Terrorist or Revolutionary? You Decide

   Area filmmakers Margo Pelletier and Lisa Thomas have made a cinematically uneven but thematically powerful documentary about Silvia Baraldini, a radical activist who was imprisoned for nearly two decades of a 43-year sentence on federal racketeering charges.  She was freed in March 2001.

   Pelletier and Thomas live and work in Catskill.  “Freeing Silvia Baraldiniâ€� is their first major film.  It begins with a re-enactment of the November 1982 day when Baraldini was apprehended by FBI agents, the beginning of her long journey through the courts and prisons.

   By then Baraldini had already spent many years as an anti-war protester, in high school and then at college in Madison, WI.  There she became involved with a wide range of liberationist movements, including the Black Liberation Army, FALN (the Puerto Rican liberation army), and a group called the May 19th Communist Organization.

   Much of the first half of the film is an extended history lesson about the various radical movements of the ’60s and ’70s, their currents and countercurrents, and the ongoing efforts of the FBI to break them.  Substantive interviews with Baraldini and other key figures from these groups, interspersed with extensive archival footage, carry the story forward.  To anyone who does not know much of this history (this writer included), the movie offers an engrossing education.

   Eventually, Baraldini was charged as a co-conspirator in the prison escape of Assata Shakur, a leader of the Black Liberation Army, and for planning a bank robbery, too, which, according to the film, never occurred.  Baraldini’s lawyer tells the filmmakers that the use of the RICO (racketeering) statutes, originally designed to bring down the mob, was a novelty when prosecutors applied them to Baraldini and other radicals.

   One frustration of the film is that it gives insufficient detail about the legal process and only vague hints, including by Baraldini herself, about what she did or did not do.  Perhaps, as the inmates in “The Shawshank Redemptionâ€� say, everyone here is innocent.

   The second half of the film follows Baraldini through her nightmare of incarceration, which included stays in maximum-security federal prisons, extended periods of isolation, and other deprivations.  At one point Baraldini developed cancer; surgery was performed only after she fought her case through the courts for months.  Even then, Baraldini describes receiving radiation treatment in a hospital with a battery of snipers aiming their rifles at her bed.

   Years of negotiations finally resulted in Baraldini’s transfer to Italy, where she was born.  Still, the U.S. government insisted that she receive harsh imprisonment, until Baraldini had a second bout of cancer and the Italian government granted her release.

    “Freeing Silvia Baraldiniâ€� is too often tricked up with re-enactments, camera effects, and a soundtrack meant to heighten our emotional response.  It simply doesn’t need these things.

    But in the end, it is impossible to watch this film and not consider the parallels between Baraldini’s treatment and those of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, not to mention the larger issue of how the U.S. government and radical movements relate to one another.

    It is also impossible not to be moved by Baraldini’s story, whatever her crimes.  She paid a steep price for her passionate commitment to justice and self-determination, yet never lost her dignity and never compromised her beliefs.

“Freeing Silvia Baraldini� will have its Northeast premiere at the Community Theater, 373 Main St. in Catskill, NY, Nov. 21, at 6 p.m., followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.