well, and he declares that he was one of the authors, and also Silombria, as his first encounter with Fuori! takes place at the end of Ponte Isabella, near where he lived. Here he sees a large graffiti and there he encounters Fuori! for the first time.
So, here we already have some of the prominent names of the movement, at least as far as the Turin group is concerned. Then, they decide to demonstrate in Sanremo at the sexology conference, involving other groups that were forming in the same period across Europe, including France, Holland, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. These groups gather to demonstrate in front of the Sanremo Casino’s congress room.
The demonstration was very successful due to the participation of the press, providing significant visibility to the movement. Fuori! had an international scope, both because it involved other nations and for the participations in meetings in Paris, Denmark, and in September 1972 in Aarhus. It focused on sexuality and was very well-organized by the local university, highlighting how far ahead the Danes and in general Scandinavian countries were in terms of sexual liberation in comparison to Southern Europe.
There is a report on the Fuori! of this meeting. However, they come away somehow shocked by the event – it was a Sex Festival – but also satisfied for having participated. They continue with the publication of the magazine Fuori!, that was initially supposed to be monthly but, for economic reasons, became semi-annual and eventually annual by the end of the ‘70s.
Other major events in the movement take place later, notably in 1974, with the decision to join the Radical Party that divides the movement because not everyone agrees with this choice, even though most hold left-wing ideas but do not find themselves represented by this party. This leads some members, particularly those from Milan and Rome, to withdraw from the central group and form what are called homosexual collectives, operating somewhat in parallel.
Several sensational events drew public attention to the fight for rights. In 1977, Angelo Pezzana goes to Moscow to protest a law prohibiting homosexuality, that victimized famous film director Sergei Parajanov. He receives support from the Radical Party. That same year, he seeks support from the Biennale del Dissenso in Venice, with its President Carlo Ripa di Meana, who promises him a platform to speak, although this does not happen. However, the news of his protest still resonates successfully.
Other sensational news includes Enzo Francone’s protest in Iran between March 21 and 29, 1979. In the meanwhile, we have the deposition of the Shah and the rise to power of the Ayatollah, therefore of extremist Islam. Francone goes to Tehran and stages a courageous protest at that time, risking much, yet making it and achieving media success as well. Then, obviously, there are meetings, congresses, local battles, but by the late ‘70s, their strength waned also because of internal divisions. Furthermore, there are the political elections in 1976, in which for the first time the Radical Party registers people who are openly homosexual. They are elected, especially Angelo Pezzana, who stays for about three years.They decided to do a shift, with changes every two years and the next two on the list took over the seat in Parliament. But when it was Angelo Pezzana’s turn, he decided to step down due to personal reasons, including his commitments with the Luxemburg bookstore, that he managed at that time, and to refuse this rotation.
Then we get to 1980, when they hold a congress in which they question themselves and decide to reach a certain number of enrolled members or to close permanently. When the enrollment numbers are not met, the history of Fuori! ended officially in the ‘70s.
However, it does not end completely because the movement’s legacy continues with the establishment of the Foundation in August 1980, with the objective of collecting all the materials produced in the previous decade, and this is what happened. The Foundation somehow carried forward the spirit of Fuori!, showing itself especially in the ‘80s.
In the early ‘80s, with the onset of the AIDS crisis, the Foundation is involved on the front lines. Enzo Cucco especially opens an AIDS solidarity group based within the Foundation: he will lead the efforts alongside Bruno Di Donato and many others. This brings us to more recent years, where the remaining members continue their activism under the Foundation, no longer Fuori!.
How are you organizing the archive and library of the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori!?
The archive has already been arranged because, at the beginning of the 2000s, it was ordered and divided into three archival funds: the Fuori! Fund, the Fondazione Sandro Penna Fund, and the AIDS Solidarity Group Fund. So, here are three main cores of the archive that are clearly identified. They are classified and sorted, so the next step, the current one, should be the digitalization of these funds. But at the same time, there is also a library, a newspaper library, and a very important press review collection. The press review spans from 1969-1970 up to 2019 and includes a complete review of the national press and especially some international coverage. While it is fully organized chronologically, it has not yet been fully digitized, except for the ‘70s, that have been completely digitalized and are available online.
The library has been partially catalogued and is available in part on an international search engine, particularly the English language section because we have multiple languages – English, Italian, and even French, German, and something in Spanish – mostly from donations by Angelo Pezzana and others. In particular, the English language collection is entirely from Angelo Pezzana, who had these texts brought over from the United States and England through his Hellas Bookstore in the ‘60s and the Luxemburg Bookstore in the ‘70s and later. Fortunately for us, he diligently preserved these texts and then donated them to the Foundation.
Our ongoing work involves continuing this work to include more of the library’s collection in the Opac catalog of the Sistema Bibliotecario Nazionale (SBN), making it available to researchers.
There is also a large, still unexplored, archive related to AIDS. This includes a press review from the ‘80s and ‘90s up to the early 2000s, along with magazines, flyers, and posters, that are yet to be catalogued. These materials are currently only organized chronologically and by publication. The work ahead involves both digitalization and cataloguing.
Photo Credits © Courtesy of Maurizio Cagliuso
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