Archive · Assignments

Genoa

2001 · Five frames from video — Argyris Dinopoulos in front of the camera, on the streets of Genoa.

One of the most important events of the early twenty-first century (and, in the end, a prophetic one) was covered by Argyris Dinopoulos, together with the cameraman Kostas Liliabtis, as correspondents for Antenna, in Genoa, Italy, from 18 to 23 July 2001.

These were the vast demonstrations against globalisation, with demonstrators from all over Europe (and from other parts of the world as well) that took place in Genoa during the days when the G8 (as they then were), that is the leaders of the eight most powerful countries in the world, were meeting in that Italian city.

The ferocity of the demonstrators' clashes with the Italian police took on the dimensions of a worldwide anger, and proved in the end prophetic of what globalisation would mean for the fortunes and the lives of the peoples of the world.

In the course of those clashes, with hundreds of journalists and television crews from every corner of the planet covering them, Kostas Liliabtis was injured in the leg (he "caught" a brick) and was taken by Argyris Dinopoulos to one of Genoa's hospitals.

In his own words: "Liliabtis's injury proved, fortunately, 'superficial' (we left after some first aid had been given) but our ('first-hand') report at the hospital recorded injured policemen and injured demonstrators in adjacent beds, as an element not only of a hospital reality, but also of the common fate of ordinary people in the face of the powerful of the planet."

The Genoa assignment was among the last of the "big reports" on international events that Argyris Dinopoulos made before he turned to local government and to politics for close to fifteen years (2001–2015).