The Last Heat of Steel recounts the transition from heavy industry – which characterised production in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – to logistics managed by digital systems. This is not just the mere narrative of an urban transformation but the story of social changes linked to the effort to adapt contexts to new forms of production which are cleaner though perhaps more anonymous. The story is that of the Ferriera, the famous iron and steel plant in Trieste, shut down after 123 years and numerous changes of ownership. Because of the role it played in the local Trieste economy and society, the plant is chosen as a symbol, but it is not unique. The documentary unfolds along a poetic itinerary, interspersed with the testimony of the workers, of the other protagonists of the transformation and experts in the sector: from Giulio Sapelli to the president of the Trieste Port Authority, Zeno D’Agostino, and from the city’s mayor, Roberto Dipiazza, to the writer and journalist Pietro Spirito.
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