CANNES, France, May 19 (Reuters) - An Italian filmmaker said on Sunday Italian authorities had tried to suppress his documentary about alleged police brutality at last year's Genoa G8 summit where one protester was shot dead by a policeman.
Marco Giusti, whose film "Bella Ciao" is being shown at the Cannes film festival, said the government did not want the footage shown because it revealed the raw violence police used on demonstrators.
"The images are really extremely violent, they can change the public's opinion about what happened at Genoa -- that is why the government does not want them aired," Giusti told Reuters.
"Whatever format we have tried to show the pictures in, on film or on television, they have been blocked in one way or another," he said.
There was no immediate reaction from the government about the film.
Giusti and partner Roberto Torelli made the one hour 40 minute documentary from more than 100 hours of footage shot by various sources at the July 2001 summit of the Group of Seven industrialized nations and Russia.
One person was shot dead by a policeman during three days of violent clashes between police and demonstrators. More than 200 people were arrested, while the city was left looking like a war zone of smashed-up buildings and burnt out cars.
After Genoa, and amid calls for Interior Minister Claudio Scajola to resign, the government conducted parliamentary hearings into what happened at the summit, but concluded there was no evidence of police using excessive force.
When the filmmakers tried to have the documentary shown on RAI, one of Italy's three state-owned television channels, they say they were repeatedly turned down.
RAI is run by a board appointed by the government. It has repeatedly said the time was not right to show the film or that it did not fit in with its programming.
BLOOD AND BROKEN TEETH
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government came in for heavy criticism after Genoa not only for the death of the protester but also for a midnight raid on a school where anti-globalization protesters were staying.
After that raid, television journalists captured footage of bloodstained walls, smashed computers and broken teeth scattered across a classroom floor. Those images are the focus of "Bella Ciao" -- which translates as "Hello Darling" and refers to an Italian World War Two song.
Italy's undersecretary of culture Vittorio Sgarbi saw the film in Cannes on Saturday and said he found the images alarming.
"To see all those people covered in blood is really very powerful," said Sgarbi, who was booed by some of the audience before taking his seat at the screening.
"I'm ready to recognize that at Genoa the police made a mistake. The reaction to the demonstrations was definitely disproportionate," La Repubblica newspaper quoted him as saying.
Another Genoa documentary airs at Cannes on Monday. Filmmaker Francesca Comincini will show her piece "Carlo Giuliani, A Boy," a documentary about the murdered protester and how he came to be a symbol of the mass opposition, as part of the festival's special selection.
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