After its premiere at the Berlinale Forum in February '75, Anna was also presented in Venice, the film was followed by a very well-participated debate, alongside Alberto Grifi there was Adriano Aprà, and among those present was Tatti Sanguineti, the author of a very articulate critical speech. The footage of this meeting is part of the 30 cassettes containing the video footage from which the film was edited, thanks to the work of Anna Maria Licciardello, the Cineteca Nazionale with the Fondazione Grifi and the La camera ottica laboratory in Gorizia.
7 April 2006 Alberto Grifi, a year before his death, is interviewed for the last time by Roberto Silvestri and canecapovolto. What emerges in the interview is the portrait of an underground filmmaker who was always intrigued by the dual aim of pursuing scientific and artistic research simultaneously, and whose cinema, influenced by Grotowski's method, was made by people whose objective was to understand how life works by interpreting roles that allow them to live experiences which were totally different from their own ones.
Alberto Grifi (Rome, 1938–2007), a painter, director, cameraman and photographer, is a fundamental figure of Italian experimental and activist cinema. In the first half of the 1960s he worked on the production of documentaries, and in 1964, together with Gianfranco Baruchello, he made La verifica incerta, followed by many other experimental films. With the cult film Anna 1975 he was one of the first to experiment with the use of videotape in an independent film. In 1976 – together with a group of ‘video hoodlums’ – he produced documentaries rarely screened today on youth protests in Milan, Bologna and Rome. Throughout the 1980s he shot industrial documentaries in the United States, Latin America, Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia. Grifi has also produced many radio programmes, published his writings on penitentiaries, contributed to various film magazines and held seminars in many squats, and universities, becoming a reference for future militant filmmakers.