The workshop “G8 Genoa 2001: A Grassroots Media Forensics Toolbox” will present the analyzing method of the photographic/video material which allowed to reconstruct the events during the trials. Its goal is to develop new tools capable of protecting the freedom to demonstrate increasingly endangered by the security apparatuses of governments and transnational institutions.

In 2001 there were no social media or smartphones, yet during the demonstrations against the G8 in Genoa, the presence of hundreds of small cameras contributed to create a grassroots narrative of the events that was very different from the one peddled by institutions and mainstream media.

The meticulous operation of collecting, attributing, archiving and synchronizing the video and photographic materials shaped one of the most effective experiences of technical support for the legal team engaged in the posthumous trials of that event, now considered to be of historical relevance not only in Italy. Film director Carlo A. Bachschmidt was a technical consultant in the G8 trials and the coordinator of the Genoa Legal Forum, an informal group of lawyers involved in the defense of the protesters. The images shot by filmmaker and media activist Manolo Luppichini helped tell the story of the events from an ‘independent’ perspective.